International labor mobility: Roots, returns and consequences

This dissertation examines what drives people to move across borders for work and how such movements affect workers in the countries they move to. It shows that decisions to migrate are shaped not only by economic factors, such as wages or taxes, but also by non-economic factors such as cultural differences. First, the research finds that cultural distance can discourage people from commuting across nearby regions, even within the highly integrated regions in the EU. Second, it demonstrates that financial incentives matter: when the Netherlands reduced a tax benefit for foreign workers, the likelihood of them leaving the country increased sharply, especially among the highest earners. Finally, the dissertation shows that low-skilled native workers experienced small declines in employment following a large and unexpected immigration wave, particularly when new arrivals had similar skills. Together, these findings show that international labor mobility is shaped by both economic and non-economic factors and it can create uneven impacts on local labor markets.