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on Economics of Human Migration |
| By: | Bertola, Giuseppe; Mola, Lorenza |
| Abstract: | International posting of workers and mobility of self-employed service suppliers lie between outright migration and trade in goods: their regulation, for both distributional and market-correcting purposes, is not as difficult to harmonize as that of labour markets, but personal mobility is more visible and socially intrusive than product market interactions. This paper analyzes economic and legal tensions between national regulatory frameworks and international competition in these areas, in both the intra-EU and global contexts, highlighting how interactions between the external and internal roles of the European Commission may foster efficient integration of markets and policies in this and other fields. |
| Keywords: | Economic integration; European Union; GATS; Harmonization; Labour regulation; Posted workers.; Services regulation; Trade in services |
| JEL: | F22 J61 |
| Date: | 2009–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:7350&r=mig |
| By: | Demiralp, Berna |
| Abstract: | This paper presents a model of migration in which migration decisions are made with incomplete information on the labor market conditions at destination. It provides an explanation for how differences in the level of information about the destination can bring about differences in economic outcomes related to migration, such as the migration propensity and the return to migration. The implications of the model show the conditions under which information positively and negatively affects these outcomes. Thus, the model can be used to explain a wide set of empirical findings regarding the relationship between information and migration outcomes. 2005 CPS data are used to estimate the econometric model. The estimation results suggest that increased access to information regarding destination labor markets increases one's likelihood to migrate to another state. Furthermore, the findings suggest that people who have more information regarding the destination at the time of their migration decision on average experience higher returns to migration. |
| Keywords: | migration; incomplete information; return to migration |
| JEL: | J61 |
| Date: | 2009–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:16121&r=mig |
| By: | Heinrich Hock (Florida State University); Delia Furtado (University of Connecticut) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the effects of low-skilled immigration on the work and fertility decisions of high-skilled women born in the United States. The evidence we present indicates that low-skilled immigration to large metropolitan areas between 1980 and 2000 lowered the cost of market-based household services. Using a novel estimation technique to analyze joint decision making, we find that college-educated native females responded, on average, by increasing fertility and reducing short-run labor force participation. These changes were accompanied by a weakening of the negative correlation between work and fertility, as well as an increase in the proportion of women who both bore children and participated in the labor force. Taken in combination, our estimates imply that the continuing influx of low-skilled immigrants substantially reduced the work-fertility tradeoff facing educated urban American women. |
| Keywords: | Child care, fertility, household services, labor supply, immigration |
| JEL: | D10 F22 J13 J22 R23 |
| Date: | 2009–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uct:uconnp:2009-20&r=mig |
| By: | Mohapatra, Sanket; Joseph, George; Ratha, Dilip |
| Abstract: | Macro- and micro-economic evidence suggests a positive role of remittances in preparing households against natural disasters and in coping with the loss afterwards. Analysis of cross-country macroeconomic data shows that remittances increase in the aftermath of natural disasters in countries that have a larger number of migrants abroad. Analysis of household survey data in Bangladesh shows that per capita consumption was higher in remittance-receiving households than in others after the 1998 flood. Ethiopian remittance-dependent households seem to use cash reserves rather than sell livestock to cope with drought. In Burkina Faso and Ghana, international remittance-receiving households, especially those receiving remittances from high-income developed countries, tend to have housing built of concrete rather than mud and greater access to communication equipment, suggesting that they are better prepared against natural disasters. |
| Keywords: | Population Policies,Access to Finance,Remittances,Natural Disasters,Debt Markets |
| Date: | 2009–06–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4972&r=mig |
