Publications
(Most recent listed first; list includes forthcoming and conditionally accepted)Publications
Bahar, D. "Not a Border Crisis, but a Labor Market Crisis: The Often Overlooked ``Pull'' Factor in US Border Crossings". Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, forthcoming.
Elevator pitch: This study investigates the link between Southwest US border crossings and labor market tightness for nearly 25 yeras and finds a strong positive correlation, suggesting that increased border crossings strongly align with greater job availability. Exploiting data across different presidential administrations reveals no statistically significant differences in this relationship, regardless of the President's party. The findings suggest a natural economic adjustment mechanism in which crossings naturally decrease as the labor market cools.Media and commentary (selcted): NPR, Bloomberg, The Hill, Yahoo! Finance, ProPublicaBahar, D., R Choudhury, E Miguelez and S Signoreli. "Global Mobile Inventors". Journal of Development Economics, Volume 171, October 2024, 103357
Elevator pitch: We document the rising phenomenon of inventors moving across borders, and find evidence about their role in the diffusion of knowledge through the filing of patents in technology classes new to a country upon their arrival.Bahar, D., A Hauptman, C Ozguzel and H Rapoport. "Migration and knowledge diffusion: The effect of returning refugees on export performance in the former Yugoslavia". Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 106, Issue 2, March 2024.
Elevator pitch: During the early 1990s over 500 thousand refugees from Yugoslavia settled in Germany. A few years later, after the 1995 peace treaties were signed, most of them were repatriated back. We find that the industries that perform best in the Yugoslavian countries post-1995 were the ones for which returning refugees worked in while in Germany. The effect is driven by refugees in occupations with managerial characteristics.Media and commentary: VoxDev, VoxEUBahar D., R Choudhury, DY Kim and W Koo. "Innovation on Wings: Nonstop Flight and Firm Innovation in the Global Context", Management Science, Volume 69, Issue 3, October 2023, pp. 6202-6223.
Elevator pitch: Using a regression discontinuity design, we study how the existence of non-stop flights between inventors affects the likelihood of global collaborations in patenting.Bahar, D., B Cowgill and J Guzman. "Refugee Entrepreneurship", American Economic Association Papers & Proceedings, Vol. 113, May 2023, Pages 352-356.
Elevator pitch: Using the full business registry of firms in Colombia we find that firms created by foreigners --most of them Venezuelan immigrants and refugees-- are more capitalied but don't have higher survival rates.Bahar, D., C Parsons and PL Vézina. "Refugees, trade, and FDI" Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Volume 38, Issue 3, Autumn 2022, Pages 487–513.
Elevator pitch: We discuss the literature on forced displacement, trade and FDI.Bahar, D., H Rapoport and R Turatti. "Does Birthplace Diversity affect Economic Complexity Cross-country Evidence". Research Policy, Volume 51, Issue 8, October 2022, 103991
Elevator pitch: We find that countries with higher birthplace diversity (due to migration) results in higher economic complexity.Bahar, D., AM Ibañez and S Rozo. "Give me Your Tired and Your Poor: Impact of a Large-Scale Amnesty to Undocumented Refugees". Journal of Development Economics. Volumen 151, June 2021, 102652
Elevator pitch: We study effects on labor markets of a massive migratory amnesty process that provided temporary protected status to nearly 500,000 undocumented Venezuelans in Colombia in 2018. For the most part, we do not find any effects that are economically significant for Colombian workers.Media and commentary: El Espectador, VoxDevBahar, D. "The hardships of long distance relationships: time zone proximity and the location of MNC’s knowledge-intensive activities". Journal of International Economics. Volume 125, July 2020, 103311.
Elevator pitch: The transmission of knowledge within multinational firms is difficult, even more so when affiliates are geographically far from their headquarters. But I find that time zone matters: using a regression discontinuity I compare the knowledge intensity of the activities of affiliates that are equidistant to the headquarters, but just accross a time zone line. Those affiliates that are in a closer time zone to the headquarters are active in more knowledge intensive industries.Media and commentary: VoxEU post Data: Download Knowledge Intensity Measures (SITC & NAICS)Bahar, D., R Choudhury and H Rapoport. "Migrant inventors and the technological advantage of nations". Research Policy. Volume 49, Issue 9, November 2020, 103947.
Elevator pitch: We find that countries are more likely to start patenting in a technology when it hosts immigrant inventors from countries that specialize in those same techs. We interpret these results as tangible evidence of migrants facilitating the technology-specific diffusion of knowledge across nations.Bahar, D. "Diasporas and economic development: A review of the evidence and policy". Comparative Economic Studies. Volume 62 (25th Dubrovnik Economic Conference Symposium), June 2020, pp. 200–214.
