Research

Publications

Tackling Scandalous Inequalities: A Global Policy Proposal for a Human Identity Card and Basic Income
With Ettore Recchi.
Nature: Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 12, 880 (2025).
Article | The Conversation (French) | Radio Télévision Suisse

Food insecurity and the absence of legal identity are the most severe deficiencies in vital and existential human capabilities. These extreme situations expose ‘scandalous inequalities’ between the haves and have-nots on a global scale. The article proposes addressing these issues simultaneously by introducing a Humanity Identity Card (HIC), coupled with a Basic Income Supplement (BIS) of US$ 1 per day for the most vulnerable half of the world’s population. This global social policy aims to expedite the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals 16.9 and 2.1 of the United Nations. The initial funding for the HIC could be sourced from contributions amounting to 0.66% of the gross domestic product of sovereign states, 0.66% of the market capitalisation of major corporations, and 0.66% of the wealth of billionaire households. The HIC would permanently provide universal recognition of individual identity, while the BIS is designed to be gradually phased out as its benefits take effect. Additionally, implementing this policy worldwide can foster a sense of shared responsibility in addressing the global challenges humanity faces.

Partisan Influences in Dutch Politics.
With Maite Laméris.
CESifo Economic Studies 70(2), 154-192 (2024).
Article

We investigate whether and how partisan politics played a role in the Netherlands. To do so, we review existing literature and prepare descriptive statistics from recent datasets. We focus on two related questions: 1) Do we find any signs of partisan politics in the Netherlands? 2) Do developments in party and voter behavior influence the relevance of partisan influences for Dutch governance? Given limited existing research with a macro-level perspective and a focus on the Netherlands, we graphically and descriptively explore the relationship between government ideology and traditional partisan outcome variables, acknowledging the limits of such an investigation. Our descriptive analysis does not suggest a large influence of political ideology on policy-making in the Netherlands, but we observe emerging volatility between changes in government and policy-making since the early 2000s. Exploring the role of party and voter movements, we also document a shifting political landscape in which the potential for traditional partisan influences has become limited.

Remittances and Development.
With H. Fromell and R. Lensink.
In Abor, Adjasi, and Lensink (eds), Contemporary Issues in Development Finance, Routledge (2020).
Article

This chapter highlights the importance of remittances for development, by sketching the magnitude of current and past remittance flows to developing countries and outlines some of the key characteristics of remittances. It discusses the impact of remittances on economic growth and focuses on the relationship between remittances and financial development in the recipient economy. In the context of voluntary labor migration, remittances result from an active migration decision of one or more members of a household aiming to increase the household’s overall income with earnings that are higher than what they would have earned at home. The most important difference between remittances and other sources of external funding of developing countries is that remittances are person-to-person transfers. Using a mutual altruism framework H. Rapoport and F. Docquier show analytically how the volume of the altruistic remittance transfer depends on the altruistic preferences of migrants and recipients as well as on their respective incomes.

Working Papers

The 10 Billion Travel World: Continuity and Change in Global Transnational Mobility (1995-2022).
With Ettore Recchi and Luca Bernasconi.
R&R at Data & Policy.
Draft Paper | MPC Seminar Presentation

Notwithstanding its size and importance in a globalized world, there is only little systematic information about the volume and direction of human travel that considers both migration and other kinds of mobility. This paper introduces new estimates of the volume of migratory and non-migratory human travel across country borders worldwide between 1995 and 2022. Building on pioneering work by Recchi et al. (2019), the estimates integrate information from three major sources: tourism data, air passenger data, and migration data. Our estimates reveal that total transnational mobility increased from 5.29 billion trips in 1995 to 10.66 billion in 2019, largely outpacing global population growth and telling a story of continued globalization in that period – or, more precisely, of regional integration, since four out of five cross-border travels occur within the same world region. Across the board, migration constitutes a tiny and decreasing fraction of international travel; less than 1% worldwide and as low as .12% in Europe. Amidst the sustained growth in volume, the global network of cross-border mobility has experienced slow ‘tectonic shifts’ in some of its major clusters, while maintaining a stable configuration in others.

