Cultural Change and the Migration Choice

Mauro Lanati and Alessandra Venturini

No 49, Discussion Papers from Central European Labour Studies Institute (CELSI)

Abstract: Cultural differences play an important role in shaping migration patterns. The conventional proxies for cross country cultural differences - such as common language, ethnicity, genetic traits or religion - implicitly assume that cultural proximity between two countries is constant over time and symmetric, which is far from realistic. This paper proposes a tractable model for international migration which explicitly allows for the time varying and asymmetric dimensions of cultural proximity. Similarly to Disdier et al (2010) we assume that the evolution of bilateral cultural affinity over time is reflected in the intensity of bilateral trade in cultural goods. Our empirical framework includes a comprehensive set of high dimensional fixed effects which enables for the identification of the impact of cultural proximity on migration over and beyond the effect of pre-existing cultural and historical ties. The results are robust across different econometric techniques and suggest that positive changes in cultural relationships over time foster bilateral migration.

Keywords: Migration; Trade in Cultural Goods; Gravity Model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F16 F22 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-02-26
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul, nep-int and nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Cultural Change and the Migration Choice (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cel:dpaper:49

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