The Role of Unemployment and Job Change when Estimating the Returns to Migration

Julian Emmler and Bernd Fitzenberger
Additional contact information
Julian Emmler: HU Berlin
Bernd Fitzenberger: HU Berlin

No 223, Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series from CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition

Abstract: Estimating the returns to migration from East to West Germany, this paper focuses on pre-migration employment dynamics, earnings uncertainty, and job change in the source region. Migrants are found to be negatively selected with respect to labor market outcomes, with a large drop in earnings and employment during the last few months before migration. We find sizeable positive earnings and employment gains of migration both in comparison to staying or job change. The size of the gains varies considerably with pre-migration earnings and with the counterfactual considered. Future migrants have worse expectations for their labor market prospects in the East and migrants show a greater openness to mobility.

Keywords: migration; returns; selection; unemployment; moving costs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J61 O15 P25 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-12-18
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://rationality-and-competition.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/223.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rco:dpaper:223

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series from CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Viviana Lalli ().