Migration dynamics

Journal of Labor Research, 2011

This work is devoted to study the role of combined entry and exit strategies in the migration process. We develop a real option model in which the community of immigrants in the host country is described as a club and the immigrants benefits is a Ushaped function, depending on the dimension of the district. There exist two threshold levels: the first one triggers the migration choice, while the second triggers the return to the country of origin. The theoretical results show that the phenomenon of hysteresis is amplified by the existence of a community both in the entry case and in the exit case. Furthermore, the community can reduce the minimum wage level required to trigger both exit and entry: this fact could explain why in some cases we observe migration inflows with a low wage differential and also with underunemployment. We show also some possible further extensions of the model: in one case we introduce a possible way to select the entrants. skills and in another case we show some theoretical implementations to include possible policy shocks in the migrant's choice.

2016

Migration flows experienced a steadily increasing trend mainly due to the increase of landings of immigrants who seek shelter in European "lands of opportunities". The huge size of phenomenon has profoundly changed the composition of host society modifying social, demographic and economic balances. Therefore, socio-economic integration of foreign population is the main issue, to harness full integration into the host environment. Economic assimilation of foreigners comes from the absorption of labor market, which is the royal road to social emancipation and integration of immigrants. For these reasons the present study aims to analyze the composition of Italian labor market, which is unique in the European scenario because of the presence of a foreign employment rate higher than the native population one. In order to understand nature and changes of phenomenon, first paragraph makes a brief analysis of contributions in literature in order to understand how the dynamics of ...

2018

The present paper aims to investigate if Brexit generated a return of migration from UK towards Italy and Spain. I collect data on immigration from OECD countries to Italian and Spanish provinces from 2006 to 2016. I present three migration models that include monadic and dyadic fixed effects, which enables to control various expression of multilateral resistance to migration. I merge migration data with various key factors: average wage, GDP per capita, unemployment rate, health spending and education level. To study the impact of Brexit on migration, I create a dummy variable for migrants leaving UK in 2016. Results suggest that in 2016 migration flows from UK to Italy and Spain increased of about 29% and 15% respectively, probably as a consequence of the Brexit referendum.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2001

If people come to live in a country different from their nation state, due to border shifts, expulsion, or migration, they adopt some of the new country's habits after some time. This paper investigates their (return) migration decision when they have been restricted to live in the foreign country for some time and suddenly become free to return to the country of their original nationality. In our model, the population is located in small communities on a Hotelling line. The two poles represent the two nationalities. Utility depends on distance to the pole and to the center of the community someone is living in. Looking at ethnic German migration in the 1990s, we compare basic features of the migration wave with assumptions of the model, compare actual and predicted migration waves and discuss the impact of immigration restrictions.

2020

The analysis of migration processes shows the need to simulate the dynamics of migration flows, to describe the trends in the redistribution of labor in the current period and to forecast for the short term. To estimate and predict labor migration flows in terms of different levels of the labor markets development we elaborated a dynamic multi-factor migration model. The model takes into account the assumptions of the positional games theory, which allows predicting the behavior of a potential migrant, depending on an amount of socioeconomic factors. We emphasize, that labor migration is one of the major factors in the development of the labor markets and in the redistribution of qualified workforce between them. To ensure sustainable development and economic growth of socioeconomic systems the inflow of migrants into a region should correspond to the labor resources demand of the labor market. According to the model idea, potential migrants have full information about the difference in living and working conditions both in the countries of origin and attraction of migrants, which allows describing the decision-making process in the model. To improve the predictive accuracy of the model, we developed a method of assessing the migration attractiveness of the region, based on the principle of differentiation of regional economic systems by the level of socioeconomic benefits. We obtain the synthetic parameter of the model, describing the migration attractiveness of the region, by combining socioeconomic indicators in a relative form, reflecting the degree of development of the social system and the labor market in the region.

2010

This study investigates the determinants of interregional migration flows in Italy in the light of the upsurge occurred in 1996, after two decades of decreasing internal migration rates. The fixed-effect vector decomposition estimator (FEVD) is applied to a gravity model using bilateral migration flows for the period 1996-2005. It is shown that the FEVD improves the estimates with respect to the traditional panel data estimators. The GDP per capita and the unemployment rate appear to be the key determinants whose changes push migrants out from their regions and direct them to "better off" destinations. Migrants leaving the regions in the Center-North respond differently to the push and pull forces compared to southern migrants. The dynamic model provides evidence for the presence of social networks, which in this analysis take place for each pair of regions.

Theoretical Economics Letters, 2019

This paper tackles the textbook message that free migration of labour equalizes real wages between local labour markets, since nominal wages should rise and prices should fall in emigrating localities and vice versa in immigrating localities. Reverse price adjustments should thus help in stabilizing migration. The paper investigates the idea in a basic labour market model with sequential comparative statics, and gets conflicting findings: both decreasing prices in the emigrating end and increasing prices in the immigrating end foster emigration. Furthermore, common wisdom is that, if emigration forces the locality to elevate tax rates, people's voting with feet should foster emigration. This paper shows that this is true only with notable tax increases. In the other end, induced emigration appears if the initially immigrating locality is forced to increase its taxes, even modestly.

2010

This paper investigates the determinants of interregional migration in Italy for the period 1985-2006, during which different migration trends took place. In so doing, in addition to the traditional variables of Harris and Todaro model, the impact of housing prices and externalities variables were studied. Our results, using a dynamic panel GMM, show that the H-T model, due to the complexity of the internal migration process, omits some important economic and non-economic variables and may not be representative of migration flow in Italy. Furthermore, our analysis confirms our intuition that for different periods we have to take into account different determinants.

Russian Journal of Economic and Social Science, 2000

This paper empirically examines the relations between wealth, migration costs and networks in determining migration decisions. The aims of this research is to improve the methodological approach in the study of the determinants of migration, to provide policy-makers with better forecasting instruments to avoid the unpredictable and undesirable consequences of immigration reforms. A three step procedure based on Instrumental Variable and Inverse Mills Ratio (IMR) is applied to identify the effect of selection (Probit and IV-Probit) and to examine the number of migrants a household sends abroad (IMR and IV Regression). Findings delve out that Bangladeshi migrants belong to the middle of the income distribution in Bangladesh. Migration and wealth are non-linearly related. Household and community networks increase the migration propensity. Specifically, when large enough, networks further increase the migration propensity of the households belonging to the middle-left of the income distribution. Community and household-level networks are partially substitutes and partially complements. This study suggests that the effect of Italian legislation on Bangladeshi migration should be investigated in more detail, focusing not on the aggregate level of analysis, but on checking whether changes in legislation have generated changes in the composition of migration flows.

Journal of Applied Statistics, 2012

This paper analyzes the wage returns from internal migration for recent graduates in Italy. We employ a switching regression model that accounts for the endogeneity of the individual's choice to relocate to get a job after graduation: the omission of this selection decision can lead to biased estimates, as there is potential correlation between earnings and unobserved traits exerting an influence on the decision to migrate. The empirical results sustain the appropriateness of the estimation technique and show that there is a significant pay gap between migrants and nonmigrants; migrants seem to be positively selected and the migration premium is downward biased through OLS estimates. The endogeneity of migration shows up both as a negative intercept effect and as a positive slope effect, the second being larger then the first: bad knowledge of the local labor market and financial constraints lead migrants to accept a low basic wage but, due to relevant returns to their characteristics, they finally obtain an higher wage then the others.