We examine the impact of the Americanization of names on the labor market outcomes of migrants. We construct a novel longitudinal data set of naturalization records in which we track a complete sample of migrants who naturalize by 1930. We find that migrants who Americanized their names experienced larger occupational upgrading. Some, such as those who changed to very popular American names like John or William, obtained gains in occupationbased earnings of at least 14%. We show that these estimates are causal effects by using an index of linguistic complexity based on Scrabble points as an instrumental variable that predicts name Americanization. We conclude that the tradeoff between individual identity and labor market success was present since the early making of modern America JEL CLASSIFICATIONJ61, J62, Z1, N32 KEYWORDSAmericanization, names, assimilation, migration EDITORIAL NOTEDr Costanza Biavaschi is a Research Associate and Deputy Program Director for the Migration Area at the Institute for the Study of Labor, Germany. Costanza's research interests are in labor economics and applied econometrics, with a focus on return migration, the dynamics of migration choices, and the selection of migrants.Dr Corrado Giulietti is Director of Research at the Institute for the Study of Labor, Germany. Corrado is also a Research Associate of the ESRC Centre for Population Change. His research interests are labor economics and applied econometrics, with a focus on the determinants of migration, the labor market and welfare effects of migration, the assimilation of immigrants, and the estimation of migration flows.Dr Zahra Siddique is a Lecturer in economics at the University of Reading, UK. Zahra's research interests are in micro-econometrics, labor economics and development economics. II ESRC Centre for Population ChangeThe ESRC Centre for Population Change (CPC) is a joint initiative between the Universities of Southampton, St Andrews, Edinburgh, Stirling, Strathclyde, in partnership with the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the National Records of Scotland (NRS). The Centre is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) grant numbers RES-625-28-0001 and ES/K007394/1. This working paper series publishes independent research, not always funded through the Centre. The views and opinions expressed by authors do not necessarily reflect those of the CPC, ESRC, ONS or NRS.Website | Email | Twitter | Facebook | Mendeley ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSThe authors would like to thank participants at the 10th IZA Annual Migration Meeting, the 4th TEMPO conference on international migration, the Essex Fresh meeting as well as seminar participants at IZA, the University of Reading, Tsinghua University and the University of Southampton for their helpful comments. This draft has greatly benefitted from comments by Benjamin Elsner, Lidia Farré, Jesús Fernández-Huertas Moraga, Daniel Hamermesh, Carolyn Moehling, Andrew Oswald, Núria Rodríguez-Planas, Todd Sorensen, Derek Stemple, Christopher Taber, and Konstantinos Ta...

This study examines the association of unemployment variation with intimate partner violence using representative data from thirty-one developing countries, from 2005 to 2016. It finds that a 1 percent increase in the male unemployment rate is associated with an increase in the incidence of physical violence against women by 0.50 percentage points, or 2.75 percent. This is consistent with financial and psychological stress generated by unemployment. Female unemployment rates have the opposite effect, a 1 percent decrease being associated with an increase in the probability of victimization of 0.52 percentage points, or 2.87 percent. That an improvement in women's employment opportunities is associated with increased violence is consistent with male backlash. The study finds that this pattern of behaviors emerges entirely from countries in which women have more limited access to divorce than men.

We examine spending on consumption items which have signaling value in social interactions across groups with distinctive social identities in India, where social identities are defined by caste and religious affiliations. The classification of such items was done by eliciting responses to a survey in India. We match the results of our survey with nationally representative micro data on household consumption expenditures. We find that disadvantaged caste groups such as Other Backward Castes spend nine percent more on visible consumption than Brahmin and High Caste groups while social groups such as Muslims spend eleven percent less, after controlling for differences in permanent income and demographic composition of households. These differences are significant and robust. Additionally, we find that these differences can be partly explained as a result of the status signaling nature of such consumption items.JEL Classification: D12, D70, O10

No abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. During the 1980s a set of randomized experiments were carried out to determine the usefulness of a mandatory arrest policy for domestic assault offenders. The first of these was the Minneapolis Domestic Violence experiment (MDVE), which was carried out in 1981. This paper re-examines the data from the MDVE and uses the recent literature on partial identification to determine the implications for a mandatory arrest policy for domestic assault offenders today. I find support for a mandatory arrest policy for domestic assault offenders, even under a set of minimal assumptions on offender and police behavior. JEL Classification:C9, C14, K42

No abstract

Strikes by unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, have been the primary weapon used by the United States to combat the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This paper examines the dynamics of violence involving drone strikes and the Taliban/Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan from January 1, 2007 to September 30, 2011. We find that drone strikes have a stronger impact on Taliban/Al-Qaeda violence in Pakistan than in Afghanistan and that these results are robust to examining different time periods and lag structures. We also examine the impact of successful and unsuccessful drone strikes (which did or did not succeed in targeted killing of a militant leader) on terrorist attacks by the Taliban. We find strong effects of unsuccessful drone strikes on Taliban violence in Pakistan, suggesting important vengeance and deterrent effects.

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.