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on Economics of Human Migration |
| By: | Damien Besancenot (CEPN - Centre d'économie de l'Université de Paris Nord - CNRS : UMR7115 - Université Paris-Nord - Paris XIII); Radu Vranceanu (Department of Economics - ESSEC) |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes the decision of a migrant to return or stay within the framework of a signaling model withexogenous migratory costs. If employers have only imperfect information about the type of a worker and goodworkers migrate, bad workers might copy their strategy in order to get the same high wage as the good workers.Employers will therefore reduce the wage they pay to migrants and good workers incur a loss compared to theperfect information setup. In one hybrid equilibrium of the game, the more bad workers migrate, the higher theincentive for good workers to come back. Policy implications follow. |
| Keywords: | Temporary migration, Return migrants, Hybrid Bayesian Equilibrium, Signaling model. |
| Date: | 2008–12–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-00344929_v1&r=mig |
| By: | Raluca Prelipceanu (CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - CNRS : UMR8174 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - Paris I) |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses the determinants of the Romanian temporary labour migration during the transition period. First of all, we build a househould level model in order to explain the decision to migrate in a couple. Then, by using a 10% sample of the Romanian 2002 Census we try to assess the importance of the gender bias for the migration decision. The main questions raised are "Do migration determinants differ according to gender ?" and "Do local norms influence the propensity to migrate of women and that of men ?". Our results prove the existence of important differences between the migration decision of men and that of women as well as the influence of cultural norms on gender roles on the latter's decision to migrate. |
| Keywords: | Temporary labour migration ; gender inequality ; household production ; social norms |
| Date: | 2008–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-00344790_v1&r=mig |
| By: | Montserrat Vilalta-Bufi, Departament de Teoria Economica and CAEPS (Universitat de Barcelona) and; Departament d'Economia i Historia Economica (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona) (Universitat de Barcelona) |
| Abstract: | We analyze an economy with two main features: labor mobility goes together with knowledge transfer and firm productivity increases with the exchange of ideas. Each firm develops some specific knowledge that will be transmitted to the rest of the industry through the mobility of workers. We study two labor market settings and use comparative statics to derive the implications of the model. They reveal how labor mobility depends on the variety and level of knowledge, the presence of mobility costs, the institutional environment, the absorptive capacity of the firms and the size of the industry. Results are robust to different labor market settings. |
| Keywords: | exchange of knowledge, inter-firm labor mobility, knowledge diffusion |
| JEL: | J61 J23 O33 |
| Date: | 2008 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bar:bedcje:2008210&r=mig |
| By: | Stephen Nickell; Jumana Saleheen |
| Abstract: | This paper asks whether immigration to Britain has had any impact on average wages. There seems to be a broad consensus among academics that the share of immigrants in the workforce has little or no effect on the pay rates of the indigenous population. But the studies in the literature have typically not refined their analysis by breaking it down into different occupational groups. In this paper we find that once the occupational breakdown is incorporated into a regional analysis of immigration in Britain, the immigrant-native ratio has a significant, small, negative impact on average wages. Closer examination reveals that the biggest impact is in the semi/unskilled services sector. This finding accords well with intuition and anecdote, but does not seem to have been recorded previously in the empirical literature. |
| Keywords: | Emigration and immigration - Great Britain ; Wages - Great Britain |
| Date: | 2008 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedbwp:08-6&r=mig |
| By: | Fida Karam (CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - CNRS : UMR8174 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - Paris I, EEP-PSE - Ecole d'Économie de Paris - Paris School of Economics - Ecole d'Économie de Paris) |
| Abstract: | In this paper, I run a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of the Moroccan economy to investigate the transmission channels through which remittances affect households and sectors. I give a particular attention to the investment of remittances in the real estate sector, by allowing a segmentation of the savings market. To begin with, I assess the negative impact of immigration restrictive policies and permanent migration on the future evolution of remittances. Then I ask what would be the appropriate policies to take the maximum profit from current flows. It turns out that channelling investment from real estate to productive sectors is unexpectedly harmful in terms of growth and welfare. Positive effects stem only from government ability to attract investors through an improvement in the country risk premium, and private efforts to reduce international transfer costs. |
| Keywords: | Sequential dynamics, computable general equilibrium model, migration, remittances. |
| Date: | 2008–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-00344833_v1&r=mig |
| By: | Federico S. Mandelman; Andrei Zlate |
| Abstract: | We analyze the dynamics of labor migration and the insurance role of remittances in a two-country, real business cycle framework. Emigration increases with the expected stream of future wage gains but is dampened by the sunk cost reflecting border enforcement. During booms in the destination economy, the scarcity of established immigrants lessens capital accumulation, labor productivity, and the native wage. The welfare gain from the inflow of unskilled labor increases with the complementarity between skilled and unskilled labor and the share of the skilled among native labor. The model matches the cyclical dynamics of the unskilled immigration from Mexico. |
| Date: | 2008 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedawp:2008-25&r=mig |
| By: | Harald Uhlig |
| Abstract: | Fifteen years after German reunification, the facts about slow regional convergence have born out the prediction of Barro (1991), except that migration out of East Germany has not slowed down. I document that in particular the 18-29 year old are leaving East Germany, and that the emigration has accelerated in recent years. I document that low wages, high unemployment and increasing reliance on social security persist across wide regions of East Germany together with these migration patterns. To understand these patterns, I use an extension of the standard labor search model introduced in Uhlig (2006, 2008) by allowing for migration and network externalities. In that theory, two equilibria can result: one with a high networking rate, high average labor productivity, low unemployment and no emigration ("West Germany'') and one with a low networking rate, low average labor productivity, high unemployment and a constant rate of emigration ("East Germany''). The model does not imply any obviously sound policies to move from the weakly networked equilibrium to the highly networked equilibrium. |
| JEL: | E20 J61 J64 O11 O18 O33 P20 P25 R12 R23 |
| Date: | 2008–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:14553&r=mig |