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Registration

Field Before After
Trial Status in_development completed
Last Published November 01, 2023 02:35 PM August 13, 2025 05:55 PM
Study Withdrawn No
Intervention Completion Date January 31, 2024
Data Collection Complete Yes
Final Sample Size: Number of Clusters (Unit of Randomization) 3348 respondents
Was attrition correlated with treatment status? No
Final Sample Size: Total Number of Observations 3348 respondents
Final Sample Size (or Number of Clusters) by Treatment Arms 3348 respondents
Public Data URL https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15322600
Is there a restricted access data set available on request? No
Program Files Yes
Program Files URL https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15322600
Data Collection Completion Date January 31, 2024
Is data available for public use? Yes
Public analysis plan No Yes
Public locations No Yes
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Other Primary Investigators

Field Before After
Affiliation LMU Munich and ifo Institute University of Innsbruck and ifo Institute
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Papers

Field Before After
Paper Abstract Understanding refugees’ destination choices is key to designing appropriate policies, but little is known about this beyond correlational patterns and the effects of isolated policy changes. To derive causal evidence on how destination country characteristics affect refugees’ destination choices, we conducted a forced-choice conjoint experiment among 3,348 Ukrainian refugees across Europe. In the survey experiment, refugees repeatedly chose between two hypothetical countries that varied on eight relevant attributes. Ukrainian refugees are uniquely suited to study the relative importance of different host country attributes as they have the right to choose in which member state of the European Union they apply for temporary protection. We find that job opportunities are a much stronger driver of destination choice than social assistance. A one SD increase in average wages makes it 16.4 percentage points more likely that the country is chosen in the survey experiment, while a corresponding increase in social assistance increases the probability of the country being chosen by only 4.5 percentage points. The ease of finding a job matching one’s qualifications is valued even more than having friends or family and knowing the language of the country. We also find strong sorting in that respondents who value knowing the language and job opportunities in our survey experiments are also more likely to have settled in countries where this is the case. Conjoint experiments can be used to assess refugees’ anticipated migratory responses to proposed policy changes.
Paper Citation Adema, Joop, Lasha Chargaziia, Yvonne Giesing, and Panu Poutvaara (2025), Refugees from Ukraine value job opportunities over welfare. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 122 (32): e2502420122.
Paper URL https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2502420122
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Sponsors

Field Before After
Sponsor Name Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs, Regional Development and Energy (Grant no. 0703/89372/2921)
Sponsor Location Munich, Germany
Sponsor Website (URL) https://www.stmwi.bayern.de/english/
Public Yes
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