نوع مقاله : مقاله پژوهشی
عنوان مقاله English
نویسندگان English
This paper investigates the impact of the post-2021 influx of Afghan migrants on real earnings in Iran’s local labor markets. Combining the Labor Force Survey (recording nationality and employment) with the Household Income and Expenditure Survey (recording earnings) from 2018 to 2023, we aggregate data at the province-sector cell level, as individual-level record linkage is unfeasible. Exposure is measured by the pre-2021 Afghan employment share in each worker's cell. The estimation sample comprises 112,257 individual observations across 337 cells (37 treated). Using a repeated cross-sectional difference-in-differences design, which is validated by event-study pre-trend and placebo tests, we find no evidence of downward wage pressure. Instead, real monthly earnings in high-exposure cells rose by approximately 5 percent relative to control trends, bordering conventional significance under cluster-robust and wild bootstrap inference. The event study reveals that this response was concentrated in 2021; coefficients for 2022 and 2023 remain positive but imprecise. The estimate is robust to and amplified by province-specific linear trends, yet attenuates toward zero when controlling for sector-by-year fixed effects, highlighting the role of sector-wide adjustments across provinces. Because the expenditure survey does not record nationality and the exposure metric carries potential measurement error, these estimates reflect average net effects across exposed local labor markets rather than direct impacts on native workers, and are likely attenuated toward zero.
کلیدواژهها English