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on Economics of Human Migration |
| By: | Arroyo Abad, Leticia; Espin-Sanchez, Jose-Antonio |
| Abstract: | This paper presents the first numbers on Spanish migration to Spanish America for the colonial period (1492-1830). We analyze quantitative patterns, geographic origins and destinations, gender, and migrant human capital. Drawing on a wide array of primary and secondary sources, we provide the first comprehensive dataset covering for the entire colonial period. This dataset opens new avenues for research on migrant networks, elite formation, social mobility, and the links between migration and long-run economic development. |
| Keywords: | Migration networks; Human capital |
| JEL: | F22 J61 O15 N36 N33 |
| Date: | 2025–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20591 |
| By: | Egger, Dennis; Faber, Benjamin; Li, Ming; Lin, Wei |
| Abstract: | We combine a new collection of microdata from China with a natural policy experiment to investigate the extent to which reductions in rural-urban migration barriers affect flows of trade and investments between cities and the countryside. We find that increases in worker eligibility for urban residence registration (Hukou) across origin-destination pairs increase rural-urban exports, imports, capital inflows and outflows, both in terms of bilateral transaction values and the number of unique buyer-seller matches. To quantify the implications at the regional level, we interpret these estimates through the lens of a spatial equilibrium model in which migrants can reduce buyer-seller matching frictions. We find that a 10% increase in a rural county's migration market access on average leads to a 1.5% increase in the county's trade market access and a 2% increase in investment market access. In the context of China's recent Hukou reforms, we find that these knock-on effects on market integration were on average larger among the urban destinations compared to the rural origins, reinforcing incentives for rural-urban migration. |
| Keywords: | Economic development; market integration |
| JEL: | F63 O12 R11 |
| Date: | 2025–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20521 |
| By: | Müller, Tobias; Pannatier, Pia; Viarengo, Martina |
| Abstract: | The paper examines the gender differences in labor market integration among refugees and their determinants. It focuses on a longitudinal dataset that includes the universe of the refugee population in Switzerland over a 20-years period. Over the period examined the large majority of refugees come from developing economies. The quasi-random allocation of asylum seekers across cantons, which are different in their socio-economic characteristics, provides a natural experiment to identify the causal effects of the source country culture as well as the role of the local initial conditions in affecting the trajectory of refugees’ labor market integration. Empirical findings highlight the importance of source country culture, though there is some variation in the persistence of the effects over time. The research also highlights the negative role of initial unemployment and the positive role of co-ethnic networks, which vary by gender and according to the characteristics of the network. Moreover, empirical findings show the positive effects of local attitudes towards gender equality in affecting women refugees’ labor market outcomes. |
| Keywords: | Refugees; Labor market integration; Gender |
| JEL: | F22 J24 J61 |
| Date: | 2025–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20318 |
| By: | Budnik, Katarzyna |
| Abstract: | This paper studies how temporary migration affects macroeconomic fluctuations and the conduct of stabilisation policies using a two-country DSGE model with search-and-matching frictions and endogenous cross-border labour mobility. The analysis shows that migration responds endogenously to both labour market conditions and exchange rate movements, making it an important channel of cross-country adjustment. Labour mobility alters the transmission of shocks in three main ways. First, it redistributes adjustment to productivity shocks across regions, smoothing output fluctuations in receiving economies while producing more nuanced effects in sending economies. Second, it favorably affects policy trade-offs: migration reduces the output costs of monetary tightening, and it mitigates the crowdingout effects of fiscal expansions. Third, it strengthens cross-country spillovers by transmitting labour market shocks across regions and reshaping their domestic propagation. Overall, temporary migration emerges as a powerful but non-neutral adjustment mechanism that affects both the effectiveness of stabilization policies and the distribution of macroeconomic outcomes across integrated economies. JEL Classification: E20, E32, F16, F22, F41 |
| Keywords: | business cycle, dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model, EU enlargement, integration, labour market, migration |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ecb:ecbwps:20263251 |
