About

Jens Hainmueller is the Kimberly Glenn Professor of Political Science and Director of Graduate Studies at Stanford University’s Department of Political Science. He holds a Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University, earned in 2009, along with a Master of Public Administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, a Master of Science in International Political Economy from the London School of Economics, and a Bachelor's degree in Political Science from Tubingen University. His research spans statistical methods, causal inference, immigration, and political economy, and he has published nearly 70 articles with over 40,000 citations. Many of his works appear in top journals such as Science, Nature, and PNAS, as well as leading field journals in political science, statistics, economics, and business. Hainmueller has developed widely adopted statistical methods, including synthetic control methods, entropy balancing, Average Marginal Component Effects, and GeoMatch algorithms, and has created several open-source software packages to support empirical research across disciplines. At Stanford, he teaches courses on causal inference and data science. His contributions have earned him prestigious awards, including the Gosnell Prize for Excellence in Political Methodology, the Warren Miller Prize, the Robert H. Durr Award, and the Emerging Scholar Award from the Society of Political Methodology. He is an Andrew Carnegie Fellow, an elected Fellow of the Society of Political Methodology, and holds an honorary degree from the European University Institute. Prior to Stanford, he was a faculty member at MIT.

Research topics

• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Economics
• Mathematics
• Data Mining
• Data science
• Statistics
• Econometrics
• Microeconomics
• Operations research
• Management science
• Engineering
• Development economics
• Law
• Economic growth

Selected publications

• How Initial Accommodation Shapes Refugee Integration: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from the Ukrainian Displacement Crisis in Denmark

  2026-03-30

  articleOpen access

  Sudden displacement crises require rapid expansion of refugee accommodation, yet little is known about how different types of initial housing affect integration outcomes. Exploiting linked administrative registers covering the full population of Ukrainian refugees arriving in Denmark in Spring 2022 and a representative survey, we classify each refugee’s initial accommodation from address and co-residence records and track outcomes for 18 months. The majority of arrivals during the peak were absorbed in pop-up shelters (36%) and private hosting (43%). These scalable alternatives to the inelastic supply of conventional refugee housing proved durable, with mean stays of about seven months. Moreover, by leveraging quasi-random assignment generated by within-municipality capacity and time constraints, we estimate effects of accommodation type while conditioning on locality, arrival timing, and sociodemographics. Relative to conventional public housing, private hosting led to higher early employment, higher earnings, persistently lower public-transfer receipt, and improved psychological well-being. Pop-up housing performed at least as well on labor-market outcomes and showed modest gains in social integration. By holding locality constant, we show that how refugees are housed within municipalities has an independent, first-order effect on integration—distinct from the well-studied importance of where they are placed. These findings highlight the potential for civic-led accommodation to complement public systems during displacement shocks and shape long-term refugee trajectories.

  PublisherDOI

• How Initial Accommodation Shapes Refugee Integration: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from the Ukrainian Displacement Crisis in Denmark

  SocArXiv (OSF Preprints) · 2026-03-30

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Sudden displacement crises require rapid expansion of refugee accommodation, yet little is known about how different types of initial housing affect integration outcomes. Exploiting linked administrative registers covering the full population of Ukrainian refugees arriving in Denmark in Spring 2022 and a representative survey, we classify each refugee’s initial accommodation from address and co-residence records and track outcomes for 18 months. The majority of arrivals during the peak were absorbed in pop-up shelters (36%) and private hosting (43%). These scalable alternatives to the inelastic supply of conventional refugee housing proved durable, with mean stays of about seven months. Moreover, by leveraging quasi-random assignment generated by within-municipality capacity and time constraints, we estimate effects of accommodation type while conditioning on locality, arrival timing, and sociodemographics. Relative to conventional public housing, private hosting led to higher early employment, higher earnings, persistently lower public-transfer receipt, and improved psychological well-being. Pop-up housing performed at least as well on labor-market outcomes and showed modest gains in social integration. By holding locality constant, we show that how refugees are housed within municipalities has an independent, first-order effect on integration—distinct from the well-studied importance of where they are placed. These findings highlight the potential for civic-led accommodation to complement public systems during displacement shocks and shape long-term refugee trajectories.

  Publisher

• The socioeconomic returns to citizenship: A randomized controlled trial

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2026-01-30

  articleOpen access1st author

  Based on observational studies, conventional wisdom suggests that citizenship carries economic benefits. We leverage a randomized experiment from New York where low-income registrants with permanent residency who wanted to become citizens entered a lottery to receive fee vouchers to naturalize. Voucher recipients were about 36 p.p. more likely to naturalize. Yet, we find no discernible effects of access to citizenship on multiple economic outcomes, including income, credit scores, access to credit, financial distress, and employment. Leveraging a multidimensional immigrant integration index, we similarly find no measurable effects on noneconomic integration. However, we do find that citizenship reduces fears of deportation. Explaining divergence from past studies, our results also reveal evidence of positive selection into citizenship, suggesting that observational studies are susceptible to selection bias.

