Laura Serlenga received her Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Edinburgh (UK) in 2004 and joined the Department of Economics at the University of Bari (Italy) in January 2004. Her general research interests are applied econometrics, analysis of panel data, international economics, migration and economics of education. She has worked on the issues of self-selection and remittance in illegal migration using data from SIMI (Survey on Illegal Migration in Italy). The SIMI is a survey commissioned by a team of researchers of the Department of Economics of the University of Bari in 2003 that collects information concerning the main demographic and socio-economic characteristics of a representative sample of clandestines and unravels their motivations and expectations to migrate.

She joined IZA as a Research Affiliate in September 2004 and became a Research Fellow in February 2007.