In this paper, I empirically investigate the determinants of migration inflows into 14 OECD countries by country of origin between 1980 and 1995. I analyze the effect on migration of average income ...and income dispersion in destination and origin countries. I also examine the impact of geographical, cultural, and demographic factors as well as the role played by changes in destination countries' migration policies. My analysis both delivers estimates consistent with the predictions of the international migration model and generates empirical puzzles.
This paper empirically analyzes economic and noneconomic determinants of individual attitudes toward immigrants, within and across countries. The two survey data sets used, covering a wide range of ...developed and developing countries, make it possible to test for interactive effects between individual characteristics and country-level attributes. In particular, theory predicts that the correlation between pro-immigration attitudes and individual skill should be related to the skill composition of natives relative to immigrants in the destination country. Skilled individuals should favor immigration in countries where natives are more skilled than immigrants and oppose it otherwise. Results based on direct and indirect measures of the relative skill composition are consistent with these predictions. Noneconomic variables also are correlated with immigration attitudes, but they don't alter significantly the labor-market results.
This paper analyzes welfare-state determinants of individual attitudes toward immigrants—within and across countries—and their interaction with labor market drivers of preferences. We consider two ...mechanisms through which a redistributive welfare system might adjust as a result of immigration. Under the first model, immigration has a larger impact on high-income individuals, while under the second one low-income individuals are those most affected. Individual attitudes are consistent with the first welfare-state model and with labor market determinants. In countries where immigration is unskilled, income is negatively correlated with pro-immigration preferences, while skill is positively correlated with them. These relationships are reversed in economies characterized by skilled migration.
We analyze two cross-country data sets that contain information on attitudes toward trade as well as a broad range of socio-demographic and other indicators. We find that pro-trade preferences are ...significantly and robustly correlated with an individual's level of human capital, in the manner predicted by the factor endowments model. Preferences over trade are also correlated with the trade exposure of the sector in which an individual is employed: individuals in non-traded sectors tend to be the most pro-trade, while individuals in sectors with a revealed comparative
disadvantage are the most protectionist. Third, an individual's relative economic status has a very strong positive association with pro-trade attitudes. Finally, non-economic determinants, in the form of values, identities, and attachments, play an important role in explaining the variation in preferences over trade. High degrees of neighborhood attachment and nationalism/patriotism are associated with protectionist tendencies.
We exploit the designs of two separate US refugee dispersal policies to provide causal evidence that refugees foster outward FDI to their countries and regions of origin. Drawing upon aggregated ...individual-level refugee and project-level FDI data, we show this effect holds in terms of new FDI projects, as well as capital invested and jobs created. Focusing on the specific case of Vietnam, we provide evidence that national domestic reforms amplified the positive FDI-creating effects of the overseas Vietnamese diaspora. Overall, our results highlight a new mechanism through which refugees foster development at their origins.
•We exploit the designs of two separate US refugee dispersal policies.•We use aggregated individual-level refugee and project-level FDI data.•Refugees foster outward FDI to their countries or regions of origin.•Policy reforms amplified the FDI-creating effects of the Vietnamese diaspora.
We are experiencing a wave of globalization that includes everything but labour. In this paper, we argue that this is the result of restrictive migration policies implemented by destination ...countries. In democratic societies individual attitudes of voters represent the foundations of policy making. To understand policy outcomes, we analyse the patterns and determinants of voters' opinions on immigration. We find that, across countries of different income levels, only a small minority of voters favour more open policies. Furthermore, our analysis supports the role played by economic channels in shaping public opinion. We next investigate how attitudes translate into policy outcomes, considering two alternative frameworks: the median voter and the interest groups model. On the one hand, the very low percentages of voters favouring immigration are, in light of the existing restrictive policies, consistent with the median voter framework. At the same time, given the extent of opposition to immigration that appears in public opinion, it is somewhat surprising in a median voter framework that immigration takes place at all. We find that interest-groups dynamics have the potential to explain this puzzle.
I analyze individual attitudes towards trade and immigration in comparative terms. I find that individuals are on average more pro-trade than pro-immigration across several countries. I identify a ...key source of this difference: the cleavage in trade preferences, absent in immigration attitudes, between individuals working in traded as opposed to non-traded sectors.
We analyze the effect of China's integration into the world economy on workers in the country and show that one important channel of impact has been internal migration. Specifically, we study the ...changes in internal migration rates triggered by the reduction in trade policy uncertainty faced by Chinese exporters in the U.S. This reduction is characterized by plausibly exogenous variation across products, which we use to construct a local measure of treatment, at the level of a Chinese prefecture, following Bartik (1991). This allows us to estimate a difference-in-difference empirical specification based on variation across Chinese prefectures before and after 2001. We find that prefectures facing the average decline in trade policy uncertainty experienced a 24% increase in their internal in-migration rate – this result is driven by migrants who are “non-hukou”, skilled, and in their prime working age. Finally, in those prefectures, working hours of “native” unskilled workers significantly increased, and internal migrants found employment in the places they migrated to.
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 article 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 5.8 per cent. 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 12.7 per cent. Finally, the article shows that the effectiveness of visa provisions in regional trade agreements reduces with the anti-immigration sentiment of voters in the destination.
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