Experimental approaches in migration studies

David McKenzie and Dean Yang

No 5395, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: The decision of whether or not to migrate has far-reaching consequences for the lives of individuals and their families. But the very nature of this choice makes identifying the impacts of migration difficult, since it is hard to measure a credible counterfactual of what the person and their household would have been doing had migration not occurred. Migration experiments provide a clear and credible way for identifying this counterfactual, and thereby allowing causal estimation of the impacts of migration. The authors provide an overview and critical review of the three strands of this approach: policy experiments, natural experiments, and researcher-led field experiments. The purpose is to introduce readers to the need for this approach, give examples of where it has been applied in practice, and draw out lessons for future work in this area.

Keywords: Population Policies; Access to Finance; Remittances; Anthropology; Debt Markets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-08-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

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Related works:
Chapter: Experimental Approaches in Migration Studies (2012)
Working Paper: Experimental Approaches in Migration Studies (2010)
Working Paper: Experimental Approaches in Migration Studies (2010)
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