Migration and Regional Trade Agreement: a (new) Gravity Estimation

This paper investigates the role of Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) on bilateral international migration. By increasing the information on the potential destination country, RTAs may favour bilateral migration flows among member countries. Building on the gravity model for migration by Anderson (2011), our econometric strategy controls for the multilateral resistance to migration (Bertoli and Fernandez-Huertas Moraga, 2013) and solves the zero migration flows problem by using a censored quantile regression approach. Further, the endogeneity problem of RTAs in migration settlement is addressed by using IV censored quantile regression (Chernozhukov and Hansen 2008). Our results suggest that the presence of a RTA stimulates the migration flows among member countries. The pro-migration effect of RTAs is magnified if the agreement includes also provisions easing bureaucratic procedures for visa and asylum among member countries. Finally, we find a non-linear effect of RTAs across the quantiles of the distribution of migration settlements.