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on Economics of Human Migration |
| By: | Bernard Franck (CREM - Centre de Recherche en Economie et Management - CNRS - Université de Caen Basse-Normandie - UR1 - Université de Rennes 1); Robert F. Owen (LEMNA - Laboratoire d'économie et de management de Nantes Atlantique - UN - Université de Nantes) |
| Abstract: | A two-country, two-period model of international migration with heterogeneous agents highlights microeconomic foundations for examining the interrelation between brain drain, brain gain and whether human capital formation is undertaken at home or abroad. Ex ante choices regarding where to study depend on abilities, relative qualities of university systems, sunk educational investments, government grants, and endogenously determined, individual foreign employment probabilities. Self-selection critically defines an inherently wide-range of conceivably positive or negative net welfare effects. The optimal design of alternative educational grant schemes, aimed at enhancing the source country’s welfare, also depends on the heterogeneity of abilities and associated informational assumptions. |
| Date: | 2015–05–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-01158239&r=mig |
| By: | Clemens, Michael A. (Center for Global Development) |
| Abstract: | This paper critiques the last decade of research on the effects of high-skill emigration from developing countries, and proposes six new directions for fruitful research. The study singles out a core assumption underlying much of the recent literature, calling it the Lump of Learning model of human capital and development, and describes five ways that research has come to challenge that assumption. It assesses the usefulness of the Lump of Learning model in the face of accumulating evidence. The axioms of the Lump of Learning model have shaped research priorities in this literature, but many of those axioms do not have a clear empirical basis. Future research proceeding from established facts would set different priorities, and would devote more attention to measuring the effects of migration on skilled-migrant households, rigorously estimating human capital externalities, gathering microdata beyond censuses, and carefully considering optimal policy – among others. The recent literature has pursued a series of extensions to the Lump of Learning model. This study urges discarding the Lump of Learning model, pointing toward a new paradigm for research on skilled migration and development. |
| Keywords: | brain drain, skill flow, development, migration, human capital, education |
| JEL: | F22 J24 O15 |
| Date: | 2015–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9218&r=mig |
| By: | Stefano Breschi (Bocconi University); Francesco Lissoni (Université de Bordeaux); Ernest Miguelez (Université de Bordeaux) |
| Abstract: | We assess the role of ethnic ties in the diffusion of technical knowledge by means of a database of patent filed by US-resident inventors of foreign origin, which we identify through name analysis. We consider ten important countries of origin of highly skilled migration to the US, both Asian and European, and test whether foreign inventors’ patents are disproportionately cited by: (i) co-ethnic migrants (“diaspora†effect); and (ii) inventors residing in their country of origin (“brain gain†effect). We find evidence of the diaspora effect for Asian countries, but not for European ones, with the exception of Russia. Diaspora effects do not translate necessarily into a brain gain effect, most notably for India; nor brain gain occurs only in presence of diaspora effects. Both the diaspora and the brain gain effects bear less weight than other knowledge transmission channels, such as co-invention networks and multinational companies. |
| Keywords: | migration, brain gain, diaspora, diffusion, inventors, patents |
| JEL: | F22 O15 O31 |
| Date: | 2015–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:1509&r=mig |
| By: | Sylvie Démurger (GATE Lyon Saint-Étienne - Groupe d'analyse et de théorie économique - ENS Lyon - École normale supérieure - Lyon - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - UCBL - Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 - Université Jean Monnet - Saint-Etienne - PRES Université de Lyon - CNRS); Hui Xu (Beijing Normal University / Beijing) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how left-behind children influence migration duration in China. We first present a simple illustrative model that incorporates economic and non-economic motives to migration duration. Using individual data from a survey carried out in Wuwei county (Anhui province) in 2008, we find that migrant parents of children in primary school tend to delay their return, a result we interpret as illustrating the need for migrant parents to accumulate money for their offspring’s education. In contrast, parental time appears substitutable by coresiding grandparents who contribute to delay the parents’ return, especially mothers, when they have children below the age of 12. |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-01159072&r=mig |
| By: | Fedotenkov, Igor |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses the link between migration and sizes of countries. It explains why larger countries (in terms of population) have lower shares of migrants in their populations. First, the data is analysed; next, a macroeconomic model with international trade and migration, explaining the stylised facts, is developed. The model includes country size, which gives rise to cheaper country-specific goods produced in a large country relative to the goods produced in a smaller country. Higher wages in the small country spur immigration to it. |
| Keywords: | Country size, migration, international trade, population |
| JEL: | F16 F22 |
| Date: | 2015–05–25 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:66035&r=mig |
| By: | Joan Monras (ECON - Département d'économie - Sciences Po) |
| Abstract: | How does the US labor market absorb low-skilled immigration? I address this question using the 1995 Mexican Peso Crisis, an exogenous push factor that raised Mexican migration to the US. In the short run, high-immigration states see their low-skilled labor force increase and native low-skilled wages decrease, with an implied local labor demand elasticity of -.7. Internal relocation dissipates this shock spatially. In the long run, the only lasting consequences are for low-skilled natives who entered the labor force in high-immigration years. A simple quantitative many-region model allows me to obtain the counterfactual local wage evolution absent the immigration shock. |
