This paper examines how legal inclusion shapes immigrant assimilation effort. I study the 1915 Dow v. United States ruling, which classified Arabs as white and thus eligible for naturalization. Using U.S. Census data, I show that Arab children born after 1915 received significantly less foreign-sounding names, with within-family estimates indicating effects comparable to decades of additional parental U.S. exposure. Difference-in-differences analyses relative to Poles and other immigrant groups corroborate these findings. I also provide evidence that, among first-generation immigrants, intermarriage with natives increased following the ruling, while residential integration lagged behind. Importantly, these cultural shifts translated into economic payoffs: post-Dow cohorts with less-foreign names earned about 37 percent higher hourly wages and were significantly less concentrated in immigrant-intensive manufacturing jobs. Finally, I assembled a new corpus of Arab-American newspapers (1890–1940) to study identity debates, offering the first systematic text-based evidence of how migrants internalized legal reclassification. Taken together, these findings show that access to naturalization encouraged and rewarded assimilation—an insight of enduring relevance as contemporary pathways to citizenship narrow worldwide.

Working Paper

🏅 MinE Best Paper Award, European Economic Association Congress 

👩🏽‍🏫 Harvard PE/History Tea, ACES Summer School, Lewis Lab Student Workshop, Boston University Development Group, Harvard Econ History Workshop, ASREC, NBER Race and Stratification Working Group, Harvard Political Economy and Culture Workshop, European Economic Association'25, Economic History Association'25, Brown University Growth Lab Seminar, Immigration, Citizenship, and Intergroup Contact Conference (PSE)

We provide causal evidence of skin tone discrimination in professional football, where performance is directly observed. Using a computer-vision measure of skin tone and a Difference-in-Discontinuities design around near-miss goals, we show that Light-skinned players receive significantly larger boosts in post-match ratings than Tan- and Dark-skinned peers for identical actions. These disparities emerge in both algorithmic and human-assigned evaluations and are concentrated in the subjective component of ratings. Season-level analysis reveals that biased ratings translate into lower market valuations for darker-skinned players, despite equivalent output. Evaluative bias---rather than differential treatment in contracts---drives economic inequality in this high-information labor market.

[NEW] draft available!

🥈 Runner-up, Best Paper Award, MENA and Asia Political Methodology 

👩🏽‍🏫 PolMeth MENA, Class for Sports and Society course (NYU AD), Association for Mentoring and Inclusion in Economics (AMIE, 3rd Applied Econ Workshop), ASREC/IRES Graduate Student Workshop, Applied Economics Seminar (PSE), 16th PhD Workshop in Economics (Turin, CCA), Sport Economics Guest Lecture Series (University of Tubingen)

Older peers' enrollment in selective tracks carries limited information about younger students' admission chances---yet substantially influences their choices. Exploiting quasi-random cohort-to-cohort variation in older students' enrollment within high school–program cells in Sweden's centralized admissions system, we find that a one percentage point increase in older peers' selective-track enrollment reduces the probability of ranking that track first by 0.21--0.87 percentage points (8--28% of baseline), with effects concentrated in highly selective tracks. Students shift across tracks rather than away from university. Heterogeneity points to social comparison: same-gender peers exert stronger effects; below-median applicants respond primarily to above-median peers; persisting peers matter more than dropouts. Migrants respond similarly to natives, though their Medicine preferences remain remarkably stable. These results suggest students overweight local signals or hold mistaken beliefs, highlighting contexts where targeted information could better align aspirations with ability.

[NEW] draft available!

🇸🇪 The analyses are conducted using registry data from Statistics Sweden, with ethics approval from the Swedish Ethical Review Authority.

👩🏽‍🏫Petit Séminaire Informel de la Paris School of Economics, Growth Lab (Harvard), Swedish Institute for Social Research Lunch Seminar, Stockholm University Demography Unit Colloquium, Stockholm University Economics Department Lunch Seminar.