Sarah Langlotz

Migration and Refugee Resettlement

Sarah Langlotz is currently working on two survey experiments. One is part of her DFG-funded project entitled “Coming to America: Immigration, Political Campaigning, and Polarization” with Axel Dreher (Heidelberg University), Johannes Matzat (University of Lucerne), and Chris Parsons (University of Western Australia). Combining data on migration with new data on refugee resettlement between 1975–2018, the authors investigate how stocks versus flows of migrants and refugees affect political polarization in the United States. By means of a survey experiment they aim at a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms.

The second survey experiment is part of a project on sea rescue and irregular migration, which is joint work with Paul Michel (University of Cologne) and Sebastian Leue (HWWI).The first part of the project is based on a large trove of data including high-frequency observations on irregular migration attempts, the presence of sea rescue missions, and administrative and political blockades of NGO vessels in the Central Mediterranean Sea from 2016 to 2021. By conducting a survey in an important origin country, the authors seek to enhance comprehension regarding the impact of sea rescue and deterrence policies on initial migration decisions and the associated risks.

Ms. Langlotz’s research focuses on Political Economy and Development Economics. Using empirical methods, she investigates policy-relevant questions at the macro and micro level in international and interdisciplinary teams. The two strands of her research are: 1) peace, conflict, and migration research and 2) the effectiveness of development cooperation. Her work has been published in prestigious journals such as the Journal of Applied Econometrics, the European Economic Review and the Journal of Health Economics and has been recently accepted by the Review of Economics and Statistics. While at CESifo, she will seek an exchange with colleagues from the centers International Institutional Comparisons and Migration Research and Public Finance and Political Economy.

Sarah Langlotz is an Assistant Professor at the Chair of Development Economics of the University of Göttingen. Before that, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Chair of International and Development Politics at the University of Heidelberg, where she also completed her PhD in Economics. Her dissertation was awarded the first prize for excellence in applied development research by the Verein für Socialpolitik and KfW Development Bank. Ms. Langlotz was a visiting researcher at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. She is member of the Research Committee on Development Economics of the German Economic Association (VfS) and steering committee member of the Network of European Peace Scientists (NEPS). She is co-initiator, organizer, and moderator of the seminar series called the Digital Development Dialogue, a monthly 45-minute online forum for policy and research exchange.