The Melting Pot Of Gold

C.W.  a paper from last year (pdf) showing that “changing from a purely foreign name to a very common American name is associated with a 14% hike in earnings”:

What sorts of people were most likely to Americanise their name? The most boring explanation is one concerning “imperfect information”: only some migrants realised the benefit of Americanisation. But the authors find little evidence for that. Instead, they show that migrants facing the greatest barriers to occupational mobility were most likely to Americanise and reaped the highest returns from doing so. People who came from more “exotic” countries, or who could not migrate to better jobs, benefited more from Americanisation than better-off migrants. These migrants had to jettison their individual identity for labour-market success.