Graduate migration in Spain: the impact of the great recession on a low mobility country

Raul Ramos and Vicente Royuela

No 201608, AQR Working Papers from University of Barcelona, Regional Quantitative Analysis Group

Abstract: This work studies the impact that the Great Recession has had on the migration of graduates in Spain, a country with low international mobility for graduates but where push factors associated to the crisis have probably changed their mobility patterns. Our empirical analysis first adopts a macro approach by estimating a gravity model taking advantage of the recent publication of the IAB brain-drain data. This dataset covers information for 20 OECD destination countries by gender, country of origin and educational level, for the period 1980-2010. Next, we use individual data from different surveys addressed to Catalan graduates and recent Ph.D. holders carried out by AQU in order to provide new evidence on the drivers and impacts of changing trends in their migration behaviour. Our hypothesis is that internal mobility has been replaced by international migration for recent graduates for two reasons: first, due to the generalized increased in unemployment across the whole country (push factor), and second, due to the better skill and educational matches in other European labour markets (pull factor) than in the Spanish one, where the incidence of overeducation is among the highest of OECD countries.

Keywords: Graduate migration; overeducation; international migration; great recession JEL classification:JEL: F22; J61; R23; I25 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2016-04, Revised 2016-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur and nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Chapter: Graduate migration in Spain: the impact of the Great Recession on a low-mobility country (2017)
Working Paper: Graduate migration in Spain: the impact of the great recession on a low mobility country (2016)
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