The Role of Negative Stereotypes in Work Effort.
With Hanna Fromell.
Submitted to Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization.
Draft Paper

We study to what extent the exposure to a negative work-effort stereotype affects effort provision. Theory suggests that when people care about their social identity, negative stereotypes may trigger identity-motivated behaviors in the relevant domain. In an online lab experiment, we exogenously vary university students’ perceptions of the prevalence of the “young people are lazy” stereotype and examine its effect on deliberate effort provision in a real-effort task. We find no average treatment effect between students exposed to information about high versus low stereotype prevalence. However, we observe patterns consistent with heterogeneous responses, depending on individuals’ certainty about their work-effort identity. Individuals with higher certainty display increased effort, consistent with fighting responses to restore and defend their self-image, whereas those with lower certainty show lower effort, thus conforming to the stereotype. These patterns extend to migrant students, who may face compounding negative work-effort stereotypes and identity threats.

Cultural Similarity and Migration.
To be submitted to the Journal of Population Economics.
Draft Paper | GLO discussion paper | IOS working paper

Theory suggests that cultural similarity increases migration flows between countries. This paper brings best practices from the trade gravity literature to migration to test this prediction. In my preferred specification, I use lags of time-varying similarity variables in a panel of international and domestic migration flows (>200 countries, 1990-2019, 5-year intervals) and estimate a theory-consistent structural gravity model with origin-year, destination-year, and corridor fixed effects. The results do not show the hypothesized positive effect of cultural similarity on migration. Instead, religious similarity has a significant negative effect on migration, while WVS-based attitudinal similarities regarding individualism, indulgence, and trust are insignificant. Additional results suggest that cultural selection and sorting can explain these findings, where migrants are attracted by destinations that are culturally similar to their personal cultural beliefs rather than the average cultural beliefs of their home country. Results of a two-stage fixed effects (TSFE) procedure and a gravity-specific matching estimator, which both allow the estimation of time-invariant similarity variables, confirm that the relationship between cultural similarity and migration is more nuanced than previously thought.

Global Mobility Ginis: The Inequality of International Travel between 230 Countries, 1995-2022.
With Ettore Recchi, Emanuel Deutschmann, Luca Bernasconi and Adrian Favell.
To be submitted to the Population and Development Review.
Draft Paper

This paper examines global inequality in the international mobility of persons and compares it to inequality in mobility rights and economic welfare. Using the Global Transnational Mobility Dataset 2.0, we compute outward mobility rates for 186 countries from 1995 to 2022 and derive global mobility Gini coefficients. Our findings reveal that inequality in actual cross-border movements (de facto mobility) is substantially higher than inequality in visa-free travel rights (de jure mobility) and GDP per capita (economic welfare), making international mobility one of the most unequal global capabilities. While mobility Ginis declined slightly over the two decades preceding the COVID-19 pandemic, the pandemic caused a sharp reversal, pushing inequality above 1995 levels. Post-pandemic recovery has been uneven, and mobility inequality remains close to its historical highs. De facto mobility rankings of countries and world regions have changed little over time, pointing to deep-rooted structural factors shaping mobility opportunities. Regression analyses show that economic welfare and legal mobility rights both matter for explaining cross-country variation in levels of mobility rates, but economic welfare is the stronger predictor. Mobility returns to economic welfare are highest among low-mobility countries, which points to a convergence rather than divergence effect of mobility on welfare. Within-country income inequality is associated with lower mobility rates and with a lower income elasticity of mobility rates. Our findings highlight that, despite globalization, opportunities for cross-border movement remain deeply tied to individuals’ home country, reinforcing territorial disparities in life chances.

Work in Progress

Migration , Mobility , and Growth Convergence
Single authored.

The Co-evolution of Migration and other Forms of Mobility: Evidence from a shift-share instrument in a structural gravity setting
Single authored.

Migration with Gravitas
With Tristan Kohl.

In this paper, we investigate whether recent empirical critiques of the gravity model of migration withstand scrutiny. In particular, we show that methods and techniques developed in the trade gravity literature also allow for the description and explanation of temporal patterns of migration flows across countries.

