Hani Mansour Ph.D. Candidate Department of Economics University of California, Santa Barbara Contact Information: Department of Economics 2127 North Hall University of California Santa Barbara, CA 93106 Email: mansour@econ.ucsb.edu (updated: 7/23/08)

Bio: I am a fourth-year Ph.D. student in economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. My fields are labor economics and applied econometrics. My primary interests are in personnel economics, contract theory, and immigration. I study both labor markets in developed countries and markets in developing countries, mainly in the Middle East. The Chair of my dissertation committee is Prof. Peter Kuhn. Curriculum Vitae Working Papers: 1) Occupational Choice and Employer Learning (Job Market Paper - coming soon) 2) The Effects of Labor Supply Shocks on Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (under review) Since September 2000, as a result of mobility restrictions, the supply of Palestinian workers competing for local jobs in the West Bank increased by about forty percent. This paper takes advantage of this unique natural experiment to study the effects of labor supply shocks of past-migrant workers on labor market outcomes in their home country. It contributes to the literature in several ways: The environment under study does not suffer from the out-migration problem common in many studies in the immigration literature. I use quarterly information on wages and employment rather than decennial data to analyze the short run adjustment of the labor market. Finally, in contrast to other recent studies of the Palestinian labor market, I attempt to estimate the supply shock effects separately from the effects of political instability. The results suggest that while unemployment rises immediately after the initial shock, it takes about five quarters for the wages of unskilled workers to respond to the increase in the supply of labor. It is estimated that a 10 percent increase in the supply of unskilled workers reduces their wages by about 2-5 percent. No effects on wages are found among skilled workers. The employment of unskilled workers seems to adjust slower than for skilled individuals, generating a persistent rate of unemployment among the unskilled. Links: Department of Economics, University of California, Santa Barbara National Bureau of Economic Research IZA – Institute for the Study of Labor Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics Israel Central Bureau of Statistics