Should they stay or should they go? Climate Migrants and Local Conflicts

Valentina Bosetti, Cristina Cattaneo and Giovanni Peri

No 24447, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: There is extensive evidence that higher temperature increases the probability of local conflict. There is also some evidence that emigration represents an important margin of adaptation to climatic change. In this paper we analyse whether migration influences the link between warming and conflicts by either attenuating the effects in countries of origin and/or by spreading them to countries of destination. We find that in countries where emigration propensity, as measured by past diaspora, was higher, increases in temperature had a smaller effects on conflict probability, consistent with emigration functioning as "escape valve" for local tensions. We find no evidence that climate-induced migration increased the probability of conflict in receiving countries.

JEL-codes: F22 H56 Q34 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-env, nep-int and nep-mig
Note: EEE ITI LS
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published as Valentina Bosetti & Cristina Cattaneo & Giovanni Peri, 2021. "Should they stay or should they go? Climate migrants and local conflicts," Journal of Economic Geography, vol 21(4), pages 619-651.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w24447.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Should they stay or should they go? Climate migrants and local conflicts (2021)
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:nbr:nberwo:24447

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w24447

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().