| By: | Yusuf Emre Akgunduz; Muhammed Hamza Kayrici |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the impact of the February 2023 Türkiye earthquakes on housing markets in unaffected regions using online real estate listings and a time-based Regression Discontinuity Design. We document a sharp post-disaster demand shock driven by large-scale population displacement, with effects concentrated in the residential rental market. Consistent with a residential displacement shock, no significant effects are detected in commercial property markets. Price increases were highly segmented: pressures were strongest for multi-room units, reflecting the larger family structures of displaced households, and for newly constructed units, indicating a post-disaster flight-to-safety. Cross-sectional province-level and difference-in-differences estimates show that pre-existing migration networks and geographic distance are the primary determinants of rental price pressures. |
| Keywords: | Natural disasters, Housing markets, Rental prices, Internal displacement, Migration networks, Regression discontinuity design |
| JEL: | C21 Q54 R21 R23 R31 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tcb:wpaper:2613 |
| By: | Daniel K. Fetter; Lee M. Lockwood; Paul Mohnen |
| Abstract: | Both historically and today, support of aging parents has largely taken the form of in-kind transfers that require physical proximity, such as housing and caregiving. If Social Security substitutes for such support, it can relax constraints on where recipients' children live and work. We investigate the long-run intergenerational effects of the early Social Security program, exploiting within-occupation, cross-industry differences in coverage and a new dataset linking parents to their children's later-life outcomes. We find that sons whose parents had greater predicted coverage moved farther from their childhood homes, earned more, and lived in better neighborhoods late in life. We find no such effects for daughters, who tended to provide forms of support less easily replaced by Social Security. The gains considerably exceeded the associated Social Security benefits for the average family, with migration to better-matched labor markets a likely key driver. We propose that the early program enabled families to realize gains from migration that were back-loaded, uncertain, and difficult to contract on. |
| JEL: | D15 H55 J14 J61 N32 R23 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35456 |
| By: | Anders G Fr{\o}seth |
| Abstract: | Blandhol (2025) estimates that wealth-tax-induced emigration from Norway reduces long-run GDP by 1.3%. Dansk Industri scaled this figure to argue that a Danish wealth tax would cost billions - a claim central to the 2026 Danish election campaign. We develop a social contagion model in which the emigration rate depends on a visibility-weighted fraction of prior emigrants, producing tipping-point dynamics. Embedding the model in the Fokker-Planck framework of Froseth (2026, arXiv:2603.05283), we show that the micro-to-macro extrapolation underlying the 1.3% figure requires five identification conditions to hold simultaneously - each of which is violated. Using a panel of the 400 wealthiest Norwegians (2011-2025), we estimate the Pareto tail exponent (approximately 1.3, stable across years), identify the emigrants within Blandhol's 2016-2020 sample window, and document a hidden channel of heir-emigration - 36 recent cases carrying approximately 127 bn NOK - invisible in panel data because controlling owners retain their A-shares while heirs emigrate with economic exposure only. The event-study sample is dominated by passive wealth-holders with near-zero productivity haircuts, and the wealth-weighted integral that determines the GDP effect is controlled by individuals entirely absent from the sample. The Norwegian emigration wave is a non-scalable, path-dependent tipping event, not a smooth elasticity. |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2607.03868 |
| By: | Cristina Bellés Obrero; Caoimhe T. Rice; Judit Vall Castelló |
| Abstract: | Healthcare providers are a frontline channel for detecting intimate partner violence (IPV): physicians are legally required to report suspected criminal injuries to the authorities and can refer victims to support and protection services. We study how restricting healthcare access affects the detection and formal reporting of IPV, exploiting a 2012 Spanish reform that withdrew public healthcare entitlement from undocumented immigrants while leaving emergency care universally accessible. Using a difference-in-differences design that compares foreign and Spanish-national women before and after the reform, we find that foreign women's use of public primary care fell by 4.9%, with no corresponding drop in emergency care use. IPV cases reaching the courts and applications for protection orders subsequently declined by about 12% among foreign relative to Spanish women, with larger effects in regions that enforced the restriction more strictly. The decline is concentrated in cases initiated through medical injury reports, and we find no accompanying change in self-reported victimization or in female homicide, suggesting a drop in detection rather than in underlying violence. Restricting healthcare access thus weakened the detection and formal reporting of IPV, an overlooked cost of policies that limit marginalized groups' access to public services. |
| Keywords: | healthcare access, Intimate partner violence, reporting, undocumented immigrants |
| JEL: | I10 I12 I14 I31 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bge:wpaper:1586 |