Does Free Movement Boost Transnational Mobility?
With Luuk van der Baaren, Diego Acosta, and Ettore Recchi. Submitted to IMISCOE 2026

Free movement regimes have become a central feature of international migration governance, creating pathways that enable nationals of one state to enter, reside, and work within the territory of another. Empirical research on free movement regimes has prevailingly focused on two issues: the nature of the policies constituting it (eg, Acosta 2019) and the effect of the regime on people using mobility rights (eg, Recchi and Favell 2009). What remains understudied is the impact of these regimes on the volume of transnational mobility. More precisely, whether reducing entry and settlement barriers for non-citizens enhances border crossings and immigration, once we control for other potential drivers of transnational mobility. We intend to assess such a hypothesis by leveraging and merging two global datasets. On the one hand, the Free Movement Regimes Dataset (Freemove) that records free movement regimes between 1992 and 2024 (Acosta and van der Baaren 2025); on the other, the Global Transnational Mobility Dataset 2.0 (Grohmann et al 2025) which includes the volume of human movements between 243 countries and territories in the 1995-2022 period. Our analyses will unpack different dimensions of free movement regimes, distinguish between migratory and non-migratory mobility, and control for geographical, economic, and socio-political co-determinants of human mobility (eg, proximity, GDP differentials, transportation infrastructures, cultural affinities, inter alia). We will further differentiate between types of free movement regimes, using indicator scores that capture their varying scope, depth, and restrictiveness. We will adopt two analytical strategies: network-weighted functional regression models including all possible controls in pooled form and Diff-in-Diff modeling where we take new free movement policies as interventions potentially leading to an increase in mobility.

The Cost of Travel
With Ettore Recchi, Lorenzo Gabrielli, Luca Bernasconi, and Emanuel Deutschmann

Recent research has estimated the size of transnational passenger flows globally, highlighting that some corridors are massively more popular than others (Glaesser et al 2017; Recchi and Deutschmann 2019; Deutschmann 2021; Llano et al 2023). We also know which destinations are more or less accessible depending on travelers’ citizenship, due to the ‘power of passports’ and visa constraints placed by sovereign states (Neumayer 2006; Mau et al 2015; Czaika and Neumayer 2017; Kochenov and Lindeboom 2020; Anonymous 2021). We know almost nothing, however, about the cost differences of international travel. This paper aims to fill this research lacuna by relying on a novel global dataset that includes all the available cross-border travel combinations between 722 origin-destination sites covering 177 countries in the world.

The long-lasting consequences of the 'Arbeitseinsatz' on civic engagement in the Netherlands
With Juliette de Wit, Femke Cnossen, and Maite Laméris.
YAG Grant announcement

During the Second World War, about a quarter of a million Dutch men were forced to work in Germany. Also known as the ‘Arbeitseinsatz’, all men aged 17-40 were at risk of being called and sent to German labor camps. The Arbeitseinsatz had grave consequences for the communities that were left behind. Refusal of the call resulted in reprisals or violent arrestations, yet obedience to the call would often result in heavy work under sometimes dangerous circumstances (Anne Frank House, n.d.). We operationalize archival information on forced labor and deportations in the Netherlands during the period of 1940-1945 by the Dutch National Archive, and investigate the long-term consequences of the Arbeitseinsatz on current civic engagement in the Netherlands. We will explore whether those communities that were exposed to higher levels of forced labor became less engaged in the public sphere, less trusting in others and institutions, and transmitted these social norms to future generations.

Measures of International Migration: A comparison of common measures in research.
With Hanna Fromell.

This paper compares different measures of international migration flows used in research. Because direct measures of migration flows are available only for selected countries, practitioners often use estimates of migration flows. However, which of the various estimates should they use? First, we use a wide range of error statistics for all common estimates of migration flows to test well they approximate actual, recorded migration flows. So-called “demographic accounting” estimates correlate the best with recorded flows and are the most precise estimates (lowest root mean squared error). However, the "migration rates" estimates, which are the least precise, yield the most unbiased estimate of average flow sizes (lowest mean error). Second, we estimate a gravity model using each flow estimate as the dependent variable and compare the resulting coefficients to coefficients from a benchmark model using recorded flows as the dependent variable. Our results suggest that recent “pseudo-Bayesian demographic accounting” estimates yield coefficients that are the most similar compared to the coefficients of the benchmark model. The reverse negative version of the “stock difference” measures also performs well. Yet, overall, our results show that the different estimates can lead to differing conclusions regarding the determinants of international migration in a gravity model.

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