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on Economics of Human Migration |
| By: | Konrad B. Burchardi; Thomas Chaney; Tarek A. Hassan |
| Abstract: | We use 130 years of data on historical migrations to the United States to show a causal effect of the ancestry composition of US counties on foreign direct investment (FDI) sent and received by local firms. To isolate the causal effect of ancestry on FDI, we build a simple reduced-form model of migrations: migrations from a foreign country to a US county at a given time depend on (i) a push factor, causing emigration from that foreign country to the entire United States, and (ii) a pull factor, causing immigration from all origins into that US county. The interaction between time-series variation in country-specific push factors and county-specific pull factors generates quasi-random variation in the allocation of migrants across US counties. We find that a doubling of the number of residents with ancestry from a given foreign country relative to the mean increases by 4.2 percentage points the probability that at least one local firm invests in that country, and increases by 31% the number of employees at domestic recipients of FDI from that country. The size of these effects increases with the ethnic diversity of the local population, the geographic distance to the origin country, and the ethno-linguistic fractionalization of the origin country. |
| JEL: | F21 G15 J61 L14 N3 O11 |
| Date: | 2016–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:21847&r=mig |
| By: | Jahn, Vera (Helmut Schmidt University, Hamburg); Steinhardt, Max Friedrich (Helmut Schmidt University, Hamburg) |
| Abstract: | The paper examines the impact of immigration on innovation. We exploit an immigrant placement policy which took place during the early nineties in Germany when large numbers of so called ethnic Germans entered the country. This allows us to overcome the potential bias of endogenous location decisions and to estimate how regional inflows of ethnic Germans affected patent applications over time. Although the majority of ethnic German inflows was unskilled, we do not find any evidence of a negative impact on innovations. Instead, our panel estimates suggest that immigration had no or even a positive impact on innovations. |
| Keywords: | Innovation; Immigration; Ethnic Germans; Quasi-experimental setting |
| JEL: | F22 O32 R11 |
| Date: | 2016–02–29 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:vhsuwp:2016_164&r=mig |
| By: | Pierre Azoulay; Ina Ganguli; Joshua S. Graff Zivin |
| Abstract: | As scientists’ careers unfold, mobility can allow researchers to find environments where they are more productive and more effectively contribute to the generation of new knowledge. In this paper, we examine the determinants of mobility of elite academics within the life sciences, including individual productivity measures and for the first time, measures of the peer environment and family factors. Using a unique data set compiled from the career histories of 10,004 elite life scientists in the U.S., we paint a nuanced picture of mobility. Prolific scientists are more likely to move, but this impulse is constrained by recent NIH funding. The quality of peer environments both near and far is an additional factor that influences mobility decisions. Interestingly, we also identify a significant role for family structure. Scientists appear to be unwilling to move when their children are between the ages of 14-17, which is when US children are typically enrolled in middle school or high school. This suggests that even elite scientists find it costly to disrupt the social networks of their children and take these costs into account when making career decisions. |
| JEL: | J12 J62 O31 |
| Date: | 2016–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:21995&r=mig |
| By: | Imbert , Clément (Department of Economics, University of Warwick) |
| Abstract: | This paper provides some of the first evidence that rural development policies can have fundamental effects on the reallocation of labor between rural and urban areas. It studies the spillover effects of the world's largest rural workfare program, India's rural employment guarantee. We find that the workfare program has substantial con¬sequences: it reduces short-term (or seasonal) migration to urban areas by 9% and increases wages for manual, short-term work in urban areas by 6%. The implied elas¬ticity of unskilled wages with respect to short-term migration is high (-0.7). |
| Keywords: | internal migration, workfare programs, spillover effects, india |
| JEL: | O15 J61 R23 H53 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wrk:warwec:1116&r=mig |
| By: | Armenak Antinyan; Luca Corazzini |
| Abstract: | This paper empirically investigates the relationship between households’ relative deprivation and the intentions of their members to temporarily migrate abroad in three transition economies of the South Caucasus: Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. Controlling for households’ absolute income and other relevant subjective dimensions, we illustrate that households’ relative position vis-à-vis their reference groups plays an important role in determining the intentions of their members to migrate abroad. Particularly, individuals are more willing to engage in temporary emigration, if they perceive themselves to be poorer than the reference group. |
| Date: | 2016–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:liu:liucec:293&r=mig |
| By: | Labanca, Claudio |
| Keywords: | Social and Behavioral Sciences |
| Date: | 2016–03–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:ucsdec:qt1fz17847&r=mig |
| By: | Emanuele Bracco; Luisanna Onnis |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the effects of immigration and immigration amnesties on the shadow economy. We find a robust and positive relationship between the presence of immigrants and the unobserved economic activity at the local level, but the implementation of a large immigration amnesty substantially weakens this link. Our analysis exploits newly compiled datasets of Italian immigration and shadow economy estimates for the years 1995-2006, comprising a panel of local-level aggregate statistical information, and a micro-level survey of representative households. We exploit the discontinuity created by the 2002 immigration amnesty, which increased the stock of migrants by almost 50%. |
| Keywords: | Shadow Economy, immigration, Immigration policies, Amnesties |
| JEL: | H26 J61 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lan:wpaper:108263550&r=mig |
| By: | Mevlude Akbulut-Yuksel; Adriana D. Kugler |
| Abstract: | It is well known that a substantial part of income and education is passed on from parents to children, generating substantial persistence in socio-economic status across generations. In this paper, we examine whether another form of human capital, health, is also largely transmitted from generation to generation, contributing to limited socio-economic mobility. Using data from the NLSY, we first present new evidence on intergenerational transmission of health outcomes in the U.S., including weight, height, the body mass index (BMI), asthma and depression for both natives and immigrants. We show that both native and immigrant children inherit a prominent fraction of their health status from their parents, and that, on average, immigrants experience higher persistence than natives in weight and BMI. We also find that mothers’ education decreases children’s weight and BMI for natives, while single motherhood increases weight and BMI for both native and immigrant children. Finally, we find that the longer immigrants remain in the U.S., the less intergenerational persistence there is and the more immigrants look like native children. Unfortunately, the more generations immigrant families remain in the U.S., the more children of immigrants resemble natives’ higher weights, higher BMI and increased propensity to suffer from asthma. |
