The Role of Risk and Risk Aversion in an Individual's Migration Decision

This paper proposes a simple, partial equilibrium model for studying an individual's migration decisions. It shows that an individual may choose to delay migration when the condition appears to be favorable, giving rise to the “waiting” behavior observed in the data. Using a closed-form solution, it also examines how the duration of the waiting is affected by a number of economic actors such as the risks associated with the wages in regions of origin and destination, the individual's attitude toward risk, etc