RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 The Labor Market Effects of a Refugee Wave: Synthetic Control Method Meets the Mariel Boatlift
JF Journal of Human Resources
JO J Hum Resour
FD University of Wisconsin Press
SP 0217_8561R1
DO 10.3368/jhr.54.2.0217.8561R1
A1 Giovanni Peri
A1 Vasil Yasenov
YR 2018
UL http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/early/2018/01/25/jhr.54.2.0217.8561R1.abstract
AB We apply the Synthetic Control Method to re-examine 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 sub-samples 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 control because of large measurement error.