Assis. Prof. Mark Colas, Ph.D.

Immigration impact on native workers

In recent work, Mark Colas examines the dynamic effects of immigration inflows on native wages using data from the United States. In the short run, immigration can lead to wage decreases for some native workers by increasing the supply of workers relative to demand. However, over time workers negatively affected by immigration respond by migrating away from cities with high immigration and by switching sectors. Mr Colas shows that these adjustments gradually mitigate the effect of immigration on wages, implying that the long-run effects of immigration differ drastically from the short-run effects. Overall, the total effects of immigration on native workers are found to be small. The study highlights the importance of dynamic adjustments to immigration and sheds light on the policy debate on immigration.

While visiting CES, Mr Colas will conduct theoretical and empirical research in the fields of labor and urban economics. One strand of his research examines how heterogeneous workers sort across cities, and how government policy can potentially interact with this sorting. In another project, coauthored with Dominik Sachs and Sebastian Findeisen, he develops and estimates a model of college attendance to evaluate how to optimally distribute financial aid. In the latter project, the researchers show that the optimal financial aid schedule is highly need-based, much more so than the current financial aid schedule in the United States.

Mark Colas is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Oregon. From 2017 to 2018, he was a visiting scholar at the Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. Prior to this, Mr Colas received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin and his BA from the University of California, Davis.