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I study migration policy past and present.

I use novel archival data and computational methods to assess the effects and effectiveness of historical immigration policies. 

Historical immigration policy restrictions (and some record linkage)
Peer-Reviewed Publications

  1. Asian Immigration to the United States in Historical Perspective. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2026.

  2. Record Linkage For Character-Based Surnames: Evidence from Chinese Exclusion. Explorations in Economic History, 2023.

  3. Immigration Restrictions as Active Labor Market Policy: Evidence from the Mexican Bracero Exclusion (with Michael A. Clemens and Ethan G. Lewis). American Economic Review, 2018.

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Working Papers

  1. Beyond Urban Chinatowns: Disaggregating Historical Chinese Residential Patterns in California. Under review.

  2. Finding John Smith: Using Extra Information for Historical Record Linkage (with Ran Abramitzky, Leah Boustan, Harriet Brookes Gray, Katherine Eriksson, Santiago Perez, Myera Rashid, and Noah Simon). Revise and resubmit, Explorations in Economic History.

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In Progress​

  1. Beyond Exclusion:  The Anti-Chinese Legal Regime in the American West (with Beth Lew-Williams).

  2. Subgroup Disparities in Automated Census Record Linkage (with Ran Abramitzky, Leah Boustan, and Katherine Eriksson). 

  3. ​The Impact of Immigration Restrictions on Third-Country Economies: Evidence of the Chinese Exclusion Act (with David Escamilla-Guerrero).

I do fieldwork to break down the relationships between migration and economic development.

Migration and development

Peer-Reviewed Publications

  1. Deterring Emigration with Foreign Aid: An Overview of Evidence from Low-Income Countries (with Michael A. Clemens). Population and Development Review, 2018.

  2. Temporary work visas as US-Haiti development cooperation: a preliminary impact evaluation (with Michael A. Clemens). IZA Journal of Labor and Development, 2017.

  3. Moving beyond “China in Africa”: Insights from Zambian Immigration Data. Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, 2017.


Working Papers

  1. The Future of Mobility and Migration within and from Sub-Saharan Africa (with Loren B. Landau and Caroline Wanjiku Kihato; sleeping paper).

 

In Progress​

  1. Return as Displacement: Deportation, Coercion, and Capabilities in Honduras (with Daniel Masterson, Juanita Ruiz, Cynthia van der Werf, and Kimberly Zelaya).

  2. Cash Transfers for Forced Returnees: Regression Discontinuity Evidence from Honduras (with Ana Andino, Daniel Masterson, Juanita Ruiz, Cynthia van der Werf, Andrea Velásquez, & Kimberly Zelaya).

  3. Coastal Flooding, Social Cohesion, and Migration in West Africa (with Allison Grossman, Patrick Hunnicutt, and Shelley Liu).

  4. Transit Migration Impacts on Indigenous Communities in Panama’s Darién Gap (with Ana Andino, Sara O’Malley, Bill Pan, Herman Pontzer, and Daniela Trujillo Hassan).

hannah.postel [at] duke [dot] edu
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