Taking the Skill Bias out of Global Migration

Costanza Biavaschi, Micha? Burzynski, Benjamin Elsner () and Joël Machado

No 201808, Working Papers from School of Economics, University College Dublin

Abstract: Global migration is heavily skill-biased, with tertiary-educated workers being four times more likely to migrate than workers with a lower education. In this paper, we quantify the global impact of this skill bias in migration. Based on a quantitative multi-country model with trade, we compare the current world to a counterfactual with the same number of migrants, where all migrants are neutrally selected from their countries of origin. We find that most receiving countries benefit from the skill bias in migration, while a small number of sending countries is significantly worse off. The negative effect in many sending countries is completely eliminated — and often reversed — once we account for remittances and additional migration-related externalities. In a model with all our extensions, the average welfare effect of skill-biased migration in both OECD and non-OECD countries is positive.

Keywords: Migration; Skill selection; Global welfare (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J61 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 69 pages
Date: 2018-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int and nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10197/9449 First version, 2018 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Taking the skill bias out of global migration (2020)
Working Paper: Taking the Skill Bias out of Global Migration (2018)
Working Paper: Taking the Skill Bias out of Global Migration (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucn:wpaper:201808

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