In Search of Magic Dirt: An Exploration of Labor Mobility across Developed Nations

Avi Woodward-Kelen ()

No 884, LIS Working papers from LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg

Abstract: This paper seeks to explore the multifaceted incentives faced by potential migrants across developed countries, focusing on the empirical examination the drivers of, and barriers to, migration. Leveraging census microdata from OECD countries, this paper adapts methodologies from Clemens et al. (2019) to quantify wage disparities and employs a quasi-gravity trade model to analyze migration elasticity in relation to wage gaps, natural barriers (geographical and cultural differences), and policy constraints. A straightforward application of the Roy-Borjas model finds no evidence of selection bias on unobservable characteristics, although some migrant groups systematically outperform host-country natives. I find that migration patterns are highly similar to patterns of international trade in their sensitivity to distance, and my variance decomposition analysis finds that natural barriers are approximately as good as wage gaps are in predicting the variance in migration decisions.

JEL-codes: F22 F66 J61 J71 K37 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 71 pages
Date: 2024-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int, nep-mig and nep-ure
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lis:liswps:884

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