VIES: Nitya Pandalai-Nayer „The Economic Impact of Mass Deportations“

The FIW Research Centre International Economics and its partners kindly invite you to participate in the upcoming Vienna International Economics Seminar (VIES) on the topic:

„The Economic Impact of Mass Deportations“

Abstract:
This paper quantifies the effects of large-scale deportation policies on wages, prices, and real incomes in the United States. We impute the legal status for each worker in the American Community Survey by combining detailed individual information with group-level visa records. In 2024, 3% of US workers were unauthorized, but these workers were highly concentrated geographically, by industry, and by occupation. We then develop a multi-region, multi-sector, multi-occupation quantitative framework with heterogeneous workers to study the economic impacts of the removal of unauthorized workers. We state analytical results that relate region- and occupation-specific real wage and sectoral relative price changes to shocks to the supply of immigrant workers, observable shares of immigrant workers in occupations and regions, and combinations of structural elasticities. Following the removal of 50% of unauthorized immigrants, average native real wages decline in every state, and by 0.3% at the national level. At the same time nationwide native wages in the most immigrant-intensive occupations rise by up to 3.4% in our baseline calibration. The deportation shock increases the average wages of immigrants , by 12.2% for the unauthorized workers remaining in the country, and 3.2% for the authorized. Consumer prices in the sectors with the highest unauthorized presence – such as Farming – rise by about 1% relative to price of the average consumption basket, while most other sectors experience negligible relative price changes. The overall cost of living rises by about 0.7% more in the regions hosting the most unauthorized immigrants, compared to regions with minimal presence of unauthorized workers.

Speaker:
Nitya Pandalai-Nayar is an Associate Professor of Economics at The University of Texas at Austin and co-Director of the Empirical Macroeconomics Policy Center of Texas (EMPCT). She received a BA in Economics and Mathematics from Wellesley College (2007), an MSc in Economics from the London School of Economics (2008) and a PhD from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor (2016) followed by the IES post-doc at Princeton (2017). She works on topics in international trade and macroeconomics, including the formation of global supply chains and their impact on global synchronization, the transmission of shocks across countries, the adaptation of economies to climate risk, and the employment impacts of trade. Her research has been published in journals such as the American Economic Review and Review of Economic Studies. Nitya is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and an associate editor of the Journal of International Economics and the IMF Economic Review.

• Date and Time: Tuesday, October 21, 17.45-19.00 p.m.
• Location: University of Vienna, Faculty of Business, Economics and Statistics, Oskar-Morgenstern-Platz 1, 1090 Vienna, lecture hall 17, 2nd floor
• Language: English

Registration:
Participants are requested to register in advance with Julia Hnidek (julia.hnidek@univie.ac.at).

The Vienna International Economics Seminar (VIES) is a joint initiative of CEU, FIW Research Centre International Economics, Universität Wien, WIFO, wiiw, and WU Vienna. It provides a forum for the presentation and discussion of cutting-edge academic research in the field of international economics.

The seminar is held at irregular intervals on Tuesdays from 17:45 to 19:15, alternating each semester between participating institutions. From October 2025 to January 2026, the seminar will be hosted by the University of Vienna.

Organizers:
Gábor Békés (CEU), Alejandro Cuñat (Vienna U.), Harald Fadinger (Vienna U.), Gabriel Felbermayr (WIFO, WU), Miklós Koren (CEU), Harald Oberhofer (WIFO, WU), Robert Stehrer (WIIW).

The seminar is currently coordinated by Harald Fadinger.

For more information and the detailed seminar schedule, please visit: https://sites.google.com/view/viennainternationaleconomicsse/