The role of unemployment and job change when estimating the returns to migration

Arbeitspapier

Estimating the returns to migration from East to West Germany, we focus on pre-migration employment dynamics, earnings uncertainty, and job change. Migrants are found to be negatively selected with respect to labor market outcomes, with a large drop in earnings and employment during the last few months before migration. We find sizeable positive earnings and employment gains of migration both in comparison to staying or job change. The gains vary considerably with pre-migration earnings and with the counterfactual considered. Future migrants haveworse expectations for their labor market prospects in the East and migrants show a greater openness to mobility.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IAB-Discussion Paper ; No. 37/2020

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers ; Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics: Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population; Neighborhood Characteristics ; Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration ; Socialist Systems and Transitional Economies: Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics
• Subject: migration ; returns ; selection ; unemployment ; moving costs

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Emmler, Julian ; Fitzenberger, Bernd
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB)
• (where): Nürnberg
• (when): 2020

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/234295
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET