Research
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My research focuses on questions at the intersection of migration, education, integration, and social cohesion. I use empirical and experimental methods to study how institutions, policies, and social environments shape educational trajectories, refugee integration, and young people’s future opportunities.
Publications
Publications
Starting off on the Right Foot – Language Learning Classes and the Educational Success of Refugee Children
Starting off on the Right Foot – Language Learning Classes and the Educational Success of Refugee Children
The Economic Journal, 2025, 136: 1217–1253
with Lisa Sofie Höckel
We study the effect of separate preparatory language learning classes on the academic outcomes of primary school-aged immigrant children in Germany compared to their direct integration into regular classrooms. Using administrative panel data and leveraging idiosyncratic assignment of refugee children to neighbourhoods, and, consequently, schools, as well as preparatory class roll-out over time, we find that primary school-aged refugees attending a preparatory class perform significantly worse on fifth-grade standardised tests and are slightly less likely to pursue an academic secondary track. While limited to short-term outcomes, our results indicate that preparatory classes could impede early academic integration by clustering migrant peers, highlighting the need to consider complementary approaches to reduce achievement disparities.
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Impact of preparatory classes on separate test results
KERMIT results in fifth grade for separate subjects. Controls:Gender, year of birth, month of birth, educational needs, RISE development index, form of full-time school, social index school-year-grade, children per school-year-grade, number refugees school-year-grade, and student teacher ratio. All regressions include test year fixed effects, first grade fixed effects, area of birth fixed effects, immigration year fixed effects, and first school fixed effects. Standard errors are clustered at the first school level.
Presented at:
2023
CESifo / ifo Junior Workshop on the Economics of Education; AlpPop
2022
SEA 92nd Annual Meeting; Economics of Migration Junior Seminar; Stratification Workshop Princeton; 7th IZA Workshop on the Economics of Education; EALE; EEA; CEMIR Junior Economist Workshop on Migration Research; 23rd IZA Summer School in Labor Economics; First Joint Workshop of Applied Macro and Microeconomics
The impact of natives’ attitudes on refugee integration
The impact of natives’ attitudes on refugee integration
with Steven Stillman
Labour Economics, 2024, 87: 102465
Using the random allocation of asylum seekers across Germany, we show that native attitudes shape refugee integration. Stronger local support for the right-wing AfD is linked to worse social integration, more harassment and right-wing attacks, and fewer positive interactions with locals—especially for groups targeted while economic integration is not affected.
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Media Coverage
Oekonomenstimme
Presented at:
2022
RGS Doctoral Conference in Economics
2021
Paris School of Economics Migration Summer School
2020
BeNA Labor Economics Workshop
Working Papers
Working Papers
What do you Want to become? Career Aspiration and School Performance. Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment
What do you Want to become? Career Aspiration and School Performance. Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment
with Federico Maggio
Working paper, September 2025
This paper evaluates a career-orientation workshop designed to help high school students visualize potential futures of their educational choices. Using a randomized field experiment in German-speaking schools in Northern Italy, the study examines effects on performance, future orientation, and psychological outcomes.
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Effects of the career-orientation workshop on psychological and personal outcomes. The workshop reduced students’ perceived stress levels.
Presented at:
2024
AlpPop
2021
UPF Student Seminar
Work in Progress
Work in Progress
Young people's post-secondary study decisions are often shaped by incomplete or inaccurate information about academic programs, skill requirements, and career prospects. These information frictions contribute to inefficient matching between students and degree programs, leading to suboptimal educational and labor market outcomes, and exacerbating shortages in specialized occupations. This paper studies whether personalized information provision can reduce such frictions. We implement a randomized intervention using a conversational AI chatbot that interacts with high school students during their decision-making process. Students are randomly assigned to receive different types of information including highly personalized content tailored to individual preferences and profiles. The chatbot collects rich conversational data, allowing us to track changes in beliefs, preferences, and application intentions.
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Information Frictions in School Track Choice – Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment
Information Frictions in School Track Choice – Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment
with Friederike Hertweck, Moritz Welz, Sven Werenbeck-Ueding
This project studies whether linguistic barriers and limited knowledge about the German school system affect immigrant parents’ school-track choices for their children. As part of a randomized field experiment in North Rhine-Westphalia, parents of fourth-graders receive a multilingual mobile application with information to support secondary school decisions.
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A Journey to Unity – A Teacher-led Preschool Program to Foster Social Cohesion
A Journey to Unity – A Teacher-led Preschool Program to Foster Social Cohesion
with Maike Schlosser, Theresia Hummel, Judith Saurer, Patrick Schneider, Christina Felfe,
As societies grow increasingly diverse and fragmented, and as polarization intensifies, understanding how to sustain social cohesion amidst changing social environments becomes ever more critical. A major challenge to social cohesion is people’s tendency to favor those who are similar to themselves, a phenomenon known as in-group bias, which emerges in early childhood.
Our paper evaluates a preschool program aimed at fostering social cohesion in early childhood. We implemented an eight-week, teacher-led intervention in about 100 preschools to encourage children’s recognition of commonalities and to foster perspective-taking, prosociality, and cooperation among peers. To evaluate its effects, we designed an age-appropriate mobile app featuring experiments measuring perceived similarities, perspective-taking, prosociality, and in-group favoritism. We furthermore elicited children's playmate choices, both within the app and in real life. The study provides novel evidence on how early interventions may influence the development of social preferences.
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Childsteps Towards Universalism – Roadblocks on the Way
Childsteps Towards Universalism – Roadblocks on the Way
Diversity and pro-sociality in early life – Evidence from a lab-in-the-field experiment in German pre-schools
Diversity and pro-sociality in early life – Evidence from a lab-in-the-field experiment in German pre-schools
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