About

Rebecca Lessem is an Associate Professor of Economics at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University. Her role involves teaching and research within the field of economics, contributing to the academic community at Tepper. Further details about her specific research focus, background, or key contributions are not provided in the available page text.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Demographic economics
• Economics
• Law
• Microeconomics
• Monetary economics
• Public economics
• Psychology
• Econometrics
• Labour economics
• Demography
• Business

Selected publications

• Do house prices affect campaign contributions?

  Economics and Politics · 2022

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Economics

  Abstract Individual campaign contributions are the largest source of financing for U.S. presidential and congressional candidates, though the body of research examining why people give remains small. To help understand these decisions, we estimate the causal impact of house prices on donations across campaigns and parties using an instrumental variables strategy. Our results indicate that an increase in house prices increases ZIP code‐level donations to Democratic presidential and congressional candidates, with minuscule or no effect for Republican candidates. The effects in areas with a greater proportion of renters are larger than areas with more homeowners. Since this population is likely to experience higher rents as a result of house price increases, this suggests that pleas for policy may inspire giving. Further, areas with the highest fraction of college educated residents also see the largest effects, when compared to less‐educated areas, suggesting a wealth effect exists as well.

  PublisherDOI

• IMMIGRANT WAGE GROWTH IN THE UNITED STATES: THE ROLE OF OCCUPATIONAL UPGRADING

  International Economic Review · 2020 · 11 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Demographic economics
  • Labour economics

  Abstract Immigrants to the United States routinely take jobs below their skill qualifications because of barriers to entering occupations. We use a structural model of immigrant job choice to quantify the benefits of potential policies to promote entry into suitable occupations. We estimate the model using longitudinal labor market data on immigrants to the United States. Our counterfactual results show that eliminating barriers to occupational entry would lead to only a small earnings increase for the average immigrant in our sample, but a substantial earnings increase for the most highly skilled immigrants.

  PublisherDOI

• How do U.S. Visa Policies Affect Unauthorized Immigration?

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2020-02-01 · 2 citations

  reportOpen accessSenior author

  We examine how increasing the number of visas available to potential migrants would affect unauthorized immigration from Mexico to the U.S. Current U.S. policy bans people who are deported from receiving legal status for a period of time. This policy aims to serve as an additional deterrent to unauthorized immigration, but may be ineffective given that most potential Mexican migrants have an extremely low probability of ever being able to legally move to the U.S. We develop a dynamic discrete location choice model, which we estimate using data from the Mexican Migration Project, and consider various counterfactual policies that vary the intensity of enforcement and access to work visas. We find that legal entry bans for deported individuals are ineffective at current rates of legal immigration, but that increased legalization rates would amplify the deterrent effects of deportation. We also show that a temporary work visa program would yield similar deterrent effects as an increase in permanent legalization without resulting in very large increases in the total stock of migrants residing in the U.S. These findings have important implications for structuring future immigration reforms.

  PublisherDOI

• How do U.S. visa policies affect unauthorized immigration?

  Journal of Monetary Economics · 2020 · 10 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Demographic economics
  • Sociology

  How would increasing the number of visas available to potential migrants affect unauthorized immigration from Mexico to the U.S.? Current U.S. policy bans people who are deported from receiving legal status for a period of time. This policy aims to serve as an additional deterrent to unauthorized immigration, but may be ineffective given that most potential Mexican migrants have an extremely low probability of ever being able to legally move to the U.S. We develop a dynamic discrete location choice model, which we estimate using data from the Mexican Migration Project, and consider various counterfactual policies that vary the intensity of enforcement and access to work visas. We find that legal entry bans for deported individuals are ineffective at current rates of legal immigration, but that increased legalization rates would amplify the deterrent effects of deportation. We also show that a temporary work visa program would yield similar deterrent effects as an increase in permanent legalization without resulting in very large increases in the total stock of migrants residing in the U.S. These findings have important implications for structuring future immigration reforms.

