Crossing the border: Self-selection, earnings and individual migration decisions

Arbeitspapier

Many empirical studies on the determinants of international migration flows rely exclusively on macro data, and do not account for migrants' self-selection. We analyze a very interesting episode in international migration for which we are able to gather individual-level data covering all relevant countries, namely the exodus of Ecuadorians to Spain and the US in the aftermath of the economic collapse of 1999. Specifically, we produce selection-corrected predictions of counterfactual individual earnings and use them to estimate a discrete-choice migration equation that allows for correlated errors across destinations and a rich structure of migration costs. We find that earnings significantly shape individual migration decisions, even in an episode in which Ecuadorians mostly chose Spain where earnings were lower than in the US, and they contribute to explaining the observed composition of migration flows. Moreover, our estimates show that changes in earnings at a particular destination have a larger effect on destination choice conditional on migration than on the scale of migration.

Angaben zum Objekt

• Sprache: Englisch

Verweise und Beziehungen

• Erschienen in: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 4957

Klassifikation und Themen

• Klassifikation: Wirtschaft ; International Migration ; Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration ; Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers ; Factor Income Distribution
• Thema: International migration ; self-selection ; earnings ; individual-level data ; Internationale Wanderung ; Auswanderung ; Diskrete Entscheidung ; Einkommen ; Migrationstheorie ; Deutschland ; Ecuador ; Einwanderung ; USA ; Spanien

Beteiligte, Orts- und Zeitangaben

• Ereignis: Geistige Schöpfung
• (wer): Bertoli, Simone ; Fernández-Huertas Moraga, Jesús ; Ortega, Francesc
• Ereignis: Veröffentlichung
• (wer): Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
• (wo): Bonn
• (wann): 2010

Weitere Informationen

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/36837
• Letzte Aktualisierung: 10.03.2025, 11:41 MEZ