  PublisherDOI

• Refugee Labor Market Integration at Scale: Evidence from Germany’s Fast-Track Employment Program

  SocArXiv (OSF Preprints) · 2026-03-14

  preprint

  Governments continue to face challenges integrating refugees into the local labor market, and many past interventions have shown limited impact. This study examines the Job-Turbo program, a large-scale initiative launched by the German government in 2023 to accelerate employment among refugees—primarily individuals from Ukraine and eight other major countries of origin. Using monthly administrative panel data from Germany’s network of public employment service offices and a difference-in-differences design, we find that the program significantly increased both caseworker–refugee contact and job placements over a 23-month follow-up period. Among Ukrainian refugees, the exit-to-job rate nearly doubled. Effects were broad-based—spanning demographic subgroups, unemployment durations, skill levels, regions, and local labor-market conditions—and concentrated in regular, unsubsidized employment. The program also raised both the rate and share of sustained job placements, consistent with improved match quality. Other refugee groups saw meaningful gains as well, but increases in job placements were concentrated among males and in low-skilled jobs, with only limited effects for females. We detect no negative spillovers for German or other immigrant job seekers, finding no signs of either resource reallocation or displacement. The results offer insights for governments responding to displacement crises. They indicate that intensified job-search assistance---embedded within the early stage of integration and implemented at scale through public employment infrastructure---can meaningfully improve refugees' labor-market outcomes, even amid significant arrivals.

  Publisher

• Refugee Labor Market Integration at Scale: Evidence from Germany’s Fast-Track Employment Program

  2025-10-03

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Governments continue to face challenges integrating refugees into the local labor market, and many past interventions have shown limited impact. This study examines the Job-Turbo program, a large-scale initiative launched by the German government in 2023 to accelerate employment among refugees—primarily individuals from Ukraine and eight other major countries of origin. Using monthly administrative panel data from Germany’s network of public employment service offices and a difference-in-differences design, we find that the program significantly increased both caseworker–refugee contact and job placements over a 23-month follow-up period. Among Ukrainian refugees, the exit-to-job rate nearly doubled. Effects were broad-based—spanning demographic subgroups, unemployment durations, skill levels, regions, and local labor-market conditions—and concentrated in regular, unsubsidized employment. The program also raised both the rate and share of sustained job placements, consistent with improved match quality. Other refugee groups saw meaningful gains as well, but increases in job placements were concentrated among males and in low-skilled jobs, with only limited effects for females. We detect no negative spillovers for German or other immigrant job seekers, finding no signs of either resource reallocation or displacement. The results offer insights for governments responding to displacement crises. They indicate that intensified job-search assistance---embedded within the early stage of integration and implemented at scale through public employment infrastructure---can meaningfully improve refugees' labor-market outcomes, even amid significant arrivals.

  PublisherDOI

• A Response to Recent Critiques of Hainmueller, Mummolo and Xu (2019) on Estimating Conditional Relationships

  ArXiv.org · 2025-02-08

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Simonsohn (2024a) and Simonsohn (2024b) critique Hainmueller, Mummolo and Xu (2019, HMX), arguing that failing to model nonlinear relationships between the treatment and moderator leads to biased marginal effect estimates and uncontrolled Type-I error rates. While these critiques highlight the issue of under-modeling nonlinearity in applied research, they are fundamentally flawed in several key ways. First, the causal estimand for interaction effects and the necessary identifying assumptions are not clearly defined in these critiques. Once properly stated, the critiques no longer hold. Second, the kernel estimator HMX proposes recovers the true causal effects in the scenarios presented in these recent critiques, which compared effects to the wrong benchmark, producing misleading conclusions. Third, while Generalized Additive Models (GAM) can be a useful exploratory tool (as acknowledged in HMX), they are not designed to estimate marginal effects, and better alternatives exist, particularly in the presence of additional covariates. Our response aims to clarify these misconceptions and provide updated recommendations for researchers studying interaction effects through the estimation of conditional marginal effects.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• “Welcome to France.” Can mandatory integration contracts foster immigrant integration?