| By: | Guenther, Laurenz; Nunnari, Salvatore |
| Abstract: | Research on the rise of populism has largely overlooked the explanation populists themselves advance: that they fill political representation gaps, defined as discrepancies between mainstream parties’ policies and the “popular will.†We test this claim in an information-provision experiment conducted in the weeks leading up to the 2025 German federal election. A sample of 5, 040 German citizens was randomly assigned varying information about the immigration stance of Germany’s mainstream center-right CDU—an issue marked by a substantial representation gap. We find that perceptions of the CDU’s position significantly affect both vote intentions and incentivized behavioral measures: when the CDU is perceived as closer to the electorate’s conservative preferences on immigration, support for the right-wing populist AfD declines. Our estimates indicate that the AfD’s vote share would shrink by as much as 75% if the CDU adopted its immigration stance. These results suggest that the electoral success of populist parties is strongly linked to genuine policy preferences, rather than being driven solely by dissatisfaction with political elites or protest voting. |
| Keywords: | Populism; Elections; Immigration |
| JEL: | D72 C93 K37 |
| Date: | 2025–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20643 |
| By: | Matthew Maury; Agustina Laurito; Lisa A. Gennetian; Kevin Kamto Sonke |
| Abstract: | This scoping review curates empirical research on economic well-being among Latino households in peer reviewed journals from 1990 to 2025, following PRISMA guidelines and a preregistered search strategy. The search yielded more than 5, 000 studies revealing a greater than five-fold increase since the early 2000s. The majority of studies examined Medicaid and health insurance and approximately half examined government benefit programs, particularly with respect to eligibility criteria and benefit receipt. Few studies examined the employment outcomes of Latinos in the context of government benefit availability and even fewer focus on Latinos and income support. A deeper content review revealed that studies examining Hispanics are typically through comparative analyses with other racial and ethnic groups. These studies find higher poverty and material hardship, and lower receipt of government benefits, among Latino families relative to non-Latino White households. Fewer studies consider heterogeneity within Hispanic populations. Research on economic well-being among Latino households, as distinct from more general investigations regarding immigrants, expanded in tandem with growth in the Latino population and shifts in social policy. Key policy-relevant open topics of research that affect Latinos include those related to tax credits, benefit generosity, employment, and considerations of mixed-citizen status households. |
| JEL: | H42 H53 I28 I31 I32 J13 J15 J18 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35452 |
| By: | Patacchini, Eleonora; Wu, Qi |
| Abstract: | We study how face-to-face interactions shape worker mobility through social networks. Using granular cellphone geolocation and sociodemographic data on 3.3 million workers in a large urban labor market, we exploit settings in which multiple friends of the same worker relocate to jobs within the same destination area. Within the same worker and destination, face-to-face interaction with a friend increases the probability of moving to that friend’s workplace by 36-43 percent relative to remote communication, with effects substantially larger than those of phone calls or digital messaging. Consistent with referral models, the effect emerges only after the friend joins the destination firm and disappears in pre-move placebo periods. A data-driven heterogeneity analysis using regularized machine learning reveals a pronounced targeting gradient: effects in the highest predicted-return settings are more than twice as large as the population average. We interpret these findings through a simple referral model in which interaction technology shapes the effectiveness of information transmission, showing that mobility depends not only on the presence of social ties but on how information flows within them. |
| Keywords: | Employment; Communication technology; Agglomeration economies |
| JEL: | R23 J60 L15 |
| Date: | 2025–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20447 |
| By: | Axbard, Sebastian; Weisser, Reinhard; Os Ådland, Roar |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how firms trade off commercial objectives against humanitarian obligations. Using 1.1 billion ship positions, we study responses to 1, 395 distress alerts during the Mediterranean migration crisis. Event-study estimates show that commercial ships are about 90% less likely than equally distant NGO vessels to render assistance within the first five hours. Opportunity costs determined by load and trip destination shape merchant-vessel responses, suggesting competitive pressures suppress prosocial conduct. At the route level, traffic on affected corridors falls by 14% over the subsequent year, consistent with re-routing to reduce expected rescue exposure and, in turn, shifting global trade flows. |
| JEL: | D64 D78 D72 F14 F22 |
| Date: | 2025–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20414 |