Macroeconomic Determinants of International Migration to the UK

Giuseppe Forte and Jonathan Portes

No 10802, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper examines the determinants of long-term international migration to the UK; we explore the extent to which migration is driven by macroeconomic variables (GDP per capita, unemployment rate) as well as law and policy (the existence of "free movement" rights for EEA nationals). We find a very large impact from free movement within the EEA. We also find that macroeconomic variables – UK GDP growth and GDP at origin – are significant drivers of migration flows; evidence for the impact of the unemployment rate in countries of origin, or of the exchange rate, however, is weak. We conclude that, while future migration flows will be driven by a number of factors, macroeconomic and otherwise, Brexit and the end of free movement will result in a large fall in immigration from EEA countries to the UK.

Keywords: immigration; EU; Brexit; UK (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J61 J68 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2017-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec, nep-lab and nep-mig
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp10802.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Macroeconomic Determinants of International Migration to the UK (2017)
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:iza:izadps:dp10802

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().