| By: | Farré, Lídia (University of Alicante); Gonzalez, Libertad (Universitat Pompeu Fabra); Ortega, Francesc (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the effects of Spain's large recent immigration wave on the labor supply of highly skilled native women. We hypothesize that female immigration led to an increase in the supply of affordable household services, such as housekeeping and child or elderly care. As a result, i) native females with high earnings potential were able to increase their labor supply, and ii) the effects were larger on skilled women whose labor supply was heavily constrained by family responsibilities. Our evidence indicates that over the last decade immigration led to an important expansion in the size of the household services sector and to an increase in the labor supply of women in high-earning occupations (of about 2 hours per week). We also find that immigration allowed skilled native women to return to work sooner after childbirth, to stay in the workforce longer when having elderly dependents in the household, and to postpone retirement. Methodologically, we show that the availability of even limited Registry data makes it feasible to conduct the analysis using quarterly household survey data, as opposed to having to rely on the decennial Census. |
| Keywords: | immigration, labor supply, fertility, retirement, household services |
| JEL: | J61 J22 J13 |
| Date: | 2009–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp4265&r=mig |
| By: | Yasser Moullan (Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne) |
| Abstract: | This paper analyse the impact of health foreign assistance on physicians' brain drain. We use the database from Bhargava and Docquier (2008) to explain physicians' brain drain and health foreign assistance from 1995 to 2003 using a bilateral gravity equation model. In the first time, we propose to investigate the direct and reverse impact of health assistance through simultaneous equation model with Three-Stage Least Squares (3SLS) methodology and highlight a significant negative effect of health foreign assistance on the medical brain whereas emigration rate of doctor increases the amount of health aid received by recipient countries. In a second time, we analyzed the indirect effect of health aid via epidemics prevalence through the death rate per 1000 people. We find that health aid plays a key role in the improvement of vaccination, treatment and prevention which may reduce death rate and, finally, decreases the physicians emigration rates. These findings confirm the efficiency of health foreign aid to weaken the vicious circle of physicians drain. |
| Keywords: | International migration, physicians emigration rates, foreign aid, health foreign assistance, simultaneous equation model, Three Stage Least Squares, gravity equation model. |
| JEL: | F22 F35 O15 C23 I1 O11 |
| Date: | 2009–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mse:cesdoc:09045&r=mig |
| By: | Hedberg, Charlotta (Stockholm University Linnaeus Center for Integration Studies - SULCIS) |
| Abstract: | Labour markets in welfare states are structured along the lines of gender and immigrant & minority statuses. This paper brings novel insights into the issue of ethnic entrepreneurship as a means of sustainable inclusion of immigrants into the labour market by adding a gender dimension. Based on unique longitudinal data, the paper analyses the division of labour and the work incomes of female immigrant entrepreneurs in contrast with male immigrants and native-born Swedes. The results indicate that the division of labour is structured along the lines of both gender and immigrant status. At first glance, a gender perspective on ethnic entrepreneurship acknowledges persistent inequalities in the labour market. Analysis of entrepreneurship within niches such as the health care sector, however, indicates greater complexity in the entrepreneurial landscape. The paper identifies implications of a nuanced analysis of entrepreneurial research, which recognises diversity along the axes of both immigrant status and gender. Entrepreneurial processes can lead to both exclusion and inclusion of minority groups in the labour market, depending on the sector concerned. |
| Keywords: | Entrepreneurship; gender; immigrant status; segmentation; division of labour |
| JEL: | J15 J16 L26 |
| Date: | 2009–06–29 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:sulcis:2009_008&r=mig |
| By: | Hou, Feng; Picot, Garnett |
| Abstract: | Immigrant selection rules were altered in the early 1990s, resulting in a dramatic increase in the share of entering immigrants with a university degree and in the skilled economic class. These changes were very successfully implemented following significant deterioration in entry earnings during the 1980s. This paper asks whether these change in immigrant selection contributed positively to immigrant entry earnings during the 1990s. Moving to the 2000s, the paper asks whether, after almost two decades of deterioration, the entry earnings of immigrants improved early in the decade, and if not, why not. We find that through the 1990s, altering immigrant characteristics did little to improve earnings at the bottom of the earnings distribution, and hence poverty rates among entering immigrants. A rapidly increasing share of immigrants with university degrees and in the skilled class found themselves at the bottom of the earnings distribution. They were unable to convert their education and “skilled class†designation to higher earnings. This inability may be related to language, credentialism, education quality, or supply issues, as discussed in the paper. However, the changing charcateristics did increase earnings among immigrants at the middle and top of the earnings distribution. We also find that from 2000 to 2004 the entry earnings of immigrants renewed their slide, but for reasons that differed from the standard explanations of the earlier decline. Following a significant increase in the supply of entering immigrants intending to work in IT and engineering during the late 1990s and early 2000s, these immigrants were faced with the IT downturn. The result was declining entry earnings, concentrated largely among these workers. |
