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on Economics of Human Migration |
| By: | Giulia Briselli; Wookun Kim |
| Abstract: | We examine the consequences of South Korea's 2008–10 immigration reforms on the marriage market and intra-household outcomes. The reforms unintentionally reduced foreign bride inflows. Exploiting regional variation in exposure to the reforms and using uniquely rich data—administrative records, household surveys, and registries—we find that the reforms resulted in fewer new marriages, increased women's intra-household bargaining power, shifted in women's time from housework to employment, and increased well-being for both spouses. Divorce rates fell, with a shift from general incompatibility to abuse-related grounds. These findings reveal the reforms' unintended impacts on household dynamics and broader economic implications. |
| Keywords: | immigration, policy reform, marriage market, intra-household allocation, bar-gaining power, divorce |
| JEL: | F22 J12 J16 D13 K37 R23 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12222 |
| By: | Patrick Bennett; Julian Vedeler Johnsen |
| Abstract: | We study how the labor market shocks of automation and immigration interact to shape workers’ outcomes. Using matched employer–employee data from Norwegian administrative registers, we combine an immigration shock triggered by the European Union’s 2004 enlargement with an automation shock based on the adoption of industrial robots across Europe. Although these shocks largely occur in separate industries, we show that automation reduces earnings not only in manufacturing but also in construction, where tasks overlap with robot-exposed sectors. Importantly, workers jointly exposed to automation and immigration suffer earnings losses greater than those facing either shock in isolation. These losses are driven by downward occupational mobility into low-wage services and re-sorting into lower-premium firms. Even within the Norwegian welfare system, the ability of social insurance to offset these long-run earnings declines is limited. Our findings underscore the importance of analyzing labor market shocks jointly, rather than in isolation, to fully understand their distributional consequences. |
| Keywords: | automation, immigration, labor market shocks |
| JEL: | J01 J61 J24 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12217 |
| By: | Francesco Amodio (McGill University, BREAD, and CEPR); Elia Benveniste (European Bank for Reconstruction and Developmet); Mario F. Carillo (Departament of Applied Economics, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain & IPEG); Marc Riudavets-Barcons (University of Helsinki & HGSE) |
| Abstract: | This paper shows that granting migrants legal status reduces labor exploitation. We study Spain's 2005 large-scale regularization program, which granted legal status to 600, 000 undocumented migrants. We proxy labor exploitation with hospitalizations for heat-related illnesses among working-age individuals, capturing exposure to hazardous working conditions in outdoor occupations. We implement a triple-difference design that exploits cross-provincial variation in pre-reform shares of undocumented migrants and temporal variation in extreme temperatures. Our results show that the incidence of heat-related hospitalizations during heatwaves declined significantly in provinces with greater exposure to the amnesty. Specifically, an additional day above 35°C became 3.3 percentage points less likely to result in heat-related hospitalization in highly exposed provinces, representing a 9.4% reduction relative to the pre-reform mean. Our findings demonstrate that migrant regularization is a powerful policy for improving worker well-being and reducing their vulnerability to extreme climatic events. |
| Keywords: | amnesty programs, working conditions, exploitation, extreme heat |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uab:wprdea:wpdea2514 |
| By: | Stark, Oded (University of Bonn); Byra, Lukasz (University of Warsaw) |
| Abstract: | In “Immigration, search and redistribution: A quantitative assessment of native welfare, ” a paper by Battisti et al. published in the August 2018 issue of the Journal of the European Economic Association, the authors inquire about how migration to 20 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries affects the welfare of the countries’ native workers. We raise several concerns regarding the analytical and the empirical parts of the Battisti et al.’s inquiry that bear on this effect. Calibration of a corrected model reveals that our concerns affect measurably the empirical results regarding the impacts on the welfare of native workers of skill-neutral migration and of migration by low-skill workers. A particular concern is that our calibration of a corrected model yields estimates of the tax rate on workers’ wages that are far too high to be considered feasible. We calibrate a version of the corrected model, which involves “reasonable” tax rates on wages and a budget deficit. The results yielded by this counterfactual version lend support to the results of the corrected model regarding the negative impact of skill-neutral migration and of migration by low-skill workers on the welfare of native workers. |
| Keywords: | recalibration of labor market model, GDP identity, sharing rule of firm-worker match surplus when wages are taxed, unemployment in a migration-destination country, welfare of native workers, migration to OECD countries, skill-neutral migration, migration by low-skill workers |
| JEL: | F22 I31 J64 |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18213 |
| By: | Fanze Kong; Jiayi Sun; Shuangquan Xie |
| Abstract: | One of the most significant findings in the study of spatial Solow-Swan models is the emergence of economic agglomeration, in which economic activities concentrate in specific regions. Such agglomeration provides a fundamental mechanism driving the spatial patterns of urbanization, labor migration, productivity growth, and resource allocation. In this paper, we consider the one-dimensional spatial Solow-Swan model with capital-induced labor migration, which captures the dynamic interaction between labor and capital through migration and accumulation. Focusing on the regime of sufficiently small capital diffusivity, we first construct an interior spike (spiky economic agglomeration) quasi-equilibrium. Next, we perform the linear stability of the corresponding spike equilibrium by using a hybrid asymptotic and numerical method. We show that a single interior spike remains stable for small reaction-time constants but undergoes a Hopf bifurcation when the constant is sufficiently large, leading to oscillations in spike height (economic fluctuation). Finally, we derive a differential-algebraic system to capture the slow drift motion of quasi-equilibrium (core-periphery shift). Numerical simulations are carried out to support our theoretical studies and reveal some intriguing yet unexplained dynamics. |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2510.19204 |
| By: | Bergantino, Angela Stefania (University of Bari); Clemente, Antonello (University of Bari); Iandolo, Stefano (University of Salerno); Turati, Riccardo (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the evolution and determinants of skill-specific internal mobility among Italian citizens by urban–rural origin. Using administrative data from the Registry of Transfer of Residence (ADELE), which records the universe of skill-specific bilateral moves across more than 700 millions potential municipality pairs between 2012 and 2022, we document distinct trends in residential mobility for college-educated and non-college-educated citizens. We then assess the role of economic and non-economic factors in shaping these flows, employing a Poisson Pseudo-Maximum Likelihood (PPML) estimator with an extensive set of destination and origin-by-nest fixed effects. Our findings show that low-skilled movers respond more strongly to economic factors, while high-skilled movers are respond more to non-economic ones, with the urban–rural divide at origin amplifying these differences. Moreover, we find that after the COVID-19 pandemic, economic drivers became less relevant, whereas non-economic factors gained importance. Overall, this study highlights that, similar to international migration, the drivers of internal mobility are inherently skill-specific. |
| Keywords: | Italy, urban-rural, human capital, migration, COVID-19 |
| JEL: | J24 J61 R23 |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18203 |