Migration and Informal Insurance

Costas Meghir (), Ahmed Mobarak, Corina Mommaerts and Melanie Morton
Additional contact information
Costas Meghir: Cowles Foundation, Yale University, NBER, IZA, CEPR, and Institute for Fiscal Studies, https://economics.yale.edu/people/faculty/costas-meghir
Corina Mommaerts: University of Wisconsin ' Madison
Melanie Morton: Stanford University and NBER

No 2185R2, Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers from Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University

Abstract: We document that an experimental intervention offering transport subsidies for poor rural households to migrate seasonally in Bangladesh improved risk sharing. A theoretical model of endogenous migration and risk sharing shows that the effect of subsidizing migration depends on the underlying economic environment. If migration is risky, a temporary subsidy can induce an improvement in risk sharing and enable profitable migration. We estimate the model and find that the migration experiment increased welfare by 12.9%. Counterfactual analysis suggests that a permanent, rather than temporary, decline in migration costs in the same environment would result in a reduction in risk sharing.

Keywords: Informal Insurance; Migration; Bangladesh; RCT (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 D52 D91 O12 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 96 pages
Date: 2019-07, Revised 2020-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cwa, nep-exp, nep-ias and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Migration and Informal Insurance (2021)
Working Paper: Migration and Informal Insurance (2020)
Working Paper: Migration and Informal Insurance (2019)
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