What Fundamentals Drive World Migration?

Timothy James Hatton () and Jeffrey Gale Williamson ()

No 3559, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: OECD governments note rising immigration with alarm and grapple with policies aimed at selecting certain migrants and keeping out others. Economists appear to be well armed to advise governments since they are responsible for an impressive literature that examines the characteristics of individual immigrants, their absorption and the consequences of their migration on both sending and receiving regions. Economists are, however, much less well armed to speak to the determinants of the world migrations that give rise to public alarm. This Paper offers a quantitative assessment of the economic and demographic fundamentals that have driven and are driving world migration, across different historical epochs and around the world. The Paper is organized around three questions: how do the standard theories of migration perform when confronted with evidence drawn from more than a century of world migration experience? How do inequality and poverty influence world migration? Is it useful to distinguish between migration pressure and migration ex-post, or between the potential demand for visas and the actual use of them?

Keywords: international; migration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J10 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002-09
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cepr.org/pubs/dps/DP3559.asp (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Working Paper: What Fundamentals Drive World Migration? (2003)
Working Paper: What Fundamentals Drive World Migration? (2002)
Working Paper: What Fundamentals Drive World Migration? (2002)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:3559

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.cepr.org/pubs/dps/DP3559.asp

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers
Address: Centre for Economic Policy Research, 53--56 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DG
Series data maintained by ().