This paper studies the self-selection intentions into internal and international migration of young individuals in their school-to-work transition from the South of Spain -one of the areas with highest youth unemployment rates in the EU. I use a rich dataset that includes personal, academic and family background characteristics, as well as individuals’ beliefs about labor market outcomes in their home region and migration destination. Results indicate that having a higher GPA and being from a high socioeconomic status predict individuals’ intention to migrate internationally, but not internally. Despite being positively selected, students who plan to migrate internationally have the most pessimistic views about their career prospects in their home region. With their migration plans, they expect higher labor market returns to migration than internal migrants. International migrants are more likely than internal migrants to plan a long-term migration as opposed to a temporary migration. My results suggest a future brain drain from the region as well as from the country.

High socioeconomic status university graduates are more likely to migrate internationally than their lower socioeconomic status counterparts. As a result, low socioeconomic status individuals could be left behind, despite being university graduates, in countries with high youth unemployment rates. This limits the university's role as a tool to foster social mobility. I study the mechanisms underlying university graduates' different geographic location choices by socioeconomic status. I use an information experiment to investigate the role of information frictions and study credit constraints and other costs (e.g., knowledge of the language) as alternative mechanisms.

with Josep Amer-Mestre and Marta C. Lopes - Applied Economics (2023). DOI:10.1080/00036846.2023.2167924

We study the impact of COVID-19 school closures on differences in online learning usage by regional academic performance. Using data from Google Trends in Italy, we find that during the first lockdown, regions with a previously lower academic performance increased their searches for e-learning tools more than higher-performing regions. Analysing school administrative and survey data before the pandemic, we find that both teachers and students in lower performing regions were using no less e-learning tools than higher performing ones. These two findings suggest that the COVID-19 shock widened the e-learning usage gap between academically lower and higher-performing regions. Exploiting the regional variation in school closure mandates during the 2020/2021 academic year, we report that the patterns detected after the first lockdown were no longer present. Regions with different previous academic performance had the same response in terms of online learning usage when faced with stricter school closures.