Jens Hainmueller

Jens Hainmueller is a professor in the department of political science at Stanford University and holds a courtesy appointment in the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is also the founder and faculty co-director of the Stanford Immigration Policy Lab that is focused on the design and evaluation of immigration and integration policies. 

His research interests include immigration, refugees, statistical methods, political economy, and political behavior. He has published over 45 articles, many of them in top general science journals and top field journals in political science, statistics, economics, and business. He has also published three open source software packages and his research has received awards and funding from the Carnegie Corporation, the National Science Foundation, the American Political Science Association, and the National Bureau of Economic Research, among others. In 2016, he was selected as an Andrew Carnegie Fellow.

Hainmueller received his PhD from Harvard University and also studied at the London School of Economics, Brown University, and the University of Tübingen. Before joining Stanford, he served on the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

King Center Supported Research

2023 - 2024 Academic Year | Global Development Research Funding

What Drives Backlash Against Progressive Refugee Policies? Evidence from Kenya 

There are growing calls for governments to grant greater rights to refugees, particularly in the Global South, which hosts a majority of the world’s refugees. Yet we know little about how the adoption of progressive refugee policies affects host citizens, and how they respond. This study exploits a unique policy change in Kenya to capture and explain support for, and resistance to, refugee policy liberalization, and the real and perceived effects of liberalization on host communities in real time. Kenya’s new Refugee Act will strengthen refugees’ right to employment, access to documentation, and freedom of movement. By conducting nationally-representative surveys before and after the Act’s implementation, we will identify changes in public attitudes towards refugees, support for government and its policies, and the perceived impact of refugee hosting on citizens. We will complement the survey with administrative data, including economic and security outcomes and refugee movements, and interviews with policymakers and NGOs. This will allow us to analyze the drivers of public backlash or welcoming attitudes in the wake of progressive refugee policy implementation.

2022 - 2023 Academic Year | Global Development Research Funding

The Impact of a Forecast-based Remittance Service on Anticipatory Action and Household Resilience to Natural Disasters

With climate change amplifying the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, there is a growing push to develop mechanisms for “anticipatory action,” or efforts to protect people before natural disasters occur. This project explores whether remittances – money sent by migrants to family and friends back home – can be leveraged to bolster disaster risk mitigation and adaptation. In collaboration with a global humanitarian NGO and a private remittance provider, we will conduct a randomized control trial to test whether providing early warning information and incentives to send money in advance of tropical storms in Central America increases anticipatory remittance flows and builds the resilience of receiving households to the impacts of these disasters. This project will contribute to the evidence base on anticipatory action and provide an innovative model for policymakers that has the potential to draw on migration and diaspora networks to help those worst impacted by climate change.