  American Journal of Political Science · 2025-04-09 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract European governments, struggling with incorporating diverse immigrant populations, introduced integration contracts. Through language training and compulsory civics courses, these contracts aim to induce new migrants to adopt the host society's culture, respect its values, and improve their labor market outcomes. Despite their popularity, little empirical evidence exists on whether integration contracts catalyze integration or trigger a backlash. To shed light on this question, we leverage the staggered introduction of France's integration contract across metropolitan departments between 2003 and 2006 to implement a regression discontinuity design. We use census data, labor force surveys, and our own survey of refugees to estimate the effect of the contract on integration outcomes. We find the integration contract facilitated employment in the short term without backlash but did not translate into long‐lasting integration gains.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Linking deliveries to newborns using nationwide Medicaid data

  BMC Medical Research Methodology · 2025-10-24

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Linking mothers to their newborns in health records is crucial for understanding the impact of policies, programs, and medical treatments on intergenerational health outcomes. While previous studies have used shared identifiers for linkage, such data are often unavailable in Medicaid records due to privacy concerns. Existing algorithms are not sufficiently flexible to accommodate Medicaid data from all states and from both Medicaid Analytic Extract (MAX) and Transformed Analytical Files (TAF) data systems. We present a scalable framework and linking algorithm that connects deliveries and infants without relying on names, addresses, or linkage to vital records. First, we confirm our ability to identify newborn beneficiaries and deliveries resulting in live birth across states and over time by comparing our findings to the total number of Medicaid births recorded in the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS). Second, we confirm that our algorithm accommodates variations in Medicaid records over time and across states for MAX and TAF data, supporting matches at different levels of stringency. Finally, we assess the extent to which our algorithm is effective across demographic groups. Using data from all 50 states over 9 years, our algorithm linked 11.68 million mother-infant dyads, covering 68% of Medicaid-enrolled infants, over 30% of all U.S. infants. Our linked cohort is approximately representative of the broader population of Medicaid beneficiaries on key observable characteristics including race and ethnicity, age, gender, and region. However, linked beneficiaries are more likely to be white and from the Midwest or Northeast relative to those we are unable to link. Despite substantial variation in the nature of Medicaid data across states and over time, it is possible to identify family units in all states between 2011 and 2019 without linking claims to vital records. This algorithm will facilitate research on social determinants of health and the intergenerational effects of medical interventions and public policy.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Refugee Labor Market Integration at Scale: Evidence from Germany’s Fast-Track Employment Program

  2025-09-30

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Governments face persistent challenges in integrating refugees into the local labor market, and many past interventions have shown limited impact. This study examines the Job-Turbo program, a large-scale initiative launched by the German government in 2023 to accelerate employment among refugees-primarily individuals from Ukraine and eight other major countries of origin. Using monthly administrative panel data from Germany's network of public employment service offices and a difference-in-differences design, we find that the program significantly increased both caseworker-refugee contact and job placements over a 23-mo follow-up period. Among Ukrainian refugees, the exit-to-job rate nearly doubled. Effects were broad-based-spanning demographic subgroups, unemployment durations, skill levels, regions, and local labor-market conditions-and were concentrated in regular, unsubsidized employment. The program also raised both the rate and share of placements followed by sustained employment, consistent with improved placement quality. Other refugee groups saw meaningful gains as well, but increases in job placements were concentrated among males and in low-skilled jobs, with only limited effects for females. We detect no negative spillovers on contact rates or exit-to-job rates for unemployed German or other immigrant job seekers, finding no evidence of resource reallocation or displacement. The results offer insights for governments responding to displacement crises. They indicate that intensified job-search assistance-embedded within the early stage of integration and implemented at scale through public employment infrastructure-can meaningfully improve refugees' labor-market outcomes, even amid significant arrivals.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• National Birth Outcomes and Care Utilization for Infants of Emergency Medicaid Eligible Parents

  2025-05-31

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  Medicaid births represent nearly 40% of all births nationwide and in states such as Oregon and California, births covered by Emergency Medicaid (EM) are 20-30% of all Medicaid births. EM provides restricted/limited benefits coverage for life-threatening conditions, including labor and delivery care for individuals who are otherwise ineligible for Medicaid because of immigration status. Despite EM-covered populations experiencing social and economic disadvantage, prior research on outcomes has included select states, such as Oregon, South and North Carolina, and Texas. This study uses national data to compare health outcomes for infants born to individuals receiving EM and non-EM coverage.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Dominik Hangartner

  154 shared

• Kirk Bansak

  University of California, Berkeley

  137 shared

• Duncan Lawrence

  Stanford University

  115 shared

• Avidit Acharya

  93 shared

• Vasil Yasenov

  IZA - Institute of Labor Economics

  80 shared

• David D. Laitin

  Palo Alto University

  59 shared

• Michael Hotard

  Stanford University

  51 shared

• Jeremy M. Weinstein

  45 shared

Awards & honors

• Gosnell Prize for Excellence in Political Methodology
• Warren Miller Prize
• Robert H. Durr Award
• Emerging Scholar Award from the Society of Political Methodo…
• Andrew Carnegie Fellow