| JEL: | I12 I14 J61 J62 |
| Date: | 2016–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:21987&r=mig |
| By: | Laura Ansala (Aalto University); Ulla Hämäläinen (Ministry of Finance); Matti Sarvimäki (Aalto University and VATT) |
| Abstract: | We document large differences in educational attainment, criminal sentences and use of psychotropic medication between the children of immigrants and natives living in Finland. Among the offspring of immigrants from the OECD countries and the former Soviet Union, the disadvantage in education reverses and differences in criminal sentences disappear once we condition on parental income and location of residence. In contrast, large gaps remain for the children of immigrants from other regions, even conditional on background characteristics. Furthermore, the children of immigrants from all source areas are substantially less likely to use psychotropic medication than the offspring of natives despite their higher self-reported mental health problems. These results suggest that institutions designed to help disadvantaged natives do not fully reach the children of immigrants. |
| Keywords: | children of immigrants, second-generation immigrants, education, crime, health |
| JEL: | I14 I21 J15 |
| Date: | 2016–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:1606&r=mig |
| By: | Anna Maria Mayda; Giovanni Peri; Walter Steingress |
| Abstract: | We empirically analyze the impact of immigration to the U.S. on the share of votes to the Republicans and Democrats between 1994 and 2012. Our analysis is based on variation across states and years – using data from the Current Population Survey merged with election data – and addresses the endogeneity of immigrant flows using a novel set of instruments. On average across election types, immigration to the U.S. has a significant and negative impact on the Republican vote share, consistent with the typical view of political analysts in the U.S. This average effect – which is driven by elections in the House – works through two main channels. The impact of immigration on Republican votes in the House is negative when the share of naturalized migrants in the voting population increases. Yet, it can be positive when the share of non-citizen migrants out of the population goes up and the size of migration makes it a salient policy issue in voters' minds. These results are consistent with naturalized migrants being less likely to vote for the Republican party than native voters and with native voters' political preferences moving towards the Republican party because of high immigration of non-citizens. This second effect, however, is significant only for very high levels of immigrant presence. |
| JEL: | F22 |
| Date: | 2016–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:21941&r=mig |
| By: | Matija Kovacic (Department of Economics, University Of Venice Cà Foscari); Cristina Orso (Department of Economics, University Of Venice Cà Foscari) |
| Abstract: | In this paper we show that the individuals' perception of immigration is shake by their cultural and social characteristics. In order to account for cultural differences in a broader sense, we rely on linguistic relativity theory according to which linguistic differences in grammatical structure may induce speakers of different languages to conceptualize and experience the world differently (Sapir (1921), Whorf and Carroll (1964)). Linguistic variation is measured by means of a specific linguistic marker developed in Kovacic et al. (2015) based on the number of grammatical categories (moods)concerned with the expression of uncertainty. We show that more intensive users of these specific grammatical forms are signficantly more intolerant toward immigration with respect to other identical individuals speaking a different language/s. In line with Kovacic et al. (2015), this result can be interpreted as a direct consequence of individual unobserved general attitude towards uncertainty reflected by the specific linguistic marker used to measure the degree of linguistic variation. The results are robust to the inclusion of additional set of explanatory and control variables, country and year fixed effects, and alternative estimation methods. |
| Keywords: | Immigration, Tolerance, Uncertainty, Integration, Culture, Language |
| JEL: | D80 Z13 J15 D83 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ven:wpaper:2016:05&r=mig |
| By: | Laetitia Duval (Imperial College London - Imperial College London); François-Charles Wolff (UN - Université de Nantes, INED - Institut national d'études démographiques) |
| Abstract: | The Roma constitute the largest, poorest and youngest ethnic minority group in Europe. Over the last few years, they have attracted unprecedented attention with the fear of massive waves of emigrants to Western European countries. Using unique comparative data from 12 Central and SouthEast European countries, we study the pattern and determinants of Roma emigration intentions. We find that plans to go abroad are more frequent among Roma compared to non-Roma, but the ethnic gap in emigration intentions is not explained by the more disadvantaged characteristics of Roma compared to non-Roma. Among the Roma population, potential emigrants are more educated and wealthier on average. Finally, ethnic discrimination is a very influential factor that explains the intentions to emigrate within the Roma population. |
| Keywords: | Emigration intention,Roma,ethnic discrimination,Central and South-East Europe |
| Date: | 2016–02–29 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-01280578&r=mig |
| By: | Thomas Kemper (Bergische Universität Wuppertal, WIB – Wuppertaler Institut für bildungsökonomische Forschung) |
| Abstract: | The paper provides information on the status of the collection of migrational data in official school statistics of the federal states in Germany. Based on this, the proportion of students without a German citizenship as well as students with migration background will be presented and differentiated by the specific definition of migration background in the federal states. Furthermore, the validity and comparability of the definitions will be discussed as well as the merging of the federal school statistics into a national school statistic. Based on the available migration attributes the educational participation of students with migration background will be analyzed – with a special focus on the attendance of secondary schools. |
| Keywords: | migration, migration background, educational participation, school statistics |
| JEL: | I20 I21 I28 |
| Date: | 2016–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bwu:schdps:sdp16001&r=mig |