nep-mig New Economics Papers
on Economics of Human Migration
Issue of 2017‒08‒27
twelve papers chosen by
Yuji Tamura
La Trobe University

  1. Impact of the Syrian Refugee Influx on Turkish Native Workers: An Ethnic Enclave Approach By Bagir, Yusuf
  2. Labour Force Participation and Employment of Humanitarian Migrants: Evidence from the Building a New Life in Australia Longitudinal Data By Cheng, Zhiming; Wang, Ben Zhe; Taksa, Lucy
  3. High skilled emigration and human capital: A theoretical and empirical essay for the case of Middle-Income Countries By Kouni, Mohamed
  4. Medical Brain Drain and Life Expectancy: A Comparative Analysis between Arab, American and Asian Countries By Kouni, Mohamed
  5. Goods and Factor Market Integration: A Quantitative Assessment of the EU Enlargement By Lorenzo Caliendo; Luca David Opromolla; Fernando Parro; Alessandro Sforza
  6. Long-term Social, Economic and Fiscal Effects of Immigration into the EU: The Role of the Integration Policy By d'Artis, Kancs; Patrizio, Lecca
  7. Look Who’s Talking: On the Heterogeneous Returns to Foreign Language Use at Work among Natives and Migrants in Europe By Wang, Zhiling; de Graaff, Thomas; Nijkamp, Peter
  8. International Migration in Ireland, 2016 By Philip J. O'Connell
  9. The Share of Foreigners in One's Occupation and Attitudes towards Foreigners By Marco Pecoraro; Didier Ruedin
  10. Divided We Stand: Immigration Attitudes, Identity, and Subjective Well-Being By Heinz Welsch; Jan Kuehling
  11. How Distributional Conflict over Public Spending Drives Support for Anti-Immigrant Parties By Cavaille, Charlotte; Ferwerda, Jeremy
  12. Migration-Induced Redistribution with and without Migrant's Voting By Assaf Razin; Efraim Sadka

  1. By: Bagir, Yusuf
    Abstract: Turkey received about 2.7 million refugees between 2011 and 2015. This paper examines the causal relationship between the Syrian refugee induced increase in labor supply and natives’ labor market outcomes in Turkey using the micro level Household Labor Force Surveys. The migration impact is analyzed in two distinct categories considering the motives behind the migration decision. The initial migration to the border regions is assumed to be completely exogenous and defined as the primary migration. Hence, a standard difference in differences strategy is employed to estimate the labor market impacts in those regions. On the other hand, migration from the primary regions towards the inner regions in Turkey (secondary migration) has suffered from the endogenous selection issues. To handle these concerns, I developed an instrumental variables estimation method following David Card (2009)’s ethnic enclave approach. I found statistically significant negative employment and wage effects on the low-skilled and less-experienced individuals in the primary migration analysis. The decline in the wages of informal workers is the main contributor of the negative wage effects. Secondary migration has no impact on the employment at all but there are statistically significant negative wage effects on the low-skilled and less-experienced workers.
    Keywords: Syrian Refugees, Turkey, Labor Economics, İnternational Economics, Migration Economics
    JEL: J1 J10 J2 J3 J6 J61
    Date: 2017–08–15
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:80803&r=mig
  2. By: Cheng, Zhiming; Wang, Ben Zhe; Taksa, Lucy
    Abstract: This study uses the longitudinal data from the Building a New Life in Australia survey to examine the relationships between human capital and labour market participation and employment status among recently arrived/approved humanitarian migrants. It includes attention to the heterogeneity of labour force participation and employment status across genders and also migration pathways. We find that the likelihood of participating in the labour force is higher for those who had preimmigration paid job experience, completed study/job training and have job searching knowledge/skills in Australia and possess higher proficiency in spoken English. We find that the chance of getting a paid job is negatively related to having better pre-immigration education, but it is positively related to having unpaid work experience and job searching skills in Australia, and better health.
    Keywords: Australia,humanitarian migrant,human capital,labour force participation,employment status
    JEL: J15 J21 J24
    Date: 2017
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:106&r=mig
  3. By: Kouni, Mohamed
    Abstract: The aim of this paper is to investigate the effect of high-skilled emigration on human capital investment in some middle-. Hence, we extend the Solow model by taking into account the net effect of high-skilled emigration. The theoretical result showed that if the ratio of the emigrant human capital on the resident human capital is inferior to critical level, and in the case of strong selectivity adopted, the high skilled emigration can generate an important quantitative brain gain as well as the possibility of qualitative brain gain. At the empirical level, new approximations are proposed. Then, based on these approximations a beta convergence model is re-estimated. The results showed that the emigration prospects have a positive and highly significant effect. The elasticity of the human capital investment with respect to emigration prospects varies from about 1.7% to about 2%.