  PublisherDOI

• Immigrant wages and recessions: Evidence from undocumented Mexicans

  European Economic Review · 2019-02-26 · 11 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Comment on “The impact of the tax cut and jobs act on the spatial distribution of high productivity households and economic welfare”, by Daniele Coen-Pirani and Holger Sieg

  Journal of Monetary Economics · 2019-04-03

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The effects of family instability on children's outcomes

  2019 Meeting Papers · 2019-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  We study how family instability causally affects child outcomes, focusing on cognitive, physical, and emotional development. To do this, we develop and estimate a dynamic model of marriage and child development. The mother chooses both marital status (choosing between married, cohabiting, and single) and how much to invest in the child each period, and the child's outcomes evolve as a function of these decisions. One key component of the model is that marriage may create a more binding commitment to stay together, since both the monetary and psychological costs of divorce are likely higher than breakups of non-married couples. We estimate the model using data from Fragile families, a survey that starts with a sample of mothers and children, and follows them up to age 15. After estimating the model, we can use our results to quantify how much their outcomes would improve if there were policies put in place to encourage parents to stay together; for example, transfers that were tied to the couple remaining as joint parents, or changes to the legal treatment of cohabiting couples making it more costly to separate. These types of policies have a direct effect on the child if marital stability affects outcomes, and also potentially an indirect effect if the probability of divorce affects the mother's incentive to invest in the child.

  Publisher

• Labor Migration and Wage Growth in Malaysia

  Research Showcase @ Carnegie Mellon University (Carnegie Mellon University) · 2018-06-30

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  I estimate a discrete choice dynamic programming model to calculate how wage differentials affected internal migration decisions in Malaysia between 1978 and 1988. In the model, individuals pick a location at each point in time, thereby allowing for repeat and return migration. I calculate total income in a location as wages plus in-kind payments. I find evidence that wages motivate migration decisions; however, I do not find evidence that in-kind payments play a role. As a person’s wage decreases, his likelihood of migration increases. People move from low to high wage locations, and people with a low wage draw in their current location are more likely to move. People prefer to live in their home location. In Malaysia at this time, there were significant urban-rural and regional earnings disparities. If people move to take advantage of higher earnings, there will be substantial wage growth through migration. I find that migration increases earnings over the course of a lifetime by about 10%.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Immigrant-Native Wage Gap in the United States

  Research Showcase @ Carnegie Mellon University (Carnegie Mellon University) · 2018-06-30 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Immigrants to the United States earn lower wages than native workers, and this gap decreases with time spent working in the US labor market. In this paper, we study the determinants of the wage path of immigrants in order to understand this wage gap between natives and immigrants. We focus on two particular explanations: differing returns to experience in the US and search frictions when finding optimal occupations. Labor market experience in the US may be more valuable for jobs in the US than labor market experience in other countries. In addition, it can take time for new immigrants to be matched with their optimal occupation after moving to the US. Separating these factors is difficult due to potential self-selection of immigrants. To deal with this, we use data from the New Immigrant Survey which has detailed information on the occupations and wages of immigrants both before they enter the US as well as repeated observations after moving to the US. Reduced form evidence shows that both search frictions and work experience affect immigrant wages. We develop and estimate a simple model of on-the-job human capital accumulation and job search. Using the estimated model, we simulate counterfactuals to understand the importance of each factor. In the first simulation, we find that immigrant wages over a lifetime increase by 32% when returns to experience in the home country are the same as returns to experience in the US. In the second simulation, we match immigrants with their optimal occupation in their first US job, and find that this increases wages by 5%.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Migration networks and Mexican migrants' spatial mobility in the US

  RePEc: Research Papers in Economics · 2018-01-01 · 1 citations

  preprint1st authorCorresponding

  Mexican low-skilled migrants are found to be highly mobile when they face labor demand shocks. This paper examines the role of migration networks in Mexican-born immigrants’ location choices. We rely on the sizable variation in labor demand declines across states during the Great Recession to identify migration responses to demand shocks and use a novel set of data, the Matrícula Consular de Alta Seguridad (MCAS) data, to construct migration network measures. We find that migration networks indeed play an important part in Mexican migrants’ responsiveness to local demand shocks.In particular, migrants respond to local economic conditions and conditions in network-connected locations when making location decisions.

  Publisher

Frequent coauthors

• Carl Sanders

  University College London

  6 shared

• Brian K. Kovak

  Carnegie Mellon University

  3 shared

• Carly Urban

  Montana State University

  3 shared

• Shan Li

  2 shared

• Brian C. Cadena

  2 shared

• James M. Snyder

  2 shared

• Stephen Ansolabehere

  Harvard University

  2 shared

• David Mooney

  1 shared