Rational inattention and migration decisions

Simone Bertoli, Jesús Fernández-Huertas Moraga and Lucas Guichard
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Lucas Guichard: CERDI - Centre d'Études et de Recherches sur le Développement International - IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UCA - Université Clermont Auvergne

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Abstract: Acquiring information about destinations can be costly for migrants. We model information frictions in the rational inattention framework and obtain a closed-form expression for a migration gravity equation that we bring to the data. The model predicts that flows from countries with a higher cost of information or stronger priors are less responsive to variations in economic conditions in the various destinations, as migrants rationally get less information before deciding where to move. The economet-ric analysis reveals systematic heterogeneity in the pro-cyclical behavior of migration flows across origins that is consistent with the existence of information frictions.

Keywords: gravity equation JEL codes: F22; D81; D83; international migration; information; rational inattention (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int, nep-upt and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Published in Journal of International Economics, 2020, pp.103364. ⟨10.1016/j.jinteco.2020.103364⟩

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Related works:
Journal Article: Rational inattention and migration decisions (2020)
Working Paper: Rational Inattention and Migration Decisions (2020)
Working Paper: Rational inattention and migration decisions (2019)
Working Paper: Rational inattention and migration decisions (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02902862

DOI: 10.1016/j.jinteco.2020.103364

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