Introductory Migration Economics
Bachelor-level seminar, Ruhr University Bochum, Chair of Empirical Economics, 2025
Term: Wintersemester 2025/26
Language: English
Audience: Bachelor students
Time: Wednesdays, 16:00–18:00
Room: GD 03/218
This bachelor-level seminar introduced students to migration economics with a strong emphasis on empirical methods. The course covered migrant definitions and legal categories, selection and human capital models, labour-market adjustment, and causal research designs such as difference-in-differences, instrumental variables, and synthetic control. A dedicated workshop examined the Mariel Boatlift debate as a case study in empirical identification.
The course combined 3 lectures, 1 workshop, and 10 presentation sessions. Assessment was based on presentation (80%) and participation (20%).
Course content
Main topics included:
- migrant categories and legal status
- migration decisions, selection, and networks
- human capital and immigrant integration
- empirical identification in migration research, including DiD, IV, and synthetic control
- labour-market effects of migration
- distributional incidence, adjustment, and external validity
A workshop session focused on the Mariel Boatlift and compared the empirical strategies and findings of Card (1990), Borjas (2017), Peri and Yasenov (2019), and Clemens and Hunt (2019).