Macroeconomic Consequences of Global Endogenous Migration: a General Equilibrium Analysis

In this paper, we analyze the consequences of endogenous migration flows over the coming decades in a dynamic general equilibrium model of the world economy. Such an approach has two major benefits. First, it offers a global perspective on the economic consequences of international migration flows by taking into account effects on both the destination and the origin regions. Second, by allowing migration flows to be related to economic fundamentals, they are determined endogenously in the model. We proceed by estimating the determinants of migration in an econometric model and then endogenizing migration flows by introducing the estimated relationships between demographic and income developments in our world model. We show that (i) migration could have a substantial impact on GDP growth in sending and destination regions; (ii) endogenizing migration induces important changes in the volume and the distribution of migration flows between regions compared to the United Nations projections; (iii) the size of these flows, although substantial, will not be sufficient to counteract the impact of population ageing in the receiving regions.