| Keywords: | immigration, earnings, high tech, immigrants |
| JEL: | J61 |
| Date: | 2009–06–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ubc:clssrn:clsrn_admin-2009-37&r=mig |
| By: | Skuterud, Mikal; Su, Mingcui |
| Abstract: | We compare predicted relative immigrant wage profiles based on returns to YSM and to foreign and host-country sources of schooling and experience. We find the biases inherent in inferring assimilation from a return to YSM appear more substantial than those emanating from the assumptions necessary to estimate foreign and host-country returns directly using standard data sources. Given the policy relevance of allowing entry effects and subsequent wage growth to depend on the foreign human capital immigrants bring and their post-migration schooling and work decisions, our findings suggest the predominance of YSM models in the literature is not well founded. |
| Keywords: | Immigrant workers; wage differentials; human capital |
| JEL: | J61 J31 J24 |
| Date: | 2009–06–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ubc:clssrn:clsrn_admin-2009-38&r=mig |
| By: | Aslund, Olof (IFAU); Böhlmark, Anders (SOFI, Stockholm University); Nordström Skans, Oskar (IFAU) |
| Abstract: | The paper studies childhood migrants and examines how age at migration affects their ensuing integration at the residential market, the labor market, and the marriage market. We use population-wide Swedish data and compare outcomes as adults among siblings arriving at different ages in order to ensure that the results can be given a causal interpretation. The results show that the children who arrived at a higher age had substantially lower shares of natives among their neighbors, coworkers and spouses as adults. The effects are mostly driven by higher exposure to immigrants of similar ethnic origin, in particular at the marriage market. We also find some effects on educational attainment, employment rates and wages, although these effects are much more limited in magnitude. We also analyze children of migrants and show that parents' time in the host country before child birth matters, which implies that the outcomes of the social integration process are inherited. Inherited integration has a particularly strong impact on the marriage patterns of females. |
| Keywords: | immigration, integration, segregation, age at migration, siblings |
| JEL: | J12 J15 J13 J01 |
| Date: | 2009–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp4263&r=mig |
| By: | de Grip, Andries (ROA, Maastricht University); Fouarge, Didier (ROA, Maastricht University); Sauermann, Jan (ROA, Maastricht University) |
| Abstract: | Using a dataset of science and engineering graduates from 12 European countries, we analyse the determinants of labour migration after graduation. We find that not only wage gains are driving the migration decision, but also differences in labour market opportunities, past migration experience, and international student exchange are strong predictors of future migration. Contrary to our expectations, job characteristics such as the utilisation of skills in the job and involvement in innovation hardly affect the migration decision. When analysing country choice, countries such as the USA, Canada and Australia appear to attract migrants due their larger R&D intensity. Moreover, graduates with higher grades are more likely to migrate to these countries. |
| Keywords: | migration, university graduates, scientists & engineers |
| JEL: | F22 J61 |
| Date: | 2009–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp4268&r=mig |
| By: | Beine, Michel; Docquier, Frederic; Ozden, Caglar |
| Abstract: | Migration flows are shaped by a complex combination of self-selection and out-selection mechanisms. In this paper, the authors analyze how existing diasporas (the stock of people born in a country and living in another one) affect the size and human-capital structure of current migration flows. The analysis exploits a bilateral data set on international migration by educational attainment from 195 countries to 30 developed countries in 1990 and 2000. Based on simple micro-foundations and controlling for various determinants of migration, the analysis finds that diasporas increase migration flows, lower the average educational level and lead to higher concentration of low-skill migrants. Interestingly, diasporas explain the majority of the variability of migration flows and selection. This suggests that, without changing the generosity of family reunion programs, education-based selection rules are likely to have a moderate impact. The results are highly robust to the econometric techniques, accounting for the large proportion of zeros and endogeneity problems. |
| Keywords: | Population Policies,Voluntary and Involuntary Resettlement,Human Migrations&Resettlements,Anthropology,International Migration |
| Date: | 2009–07–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4984&r=mig |
| By: | Boeri, Tito (Bocconi University) |
