The Effect of Income and Immigration Policies on International Migration / Francesc Ortega, Giovanni Peri.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ortega, Francesc.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Peri, Giovanni.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w18322.

NBER working paper series no. w18322

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2012.

Summary:

This paper makes two contributions to the literature on the determinants of international migration flows. First, we compile a new dataset on annual bilateral migration flows covering 15 OECD destination countries and 120 sending countries for the period 1980-2006. We also collect data on time-varying immigration policies that regulate the entry of immigrants in our destination countries over this period. Second, we extend the empirical model of migration choice across multiple destinations developed by Grogger and Hanson (2011) by allowing for unobserved individual heterogeneity between migrants and non-migrants. Our estimates show that international migration flows are highly responsive to income per capita at destination. This elasticity is twice as high for within-EU migration, reflecting the higher degree of labor mobility within the European Union. We also find that tightening of laws regulating immigrant entry reduce rapidly and significantly their flow.

Notes:

Print version record

August 2012.