Yannay Spitzer on Italian and Jewish Immigration

“The Mass Migrations of Italians and Jews to America: New Evidence on Who and Why” Yannay Spitzer is studying the economics of mass migration from a historical perspective. He is mainly interested in questions such as why people migrate across borders, how they migrate, what determines the timing and the demographic and economic patterns of their migration, and what happens with them after they arrive in the new country. His current research deals with the Jewish and the Italian migrations during the Age of Mass Migration (1880s-1924), movements of millions of people that provide unique a lens on the anatomies of migration and data that are typically unavailable for contemporary migrations. He is also interested in the economic history of the Jews and studies the economics and the demography of the Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire. His efforts are dedicated to producing research that is based on historical cases while addressing current economic issues; builds on newly produced, discovered, or complied large historical data sets; and analyzes these data sets using innovative methods of applied-microeconomics. His methodological toolkit includes both experimental and structural estimation methods, as well as GIS analysis and development of matching algorithms and other sorts of computer script work. At the end of the current academic year, Spitzer will be joining the Department of Economics and the PEP program at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as an assistant professor.