    Keywords: Brain drain, human capital, development, instrumental variables-GMM method
    JEL: F22 J24 O15
    Date: 2016
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:78320&r=mig
  4. By: Kouni, Mohamed
    Abstract: Purpose: In this paper we use the most recent database on medical brain drain (estimated by Bhargava, Docquier and Moullon in 2010) in order to analyze the consequences ofincreasing medical migration flowson human development, in particular on life expectancy in three developing country groups. Methodology: Our aim is to study the quantitative and qualitative effect of medical brain drain (MBD) on life expectancy in the Arab, Asian and American countries. Findings: The results showed that the MBD has an important and significant quantitative effect on life expectancy in Arab and Asian countries. Indeed, the elasticity of life expectancy with respect (1+MBD) is positive and significant at 1% level in all regressions for the two groups. Nevertheless, this relationship is not clear for central and Latin American countries where elasticity is not significant in two among three regressions. Moreover, the qualitative MBD effect is negative for all countries in the three groups. Recommendations: Therefore, there is a need for the majority of these countries to change both their labor and emigration policies. This can be achieved by a veritable incentive policy and by reinforcing networks between emigrant physicians and their origin society.
    Keywords: Brain Drain, Human Capital, Development
    JEL: F22 J24 O15
    Date: 2016
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:78321&r=mig
  5. By: Lorenzo Caliendo; Luca David Opromolla; Fernando Parro; Alessandro Sforza
    Abstract: The economic effects from labor market integration are crucially affected by the extent to which countries are open to trade. In this paper we build a multi-country dynamic general equilibrium model with trade in goods and labor mobility across countries to study and quantify the economic effects of trade and labor market integration. In our model trade is costly and features households of different skills and nationalities facing costly forward-looking relocation decisions. We use the EU Labour Force Survey to construct migration flows by skill and nationality across 17 countries for the period 2002-2007. We then exploit the timing variation of the 2004 EU enlargement to estimate the elasticity of migration flows to labor mobility costs, and to identify the change in labor mobility costs associated to the actual change in policy. We apply our model and use these estimates, as well as the observed changes in tariffs, to quantify the effects from the EU enlargement. We find that new member state countries are the largest winners from the EU enlargement, and in particular unskilled labor. We find smaller welfare gains for EU-15 countries. However, in the absence of changes to trade policy, the EU-15 would have been worse off after the enlargement. We study even further the interaction effects between trade and migration policies and the role of different mechanisms in shaping our results. Our results highlight the importance of trade for the quantification of the welfare and migration effects from labor market integration.
    JEL: F1 F13 F16 F22
    Date: 2017–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23695&r=mig
  6. By: d'Artis, Kancs (European Commission – JRC); Patrizio, Lecca (European Commission – JRC)
    Abstract: The issues of the forced migration and integration of refugees in the EU society and labour markets are high on the policy agenda. Apart from humanitarian aspects, a sustainable integration of accepted refugees is important also for social, economic, budgetary and other reasons. Although, the potential consequences of the refugee acceptance are being often discussed, little scientific evidence has been provided for the policy debate so far in the context of the current refugee crisis. The present study attempts to shed light on the long-run social, economic and budgetary effects of the rapidly increasing forced immigration into the EU by performing a scenario analysis of alternative refugee integration scenarios. Our simulation results suggest that, although the refugee integration (e.g. by the providing language and professional training) is costly for the public budget, in the medium- to long-run, the social, economic and fiscal benefits may significantly outweigh the short-run refugee integration costs. Depending on the integration policy scenario and policy financing method, the annual long-run GDP effect would be 0.2% to 1.4% above the baseline growth, and the full repayment of the integration policy investment (positive net present value) would be achieved after 9 to 19 years.
    Date: 2017–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jrs:wpaper:201704&r=mig
  7. By: Wang, Zhiling; de Graaff, Thomas; Nijkamp, Peter
    Abstract: We examine the heterogeneous impacts of foreign language use at work on earnings of both native-born workers and foreign-born workers, using a longitudinal survey, viz. the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) running from 1994 to 2001. Our findings are the following. First, for native-born workers with a tertiary diploma, using a foreign language at work is found to have an unambiguously positive impact on their earnings (2% on average). Second, for foreign-born workers, returns to foreign language use at work is highly complementary to education. Foreign language users below the upper secondary educational level earn significantly less (¡8%) than those who use the local language at work. Third, with regard to language types, a linguistically distant foreign language gives native-born workers the highest wage premium, while the use of EU official languages pays off the most for foreign-born workers. Fourth, our results do not show evidence that the lack of local language knowledge of low-educated migrants causes these results, as immigrants for whom themother tongue is similar to the local language show a similar pattern.
