Do Migrants Improve Governance at Home? Evidence from a Voting Experiment

Catia Batista and Pedro Vicente

No 2011004, Norface Discussion Paper Series from Norface Research Programme on Migration, Department of Economics, University College London

Abstract: Can international migration promote better institutions at home by raising the demand for political accountability? In order to examine this question, we designed a behavioral measure of the population's desire for better governance. A postcard was distributed to households with the pledge that, if enough postcards were mailed back, results from a survey module on perceived corruption would be made public in the national media. Using data from a tailored household survey, we examine the determinants of our behavioral measure of demand for political accountability (i.e. of undertaking the costly action of mailing the postcard), and isolate the positive effect of international emigration using locality level variation. The estimated effects are robust to the use of instrumental variables, including both past migration and macro shocks in the migrant destination countries. We find that the estimated effects can be mainly attributed to those who emigrated to countries with better governance, especially return migrants.

Keywords: international migration; governance; political accountability; institutions; effects of emigration in origin countries; household survey; Cape Verde; sub-Saharan Africa. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 O12 O15 O43 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-mig and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (145)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Do Migrants Improve Governance at Home? Evidence from a Voting Experiment (2011)
Working Paper: Do Migrants Improve Governance at Home? Evidence from a Voting Experiment (2011)
Working Paper: Do Migrants Improve Governance at Home? Evidence from a Voting Experiment (2010)
Working Paper: Do Migrants Improve Governance at Home? Evidence from a Voting Experiment (2009)
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