International Economics

• Sponsor: IFPRI
• IRES promoter: Jean-François Maysatdt
• Start date: September 2024
• End date: August 2026

Project description

The project seeks to generate evidence, including rigorous evaluations, on effective immediate responses to conflict and displacement,. Specifically, we will exploit within-country data on internal migration to improve our understanding of conflict hotspots and migration corridors in space and time

• Sponsor: World Bank
• IRES Promoter: Jean-François Maystadt

Project description

With the University of Antwerp and a NGO, called Talent Beyond Boundaries (TBB), we assess the impact of skilled-worker visas on refugees and their families. Refugee talents remain a largely untapped resource: many have skills that are demanded in high-income countries and aspire to migrate; yet they are often locked out of skilled migration systems due to administrative barriers. Our research will examine how facilitating access to skilled-worker visas can unlock skilled migration pathways for refugees and displaced people. Our innovative solution is implemented by TBB, a charity that has built the “Talent Catalog”, a database and software platform to enable refugees to upload their profiles, qualifications, skills and experience. TBB uses this repertoire of more than 75,000 skilled refugees to match talents with employers in need of their skills. TBB then works with employers, governments, civil society, refugee organisations, and global mobility partners to address administrative and practical barriers to migration. Employers gain valuable talent and displaced people have a chance to rebuild their careers and lives. Using quantitative and qualitative methods, our research will assess the impact of skilled-worker visas on refugees and their families. We will identify the enabling factors and challenges that influence the success or failure of the program.

Sponsor: FNRS - PDR
Promoter: Gonzague Vannoorenberghe, Frédéric Docquier
Start date: 2020
End date: 2024

Project description

This project examines the interaction between globalization and populism in a large set of countries and over long time periods, using a variety of methods and data. We consider the effects of both exposure to international trade and migration as dimensions of globalization and differentiate the effects of low-skilled or high-skilled trade and migration on populism. We study how globalization affects differentially right-wing and left-wing populism, as well as how populist and nonpopulist parties evolve as a response to globalization.In various projects, Jean-François Maystadt seeks to quantify the impact of refugees on the environment, the risk of conflict, or the health conditions among hosting communities in Africa. To that purpose, he combines unique geo-referenced data on refugees from 2000 to 2016 with various micro-level, satellite-based and administrative data across the African continent.

Sponsor: FNRS - PDR
Promoter: Joseph Gomes
Start date: 2023
End date: 2025

Project description

In the face of growing backlash against globalization, there is increasing interest in identifying the groups and locations that are left behind by globalization. Using high-resolution geocoded grid-cell level as well as individual-level data, this project will investigate the deleterious effects of globalization in perpetuating the marginalisation of ethnic minorities, thereby encouraging violent conflict in sub-Saharan Africa. We will rely on the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) that, during the 2000s, lowered US trade barriers for most African countries and led to substantial increases in international trade. Because not all African countries were part of the AGOA, and because accession occurred in a staggered manner, there is cross-country temporal variation in trade openness. With this, we will combine the natural level of openness to trade at a local level using information on travel time from the closest port to generate sub-national variation in trade exposure. Further combining this with a novel dataset on local ethnic composition at a spatial resolution of 5 sq. km, we will particularly gauge the role of ethnic remoteness, as opposed to ethnic diversity, in mediating the effects of trade shocks on conflict. Deploying cutting edge econometric methods on grid-cell- and individual-level data, we will be able to estimate causal effects more convincingly than is usual in the state of the art. We will provide unprecedented insights into the potential marginalization of ethnic minorities in the face of trade liberalization and its effects on intergroup relations and violent conflict.