| Date: | 2015–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-01127022&r=mig |
| By: | Gandolfi, Davide (Macalester College, Minnesota); Halliday, Timothy J. (University of Hawaii at Manoa); Robertson, Raymond (Macalester College, Minnesota) |
| Abstract: | Large wage differences between countries ("place premiums") are well documented. Theory suggests that factor price convergence should follow increased migration, capital flows, and commercial integration. All three have increased between the United States and Mexico over the last 25 years. This paper evaluates the degree of wage convergence between these countries during the period 1988 and 2011. We match survey and census data from Mexico and the United States to estimate the change in wage differentials for observationally identical workers over time. We find very little evidence of convergence. What evidence we do find is most likely due to factors unrelated to US-Mexico integration. While migration, trade, and FDI may reduce the US-Mexico wage differential, these effects are small when compared to the overall wage gap. |
| Keywords: | migration, labor-market integration, factor price equalization |
| JEL: | F15 F16 J31 F22 |
| Date: | 2015–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9215&r=mig |
| By: | David Reichel (EUROPEAN UNION AGENCY FOR FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS); Melissa Siegel (MAASTRICHT UNIVERSITY); Juan Carlos Andreo Tudela (Universidad Pablo de Olavide) |
| Abstract: | This report shows the role played by Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in supporting the employability and integration of immigrants in Europe in three European countries, framed in their migration history, migration policies, integration policy and levels of integration of migrants in the country. This study complements the findings obtained in the report entitled "ICT for the employability and integration of immigrants in the European Union: Results from a survey in three Member States". The research found that age, education, employment status and type of occupation are drivers of digital inequalities; ICTs constitute an important resource for employability and integration of immigrants in the three countries, and specific groups of immigrants such as older and less educated are isolated from the digital world, and that immigrants they are not making more advanced uses of ICTs. Policy strategies go toward increasing access and the digital literacy of isolated groups and in particular for newly arrived migrants, as to provide on-line access to relevant information and on-line services for migrants through user friendly multi-lingual websites. |
| Keywords: | Digital single market, connected, immigrants, skills, employability, digital, competences, migration, integration, e-inclusion, digital agenda, information and communication technologies |
| JEL: | I00 I18 |
| Date: | 2015–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipt:iptwpa:jrc93966&r=mig |
| By: | Francisco Lupiañez (Open Evidence); Cristiano Codagnone (Open Evidence); Rosa Dalet (Block de ideas) |
| Abstract: | This report presents the findings of a survey on the role played by Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in supporting the employability and integration of immigrants in Europe. 1,500 immigrants in 3 Member States (Bulgaria, the Netherlands, and Spain) were interviewed face-to-face from the end of 2012 to mid-2013 to identify their ICT skills, access and usage, with the aim to identify the role of ICT for their employability and integration in the host country and comparing connected and non-connected migrants. The statistical analysis carried out in this survey revealed that migrants differed in ICT usage, employability and integration in the 3 countries surveyed. Moreover, age, education, employment status, and type of occupation were clear sources of digital inequalities. The findings point to the implications for policies that aim to take advantage of the potential offered by immigration in the European Union, such as digital inclusion policies address specific groups of migrants (older and unemployed), supporting public libraries and other forms of public access, promoting digital skills, and migrant integration policies to raise awareness about how the Internet can help migrants to become more actively engaged in society. |
| Keywords: | Digital single market, connected, immigrants, skills, employability, digital, competences, migration, integration, e-inclusion, digital agenda, information and communication technologies |
| JEL: | I00 I18 |
| Date: | 2015–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipt:iptwpa:jrc93960&r=mig |
| By: | Eva Moreno-Galbis (GAINS - Groupe d'Analyse des Itinéraires et des Niveaux Salariaux - UM - Université du Maine, TEPP - Travail, Emploi et Politiques Publiques - UPEM - Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée - CNRS, Granem - Groupe de Recherche ANgevin en Economie et Management - UA - Université d'Angers - Agrocampus Ouest - Institut National de l'Horticulture et du Paysage); Ahmed Tritah (TEPP - Travail, Emploi et Politiques Publiques - UPEM - Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée - CNRS, GAINS - Groupe d'Analyse des Itinéraires et des Niveaux Salariaux - UM - Université du Maine) |
| Abstract: | Immigrants are new comers in a labor market. As a consequence, they lack of social networks and other country specific and not directly productive valuable assets affecting their relative bargaining position against employers. We introduce this simple observation into a matching model of the labor market and show that immigrants increase employment prospects of competing natives. To test the predictions of our model, we exploit yearly vari- ations between 1998 and 2004 in the share of immigrants within occupations of 12 European countries. We identify the causal impact of immigrants on natives’ employment rate using an instrumental variable strategy based on historical settlement patterns across host countries and occupations by origin countries. We find that natives’ employment rate increases in oc- cupations and sectors receiving more immigrants. Moreover, we highlight the heterogeneity of this impact across groups of immigrants and host countries along dimensions that affect immigrants-natives relative reservation wages. |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-01100269&r=mig |