Event Date
Abstract :
Drawing on matched employer–employee data from Denmark, we study the role of employers in the labor market integration of refugees. First, we estimate firm-specific wage premia that we use as a proxy for workplace quality. Second, we leverage a dispersal policy implemented between 1986 and 1998 that quasi-randomly allocated refugees across municipalities to obtain exogenous variation in their exposure to the quality of first accessible employers. Our findings show that being placed in a municipality where, at arrival, members of the co-ethnic network are employed by high-quality employers has positive and statistically significant effects on refugees' employment and earnings for up to 10 years after arrival. We also present a set of novel facts on refugees and the firm ladder to complement the analysis. Our results suggest that policymakers should consider access to high-quality employers as an additional factor contributing to refugees' success when designing policies in host countries.