    Keywords: foreign language at work,earnings,native-born,foreign-born
    JEL: J24 J31 J61
    Date: 2017
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:104&r=mig
  8. By: Philip J. O'Connell (UCD Geary Institute for Public Policy)
    Abstract: This working paper is the Irish report to the OECD Expert Group on Migration. As such, the focus of the report is largely shaped by the reporting requirements for the preparation of the annual OECD International Migration Outlook. The purpose of the paper is to outline major developments and trends in migration and integration data and policy. The principal reference year is 2015, although information relating to early-2016 is included where available and relevant. The Executive Summary provides an overview of the main findings of the report. Section 2 discusses the main developments in migration and integration policy in Ireland in 2015, including topics related to migration in the public debate. Section 3 discusses the statistics on inward and outward migration movements. Section 4 examines trends in the population. Migration and the labour market are discussed in Section 5. Section 6 describes developmetns in relation to forced and voluntary return.
    Date: 2017–08–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucd:wpaper:201707&r=mig
  9. By: Marco Pecoraro; Didier Ruedin
    Abstract: This paper examines the relationship between attitudes towards foreigners and the share of foreigners at the occupational level. Using a question on equal opportunities for foreigners from the Swiss House-hold Panel, ordered probit regressions with standard controls show that: (a) there is a negative association between the share of foreigners in one's occupation and positive attitudes towards foreigners; (b) there is a positive association between the share of recently arrived foreigners and positives attitudes towards foreigners. This suggests that workers are at the same time wary of competition with foreigners, and welcome their contribution to overcome labour shortages. Adding the occupational unemployment rate to the model indicates that objective competition may be as relevant as perceptions of competition. Controlling for other occupational characteristics establishes that the associations in (a) and (b) are probably caused by sorting on job quality. All results are robust to the potential endogeneity of the share of foreigners at the occupational level.
    Keywords: Immigration, attitudes towards foreigners, labour market, occupational classication, ethnic concentration, unemployment, instrumental variables
    JEL: F22 J24 J61
    Date: 2017–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:irn:wpaper:17-06&r=mig
  10. By: Heinz Welsch (University of Oldenburg, Department of Economics); Jan Kuehling (University of Oldenburg, Department of Economics A)
    Abstract: : Immigration is a crucial issue in contemporary politics, and attitudes towards immigration are highly dispersed in many countries. We treat individuals’ immigration friendliness (IF) as a feature of their self-image or identity and hypothesize that, similar to other pro-social self-images, greater immigration friendliness is associated with greater subjective well-being (SWB). We further hypothesize that greater disparity of immigration attitudes yields social antagonism and as such is associated with less SWB. Finally, we hypothesize that greater disparity of immigration attitudes permits immigration-friendly individuals to differentiate themselves from others, thus raising the SWB benefit of holding an immigration-friendly self- image. Using 225,356 observations from 35 European countries, 2002-2015, we find evidence consistent with the hypotheses stated above. A 1-standard-deviation (SD) increase in IF is associated with an increase in 11-point life satisfaction (LS) by 0.15 to 0.32 points, whereas a 1-SD increase in attitude disparity is associated with a decrease in LS by 0.05 to 0.11 points.
    Keywords: immigration; attitudes; identity; antagonism; social conflict; subjective well-being
    Date: 2017–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:old:dpaper:401&r=mig
  11. By: Cavaille, Charlotte (Georgetown University); Ferwerda, Jeremy (Dartmouth College)
    Abstract: To what extent does immigration drive support for anti-immigrant populist parties and candidates? Previous research has hypothesized the existence of a welfare channel, in which individuals exposed to the potential fiscal costs of immigration, in the form of higher taxes and lower benefits, will be more supportive of anti-immigration parties. But evidence in support of this argument is scant. This paper builds on existing work in two ways. Theoretically, we distinguish between the cash and the in-kind components of public transfers, and argue that the latter are especially prone to generating distributional conflicts. Empirically, we leverage an EU legal directive that resulted in an exogenous increase in the intensity of competition between immigrants and natives over public housing in Austria. Our findings indicate that support for anti-immigrant parties is highly responsive to perceived scarcity resulting from immigrant receipt of in-kind benefits. More broadly, the findings suggest that the confluence of austerity measures and free movement in the EU may explain the far-right’s recent electoral gains beyond its historic voting bloc.
    Keywords: JEL Classification:
    Date: 2017
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cge:wacage:328&r=mig
  12. By: Assaf Razin; Efraim Sadka
    Abstract: We are motivated by the unique migration experience of Israel of a supply-side shock triggering skilled immigration and the concurrent decline in welfare-state redistribution. This paper develops a model, which can provide an explanation for the mechanism through which a supply-side shock triggering high-skill migration can also reshape the political-economy balance and the redistributive policies. The paper highlights the differences in the political-economy induced redistribution policies between the cases in which migrants participate in the electoral system and the case where they do not. When migrants are allowed to vote, and they take advantage of this right, then, following the shock, all income groups gain, except low skilled immigrants who lose. When migrants are not allowed to vote, or choose not to participate in elections, all income groups gain, except the skilled migrants who lose.
    JEL: F22 H0
    Date: 2017–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23713&r=mig

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