Essays on immigration, relative income, and redistribution.

Summary The thesis contains six essays on immigration, relative income and redistribution. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 form a coherent whole. The analysis focuses on the effect of immigration and ethnic diversity on support for redistributive policy and the welfare state among the non-immigrant population. Chapters 5, 6, and 7 are independent. In Chapter 5, I use information on immigrants' home country visits to test the model proposed by Falk and Knell (2004) on the correlation between job skills and immigrants' baseline income. In Chapter 6, I analyze differences in bargaining power within couples between East and West German women by estimating a collective household labor supply model. Finally, Chapter 7 presents a study of the effect of marital satisfaction on the probability of separation.