Elevator pitch: I provide a review of the literature on gains from diaspora for home countries through a number of economic channels.Bahar, D., S Rosenow, E Stein, and R Wagner. "Export take-offs and acceleration: Unpacking cross-sector linkages in the evolution of comparative advantage". World Development. Volume 117, May 2019, pp. 48-60
The elevator pitch: Using global exports data, we find that (i) countries tend to diversify towards technologically related products, and (ii) developing countries also tend to diversify upstream of current exports, not through downstream processing (e.g., a country is more likely to become exporters of textiles, if it already has a large garment sector). This is consistent with Albert Hirschman’s 60-year-old view that the forces behind upstream linkages fueled the growth of new competitive industries in the developing world.Media and commentary: Brookings blog postBahar, D. "Measuring knowledge intensity in manufacturing industries: a new approach". Applied Economic Letters. Volume 26, Issue 3, 2019, pp. 187-190.
The elevator pitch: I present new measures to quantify the knowledge intensity of industries, and show how they overcome weaknesses of other traditionally employed measures such as R&D intensity. They are used in Bahar (2020).Data: Download Knowledge Intensity Measures (SITC & NAICS)Bahar, D., and H Rapoport. "Migration, Knowledge Diffusion and the Comparative Advantage of Nations". The Economic Journal. Volume 128, Issue 612, July 2018, pp. F273-F305
The elevator pitch: We find that countries are more likely to become exporters in sectors new to them when they host a larger host of immigrants from other nations that are competitive exporters of those same sectors. A 10% increase in immigration from exporters of a given product is associated with a 2% increase in the likelihood that the host country starts exporting that good ‘from scratch’ in the next decades.Media and commentary: VoxDev, LSEOther: Among work published between January 2018 and December 2019 by the Royal Society's Economic Journal, this paper is among the 10% most downloaded ones in the 12 months following online publication.Bahar, D., CA Molina, and MA Santos. "Fool's Gold: The Impact of Venezuelan Currency Devaluations on Multinational Stock Prices". Economía (Journal of LACEA). Volume 19, Issue 1, Fall 2018, pp. 93-128.
The elevator pitch: We find that multinational firms active in Venezuela experienced abnormal negative shocks in their stock prices following arguably predictable devaluations in Venezuela. We use synthetic control methods to confirm our findings. We interpret the results as a suggestive indication of market inefficiencies in the process of asset pricing.Media and commentary: VoxLACEABahar D. "The middle productivity trap: dynamics of productivity dispersion". Economic Letters. Volume 167, June 2018, pp. 60-66
The elevator pitch: I find productivity divergence for firms within a country and (narrowly defined) industries, with both low and very high productivity firms growing at significant faster paces. This pattern can explain the rising productivity dispersion and increasing market share of hi-productivity firms. I find that this divergence is particularly prevalent among knowledge intensive industries, suggesting that it responds to the difficulties in the diffusion of knowledge. Media and commentary: Brookings, New York TimesBahar, D. and MA Santos. "One more resource curse: Dutch disease and export concentration". Journal of Development Economics, Volume 132, May 2018, pp. 102-114
The elevator pitch: We find that Dutch disease episodes result in lower export diversification of the non-resource tradable sector. We use data on discovery of oil and gas fields and of commodity prices as sources of exogenous variation, and find that countries with larger shares of natural resources in exports have more concentrated non-resource export baskets. We also find capital-intensive exports tend to dominate the export basket of countries prone to Dutch disease episodes.Bahar, D., R. Hausmann, and C.A. Hidalgo. "Neighbors and the Evolution of the Comparative Advantage of Nations: Evidence of International Knowledge Diffusion?" Journal of International Economics, Volume 92, Issue 1, January 2014, pp. 111-123.
The elevator pitch: We study export similarity among neighbors in both static and dynamic settings. We find that a country is 65% more likely to start exporting goods currently being exported by a neighboring country. These results are what would be expected from the localized character of knowledge diffusion.Data: Similarity Index DatasetBahar, D. and M. Dooley, (2019) "No Refugees and Migrants Left Behind". In H. Kharas, J. McArthur and Ohno, I. (Eds.), Leave No One Behind: Time for Specifics on the Sustainable Development Goals" (79-104). Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.
Bahar, D., (2019) “The Economy Is about Firms: Productive Slowdown and Divergence”. In Productive Equity: The Twin Challenges of Reviving Productivity and Reducing Inequality (81-99). Washington, DC: Brookings Institution and Chumir Foundation.
Bahar, D. and K. Foda, (2019) “The Technology-Productivity Paradox: Why Has Productivity Growth Slowed?” In Productive Equity: The Twin Challenges of Reviving Productivity and Reducing Inequality (101-140). Washington, DC: Brookings Institution and Chumir Foundation.
Bahar, D. "Review of Israel’s Technology Economy: Origins and Impact (by David Rosenberg)", Israel Studies Review, 2018, 33(3), 173-174.