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on Economics of Human Migration |
| By: | Lewis, John (Bank of England); Swannell, Matt (Bank of England) |
| Abstract: | We estimate a gravity model of the determinants of migration flows using pairwise data from around 160 origin countries to 35 advanced economy destinations over the period 1990–2013. When we interact the various explanatory variables with freedom of movement we find that the elasticities of migration with respect to macroeconomic variables are not constant across country pairs. Under freedom of movement, the response to macroeconomic variables is stronger, and the response to distance and historical migrant stocks is weaker. However, the elasticity with regard to linguistic and historical variables does remain constant. Alongside macro variables commonly used in the literature, we also find a significant role for expected GDP growth. Migration flows are higher to destinations with stronger expected GDP growth, and from origins with weaker expected GDP growth. In addition, greater labour market flexibility in destination countries is associated with higher inward migration. |
| Keywords: | Migration; macroeconomics; common correlated effects; multilateral resistance |
| JEL: | C23 E00 F22 |
| Date: | 2018–05–25 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:boe:boeewp:0729&r=mig |
| By: | Carlana, Michela (Bocconi University); Tabellini, Marco (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we study the effects of immigration on natives' marriage, fertility, and family formation across US cities between 1910 and 1930. Instrumenting immigrants' location decision by interacting pre-existing ethnic settlements with aggregate migration flows, we find that immigration raised marriage rates, the probability of having children, and the propensity to leave the parental house for young native men and women. We show that these effects were driven by the large and positive impact of immigration on native men's employment and occupational standing, which increased the supply of "marriageable men". We also explore alternative mechanisms − changes in sex ratios, natives' cultural responses, and displacement effects of immigrants on female employment − and provide evidence that none of them can account for a quantitatively relevant fraction of our results. |
| Keywords: | immigration, marriage, fertility, employment |
| JEL: | J12 J13 J61 N32 |
| Date: | 2018–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp11467&r=mig |
| By: | María Camou (Programa de Historia Económica y Social, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de la República) |
| Abstract: | The aim in this research is to analyse the impact of institutions such as the family for a better comprehension of the status of women in the formation of Uruguayan society. Uruguay was a country with a large contingent of European immigrants who came mainly from Spain, followed by Italy. Although these two countries are not representative of the Western European Marriage Pattern, it will be argued that the immigration process caused a disruption of the original family patterns and led to more unstructured family formation and to weaker family ties and greater predominance of the nuclear family. Weaker family ties characterized by more egalitarian gender and intergenerational relations are supposed to allow for women to take on a less traditional role and stimulate higher female labour force participation. Our results show that the effects of migration cannot only be derived from the specific demographic, cultural and human capital profile of the immigrants, but also indirectly from the consequences of their decision to immigrate in their life courses and labour options. |
| Keywords: | Uruguay, Family Structure, Labour, Gender, Immigration |
| JEL: | N36 B54 J21 J12 N96 |
| Date: | 2018–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ude:doctra:50&r=mig |
| By: | Knauth, Florian; Wrona, Jens |
| Abstract: | We present supportive empirical evidence and a new theoretical explanation for the negative selection into planned return migration between similar regions in Germany. In our model costly temporary and permanent migration are used as imperfect signals to indicate workers' high but otherwise unobservable skills. Production thereby takes place in teams with individual skills as strategic complements. Wages therefore are determined by team performance and not by individual skill, which is why migration inflicts a wage loss on all workers, who expect the quality of their co-workers to decline. In order to internalise this negative migration externality, which leads to sub-optimally high levels of temporary and permanent migration in a laissez-faire equilibrium, we propose a mix of two policy instruments, which reduce initial outmigration while at the same time inducing later return migration. |
| Keywords: | return migration,signalling,selection,strategic complementarity |
| JEL: | R23 J61 D82 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:dicedp:290&r=mig |
| By: | David R. Agrawal; Dirk Foremny |
