|
on Economics of Human Migration |
| By: | Cabra-Ruiz, Nicolás (Princeton University); Rozo, Sandra V. (World Bank); Sviatschi, Maria Micaela (Princeton University) |
| Abstract: | How does forced displacement shape development in origin countries? We examine the case of Venezuela, where nearly eight million people have been forcibly displaced. To do this, we compare municipalities with varying shares of foreign-born populations before and after international oil price shocks accelerated forced displacement between 2014 and 2019. Our findings show that municipalities with larger foreign-born populations in 1990, which also exhibited greater out-migration from Venezuela after 2014, experienced lower economic development and higher inequality. We highlight a new mechanism through which forced displacement facilitates the perpetuation of autocratic rule and hinders development: by weakening political opposition and enabling the growth of organized crime and illicit income sources. Using novel election data, we find that areas affected by mass forced displacement experienced lower voter turnout and opposition support, limiting political and social reforms. These areas also witnessed growth in organized crime and foreign non-state drug and human trafficking, which diminished incentives for economic change. |
| Keywords: | forced displacement, electoral outcomes, economic growth, Venezuela |
| JEL: | O12 O15 O54 |
| Date: | 2025–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17671 |
| By: | Ljubica Nedelkoska; Diego Martin; Alexia Lochmann; Ricardo Hausmann; Dany Bahar; Muhammed A. Yildirim |
| Abstract: | Various factors influence why some countries are more open to immigration than others. Policy is only one of them. We design country-specific measures of openness to immigration that aim to capture de facto levels of openness to immigration, complementing existing de jure measures of immigration, based on enacted immigration laws and policy measures. We estimate these for 148 countries and three years (2000, 2010, and 2020). For a subset of countries, we also distinguish between openness towards tertiary-educated migrants and less than tertiary-educated migrants. Using the measures, we show that most places in the World today are closed to immigration, and a few regions are very open. The World became more open in the first decade of the millennium, an opening mainly driven by the Western World and the Gulf countries. Moreover, we show that other factors equal, countries that increased their openness to immigration, reduced their old-age dependency ratios, and experienced slower real wage growth, arguably a sign of relaxing labor and skill shortages. |
| Date: | 2025–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2502.16407 |
| By: | Levelu, Anthonin; Mayda, Anna Maria; Orefice, Gianluca |
| Abstract: | An increasing number of regional trade agreements contains provisions that ease access to visas among member countries, which reduces the administrative cost of crossing the border. Combining United Nations data on bilateral stocks of immigrants in the period 1990-2020 with World Bank data on the content of 279 regional trade agreements, this paper presents robust evidence of a positive effect of visa provisions in regional trade agreements on bilateral migration: the presence of visa provisions in regional trade agreements increases the bilateral stock of immigrants by 5.9 percent. This result is robust to an instrumental variable strategy addressing the endogeneity problem. The effect of the inclusion of visa provisions in regional trade agreements is particularly effective among country pairs with different income levels (such as North-South). For this type of country pairs, the presence of visa provisions in regional trade agreements increases the bilateral stock of immigrants by 13 percent. Finally, the paper shows that the effectiveness of visa provisions in regional trade agreements reduces with the anti-immigration sentiment of voters in the destination. |
| Date: | 2023–02–27 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:10324 |
| By: | Shrestha, Maheshwor |
| Abstract: | This descriptive paper provides a nuanced perspective on the relationship between development and migration, extending the non-parametric analysis in Clemens (2020). A few stylized patterns of migration emerge as countries develop. First, the migration response to development differs by the types of origin and destination countries. As low-income countries develop, their migration to high-income destinations increases slowly but steadily, whereas migration to other low-income or neighboring countries decreases at early levels of development. As middle-income countries develop, their migration to high-income countries increases steadily and plateaus once they reach sufficiently high levels of income. Second, the composition of migrants changes as countries develop. In particular, migrants to high-income destination countries become more educated. Third, the emigration response from middle-income countries is muted for countries with larger populations, particularly toward high-income destinations. These patterns suggest a strong role multiple transformations—such as increasing incomes, increased global integration, a demographic transition, increased human capital, and domestic structural change—play in changing migration patterns as countries develop. The paper explores these migration patterns in light of these transformations. |
| Date: | 2023–02–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:10295 |
| By: | Boustan, Leah Platt (Princeton University and NBER); Jensen, Mathias Fjællegaard (University of Oxford); Abramitzky, Ran (Stanford University); Jácome, Elisa (Northwestern University); Manning, Alan (London School of Economics); Perez, Santiago (University of California, Davis); Watley, Analysia (Princeton University); Adermon, Adrian (Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy (IFAU)); Arellano-Bover, Jaime (Yale University); Aslund, Olof (Uppsala University); Connolly, Marie (University of Melbourne); Deutscher, Nathan (University of Technology, Sydney); Gielen, Anne C. (Erasmus University Rotterdam); Giesing, Yvonne (Ifo Institute for Economic Research); Govind, Yajna (Copenhagen Business School); Halla, Martin (Vienna University of Economics and Business); Hangartner, Dominik (Stanford University); Jiang, Yuyan (University of Cambridge); Karmel, Cecilia (Australian National University); Landaud, Fanny (CNRS); Macmillan, Lindsey (University College London); Martínez, Isabel Z. (KOF Swiss Economic Institute); Polo, Alberto (New York University); Poutvaara, Panu (University of Munich); Rapoport, Hillel (Paris School of Economics); Roman, Sara (IFAU); Salvanes, Kjell G. (Norwegian School of Economics); San, Shmuel (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem); Siegenthaler, Michael (ETH Zurich); Sirugue, Louis (London School of Economics); Espín, Javier Soria (Paris School of Economics); Stuhler, Jan (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid); Violante, Giovanni L. (Princeton University); Webbink, Dinand (Erasmus University Rotterdam); Weber, Andrea (Central European University); Zhang, Jonathan (McMaster University); Zhang, Angela (University of Sydney); Zohar, Tom (CEMFI) |
| Abstract: | We estimate intergenerational mobility of immigrants and their children in fifteen receiving countries. We document large income gaps for first-generation immigrants that diminish in the second generation. Around half of the second-generation gap can be explained by differences in parental income, with the remainder due to differential rates of absolute mobility. The daughters of immigrants enjoy higher absolute mobility than daughters of locals in most destinations, while immigrant sons primarily enjoy this advantage in countries with long histories of immigration. Cross-country differences in absolute mobility are not driven by parental country-of-origin, but instead by destination labor markets and immigration policy. |
| Keywords: | immigration, intergenerational mobility |
| JEL: | J15 J61 J62 |
| Date: | 2025–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17711 |