Migration, Family, and Risk Diversification

Kong-Pin Chen, Shin-Hwang Chiang and Siu Leung ()
Additional contact information
Shin-Hwang Chiang: York University, Canada

Working Papers from York University, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper proposes a formal model of migration in which workers are heterogeneous and markets are stochastically correlated. We derive and characterize the optimal migration pattern of a family. It is shown to depend on differences in expected earnings, costs of migration, income risks, and more importantly market correlations. We show that migration can take place even when migrants earn less abroad and, more surprisingly, when earnings in the foreign country are riskier for every member of the family. Moreover, it may well be an optimal arrangement to have only dependents migrate, thus rationalizing the recent dependent-oriented migration flows from places like Hong Kong and Taiwan. We also provide some evidence in support of our theory.

Keywords: Migration; Emigration; Family; Risk Diversification; Dependents (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D81 F22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39 pages
Date: 2002-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dept.econ.yorku.ca/research/workingPapers/working_papers/migr3.pdf First version, 2002
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 500 Can't connect to dept.econ.yorku.ca:80 (No such host is known. )

Related works:
Journal Article: Migration, Family, and Risk Diversification (2003)
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:yca:wpaper:2002_01

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from York University, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Support ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).