Climatic Factors as Determinants of International Migration: Redux

Michel Beine and Christopher Parsons

DEM Discussion Paper Series from Department of Economics at the University of Luxembourg

Abstract: In this paper, we revisit the issue of environmental change as a potential determinant of international migration, thereby providing an extension of our earlier paper. In contrast to Beine and Parsons (2015) and in light of recent empirical contributions, we adopt an alternative identification strategy in which we only include fixed effects together with our measures of climatic change in order to quantify the net partial effect of climatic change on bilateral migration. Again drawing on panel data from 1960-2000, we further exploit the dyadic dimension of our data to highlight the importance of neighbouring countries and former colonial powers in determining the direction of climate-induced emigration. We additionally highlight the importance of how differences in modelling climate change can lead to differing results. Our baseline results suggest that climatic change affects individuals’ credit constraints more than their desire to move. Our key findings are that natural disasters deter emigration from all origin countries but importantly spur emigration to neighbouring countries while for middle income origins, natural disasters while deterring migration, foster emigration to former colonial powers.

Keywords: International Migration, Environmental change; Natural disasters (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-env, nep-int, nep-mig and nep-res
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Journal Article: Climatic Factors as Determinants of International Migration: Redux (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:luc:wpaper:16-11

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