Ben Elsner - FEEM Award

Congrats to Ben Elsner, TCD PhD Student who most of the local readers here know, for being one of three winners of the FEEM award at this year's European Economics Association. According to the website, 600 papers were eligible and this is a very competitive pool to begin with. Details of his paper from the website below.

Benjamin Elsner, Trinity College Dublin
Does Emigration Benefit The Stayers? The Eu Enlargement As A Natural Experiment. Evidence From Lithuania

Migration impacts both receiving and source countries. While both are important in assessing the welfare consequences of migration, most research has focused on the receiving countries. Elsner studies the effect in the source country of migration resulting from the eastern enlargement of the European Union in 2004. From 2004 to 2007, around 9 percent of the Lithuanian workforce emigrated to the UK and Ireland. Elsner finds that demographic and educational groups in which a larger share emigrated had a more positive wage trend. He concludes that emigration had a significant positive effect on the wages of those who stay. This effect is only significant for men, and the impact is greater for unmarried people. These are important pieces of evidence to evaluate welfare consequences of migration flows.