Principal Investigator Albert Saiz
Project Website http://urbaneconomics.mit.edu/immigration-spain-0
This is a comprehensive study of the response of Spanish natives’ residence location decisions to immigrant arrivals, combining microdata on exact addresses with distance to amenities and socioeconomic characteristics of neighborhoods at baseline. In an environment of massive inflows, with the Spanish population growing by 10 percent because of immigration between 1998 and 2008, we find that: (i) Immigrants displaced natives from city centers and centers of satellite towns in metro areas, (ii) New neighborhoods in suburbs saw both immigrant and native arrivals, (iii) The overall effect on average immigrant segregation is neutral.