| Abstract: | A recent Spanish tax reform granted regions the authority to set income tax rates, resulting in substantial tax differentials. We use individual-level information from Social Security records over a period of one decade. Conditional on moving, taxes have a significant effect on location choice. A one percent increase in the net of tax rate for a region relative to others increases the probability of moving to that region by 1.7 percentage points. Focusing on the stock of top-taxpayers, we estimate an elasticity of the number of top taxpayers with respect to net-of-tax rates of 0.85. Using this elasticity, a theoretical model implies that the mechanical increase in tax revenue due to higher tax rates is larger than the loss in tax revenue from the out-ow of migration. |
| Keywords: | migration, taxes, mobility, rich, fiscal decentralization |
| JEL: | H24 H31 H73 J61 R23 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_7027&r=mig |
| By: | Zorlu, Aslan (University of Amsterdam); Hartog, Joop (University of Amsterdam) |
| Abstract: | This study examines the causal effects of Dutch language proficiency of immigrants from four main source countries on their labour market and social integration outcomes. Language proficiency appears ranked according to linguistic distance to The Netherlands, a ranking that even holds for the gender gap in proficiency. We assess the effect of language proficiency on two objective indicators of integration (employment and income) and two subjective measures (feeling Dutch and feeling integrated). The analysis shows that endogeneity of language skills masks a substantial part of language effects. Once accounted for endogeneity, effects of Dutch language proficiency on social and economic integration of immigrants are more than double the estimates ignoring endogeneity. |
| Keywords: | language skills, immigrants, integration, treatment effects |
| JEL: | J15 |
| Date: | 2018–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp11485&r=mig |
| By: | Wukuang Cun; M. Hashem Pesaran |
| Abstract: | This paper develops a dynamic spatial equilibrium model of regional housing markets in which house prices are jointly determined with migration flows. Agents optimize period-by-period and decide whether to remain where they are or migrate to a new location at the start of each period. The gain from migration depends on the differences in incomes, housing and migration costs. The agent’s optimal location choice and the resultant migration process is shown to be Markovian with the transition probabilities across all location pairs given as non-linear functions of income and housing cost differentials, which are endogenously determined. On the supply side, in each location the construction firms build new houses by combing land and residential structures. The regional land supplies are exogenously given. When a tightening of regional land-use regulation reduces local housing supply, upward pressure on house prices created by excess housing demand cascades to other locations via migration. It is shown that the deterministic version of the model has a unique equilibrium and a unique balanced growth path. We estimate the state-level supplies of new residential land from the model using housing market and urban land acreage data. These estimates are shown to be significantly negatively correlated with the Wharton Residential Land Use Regulatory Index. The model can simultaneously account for the rise in house price dispersion and the interstate migration in the U.S. during the period 1976-2014. Counterfactual simulations suggest that reducing either land supply differentials or migration costs could significantly lower house price dispersion. The model predicts substantially smaller impacts of land-use deregulation on population reallocation as compared to recent existing models of housing and migration that assume population are perfectly mobile. |
| Keywords: | house price dispersion, endogenous location choice, interstate migration, land-use restriction, spatial equilibrium |
| JEL: | E00 R23 R31 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_7007&r=mig |
| By: | Larkin, Matthew P. (Deakin University); Askarov, Zohid (Deakin University); Doucouliagos, Chris (Deakin University); Dubelaar, Chris (Deakin University); Klona, Maria (Deakin University); Newton, Joshua (Deakin University); Stanley, T. D. (Deakin University); Vocino, Andrea (Deakin University) |
| Abstract: | The sharp rise in international migration is a pressing social and economic issue, as seen in the recent global trend towards nationalism. One major concern is the impact of immigration on housing. We assemble a comprehensive database of 474 estimates of immigration's impact on house prices in 14 destination countries and find that immigration increases house prices, on average. However, attitudes to immigrants moderate this effect. In countries less welcoming to immigrants, house price increases are more limited. |
| Keywords: | immigration, house prices, attitudes, meta-regression |
| JEL: | F22 R31 |
| Date: | 2018–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp11497&r=mig |
