Nicolò Gatti (Catholic University of Milan)
This paper investigates whether trade shocks interact with labor mobility in affecting workers outcomes. As a natural experiment, I exploit the sharp Swiss franc appreciation following the unexpected removal of the exchange rate floor against the euro in January 2015, which raised EU cross-border workers incentives to seek employment in Switzerland. Leveraging variation in sectoral trade exposure and geographic proximity to national borders, I find that the adverse unemployment and earnings effects are concentrated in border regions, where the share of immigrant cross-border workers in trade-exposed industries increased by more than 4 percentage points in areas closest to the frontier.