| Abstract: | Negative perceptions about migrants in Europe, the Continent with the largest social policy programmes, are driven by concerns that foreigners are a net fiscal burden. Paradoxically instruments of social inclusion are becoming a weapon of mass exclusion. Increasing concerns of public opinion are indeed pressing Governments, in the midst of the recession, to reduce welfare access by migrants or further tighten migration policies. Are there politically feasible alternatives to these two hardly enforceable (and procyclical) policy options? In this paper we look at economic and cultural determinants of negative perceptions about migrants in Europe. Based on a simple model of the perceived fiscal effects of migration and on a largely unexploited database (EU-Silc), we find no evidence that legal migrants, notably skilled migrants, are net recipients of transfers from the state. However, there is evidence of "residual dependency" on non-contributory transfers and self-selection of migrants more likely to draw on welfare in the countries with the most generous welfare state. Moreover, redistribution does not find much support among those who are in favour of immigration. A way out of the migration into the welfare state dilemma facing Europe involves i. co-ordinating safety nets across the EU, ii. adopting explicitly selective migration policies, and iii. improving activation programmes. Other options – such as restricting migration or welfare access by migrants – are however on the agenda of national Governments. |
| Keywords: | migration policy, welfare access, fiscal externality |
| JEL: | J38 J5 |
| Date: | 2009–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp4273&r=mig |
| By: | Barrett, Alan (ESRI, Dublin) |
| Abstract: | Ireland, along with Sweden and the UK, allowed full access to its labour market to the citizens of the accession countries when the EU enlarged in May 2004. Given the limited number of countries that opened up and the rapid pace of economic growth in Ireland around 2004, a significant inflow was expected. However, the rate of inflow exceeded all expectations. Based on census information, the number of EU10 nationals living in Ireland grew from around 10,000 in 2002 to 120,000 in 2006. Data on inflows suggests that this number could have reached 200,000 by 2008 or 4.5 percent of the population. The EU10 immigrants have very high employment rates and also have levels of education that are comparable to the native labour force in Ireland. However, they appear to earn considerably less than the native labour force and also to be in lower grade occupations. They have impacted positively on the Irish economy in terms of GNP growth. This is because wages grew more slowing in Ireland than would otherwise have been the case as a result of the labour supply increase brought about by this immigration flow. |
| Keywords: | EU enlargement, EU new member states, Ireland, immigration |
| JEL: | J61 F22 |
| Date: | 2009–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp4260&r=mig |
| By: | Smyth, Emer (Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI)); Darmody, Merike (Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI)); McGinnity, Frances (Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI)); Byrne, Delma (Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI)) |
| Date: | 2009–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:esr:wpaper:rb20090206&r=mig |
| By: | Demirguc-Kunt, Asli; Lopez Cordova, Ernesto; Martinez Peria, Maria Soledad; Woodruff, Christopher |
| Abstract: | Despite the rising volume of remittances flowing to developing countries, their impact on banking sector breadth and depth in recipient countries has been largely unexplored. The authors examine this topic using municipio-level data on the fraction of households that receive remittances and on measures of banking breadth and depth for Mexico. They find that remittances are strongly associated with greater banking breadth and depth, increasing the number of branches and accounts per capita and the ratio of deposits to gross domestic product. These effects are significant both statistically and economically, even after conducting robustness tests and addressing the potential endogeneity of remittances. |
| Keywords: | Access to Finance,Banks&Banking Reform,Population Policies,Debt Markets, |
| Date: | 2009–06–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4983&r=mig |
| By: | Gagnon, Jason; Xenogiani, Theodora; Xing, Chunbing |
| Abstract: | The rapid and massive increase in rural-to-urban worker flows to the coast of China has drawn recent attention to the welfare of migrants working in urban regions, particularly to their working conditions and pay; serious concern is raised regarding pay discrimination against rural migrants. This paper uses data from a random draw of the 2005 Chinese national census survey to shed more light on the discrimination issue, by making comparisons of earnings and the sector of work between rural migrants on one hand, and urban residents and urban migrants on the other. Contrary to popular belief, we find no earnings discrimination against rural migrants compared to urban residents. However, rural migrants are found to be discriminated in terms of the sector in which they work, with a vast majority working in the informal sector lacking adequate social protection. |
| Keywords: | Migration; China; Discrimination; Informal Employment |
| JEL: | O15 J71 J24 R23 |
| Date: | 2009–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:16109&r=mig |