| By: | Olney, William W. (Williams College); Pozzoli, Dario (Copenhagen Business School) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the relationship between immigration and offshoring by examining whether an influx of foreign workers reduces the need for firms to relocate jobs abroad. We exploit a Danish quasi-natural experiment in which immigrants were randomly allocated to municipalities using a refugee dispersal policy and we use the Danish employer-employee matched data set covering the universe of workers and firms over the period 1995-2011. Our findings show that an exogenous influx of immigrants into a municipality reduces firm-level offshoring at both the extensive and intensive margins. The fact that immigration and offshoring are substitutes has important policy implications, since restrictions on one may encourage the other. While the multilateral relationship is negative, a subsequent bilateral analysis shows that immigrants have connections in their country of origin that increase the likelihood that firms offshore to that particular foreign country. |
| Keywords: | immigration, offshoring |
| JEL: | F22 F16 J61 F23 |
| Date: | 2018–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp11480&r=mig |
| By: | Costanza Biavaschi (Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and IZA); Michal Burzynski (University of Luxembourg); Benjamin Elsner (University College Dublin, IZA and CReAM); Joël Machado (Luxembourg Institute for Socio-Economic Research (LISER)) |
| Abstract: | Global migration is heavily skill-biased, with tertiary-educated workers being four times more likely to migrate than workers with a lower education. In this paper, we quantify the global impact of this skill bias in migration. Based on a quantitative multi-country model with trade, we compare the current world to a counterfactual with the same number of migrants, where all migrants are neutrally selected from their countries of origin. We find that most receiving countries benefit from the skill bias in migration, while a small number of sending countries is significantly worse off. The negative effect in many sending countries is completely eliminated — and often reversed — once we account for remittances and additional migration-related externalities. In a model with all our extensions, the average welfare effect of skill-biased migration in both OECD and non-OECD countries is positive. |
| Keywords: | migration, skill selection, global welfare |
| JEL: | F22 O15 J61 |
| Date: | 2018–05–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucd:wpaper:201810&r=mig |
| By: | Philip J O'Connell (University College Dublin) |
| 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 2016, although information relating to early-2017 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 2016, including topics related to migration in the public debate. Section 4 discusses the statistics on inward and outward migration movements. Section 5 examines trends in the population. Migration and the labour market are discussed in Section 6. |
| Date: | 2018–05–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucd:wpaper:201809&r=mig |
| By: | Anthony Edo; Lionel Ragot; Hillel Rapoport; Sulin Sardoschau; Andreas Steinmayr |
| Abstract: | The rise in international migration over the past decades and particularly the recent influx of refugees to the European Union has given more audience to the economic and political consequences of immigration. A major concern in the public debate is that immigrants could take jobs from natives, reduce their wages and negatively contribute to public finances. At the same time, the rise of right-wing populist movements has brought to light that the skepticism towards immigrants and refugees may not only be based only on economic but also on cultural considerations. This report is devoted to investigating these considerations by carefully relying on the existing evidence. We thus study the vast literature on the effects of immigration on the labor market and welfare system in host societies, as well as the more recent literature on the attitudinal and political consequences of immigration. The literature on the labor market impact of immigration indicates that immigration has a negligible average impact on the wages and employment of native workers. However, because adjustments take time, particularly when immigration is unexpected, the initial and longer run impacts of immigration can differ. The average impact of immigration on public finance is also negligible, sometimes slightly positive or slightly negative. We also document that immigration can have distributional consequences. In particular, the age and educational structure of immigrants plays an important role in determining their impact on the labor market and public finances. The fact that immigration is sometimes perceived as a factor depressing economic outcomes in host countries tends to affect native attitudes and electoral outcomes. In this regard, the literature first suggests that cultural concerns is the main driving force behind the skepticism towards immigration and that fiscal or labor market concerns only play a secondary role. Second, immigration tends to reduce the support for redistribution among native workers. Third, the effect of local level exposure to immigrants and refugees on native attitudes towards immigrants and extreme voting has been found to vary by context and can be positive or negative. |
| Keywords: | Immigration;Labour Market;Public finance;Redistribution; Voting |
| JEL: | D72 E62 F22 H62 J15 |
| Date: | 2018–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cii:cepipb:2018-22&r=mig |