RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 The Labor Market Effects of a Refugee Wave
JF Journal of Human Resources
JO J Hum Resour
FD University of Wisconsin Press
SP 267
OP 309
DO 10.3368/jhr.54.2.0217.8561R1
VO 54
IS 2
A1 Giovanni Peri
A1 Vasil Yasenov
YR 2019
UL http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/54/2/267.abstract
AB We apply the synthetic control method to reexamine the labor market effects of the Mariel Boatlift, first studied by David Card (1990). This method improves on previous studies by choosing a control group of cities that best matches Miami’s labor market trends pre-Boatlift and providing more reliable inference. Using a sample of non-Cuban high school dropouts we find no significant difference in the wages of workers in Miami relative to its control after 1980. We also show that by focusing on small subsamples and matching the control group on a short pre-1979 series, as done in Borjas (2017), one can find large wage differences between Miami and the control because of large measurement error.