Providing recently laid off workers with cash benefits may help them overcome mobility costs and thereby stimulate labor mobility. On the other hand, cash benefits may dampen the employment shock and reduce the incentive to move. In this paper, we test these two competing mechanisms against each...

Providing recently laid offworkers with cash benefits may help them overcome mobility costs and thereby stimulate labor mobility. On the other hand, cash benefits may dampen the employment shock and reduce the incentive to move. In this paper, we test these two competing mechanisms against each...

This paper examines the determinants of temporary migration and return decisions among immigrants in Italy, drawing on a novel administrative dataset covering 3.7 million foreignborn individuals between 2011 and 2022. By reconstructing individual migration histories, we estimate migration...

This paper estimates the causal effect of income taxation on inter-provincial migration in Canada. We exploit a major tax decentralization reform between 1998-2001 that led to some provinces lowering their marginal and average tax rates more than others, particularly for top earners. Using a...

This paper estimates the causal effect of income taxation on inter-provincial migration in Canada. We exploit a major tax decentralization reform between 1998-2001 that led to some provinces lowering their marginal and average tax rates more than others, particularly for top earners. Using a...

How do institutional barriers to migration shape fertility in developing economies? We analyze the staggered removal of institutional barriers to rural-to-urban migration across 283 Chinese cities. We find that reducing these frictions led to a significant and persistent increase in fertility in...

This paper provides a non-technical summary of recent research on why people stay put rather than move, even in the face of adverse local economic shocks. I compare three frameworks for understanding migration: the moving costs model, the spatial frictions model, and a newer approach called the...

Many couples face a trade-off between advancing one spouse's career or the other's. We study this trade-off using administrative data from Germany and Sweden. Using an event study approach, we find that when couples move across commuting zones, men's earnings increase more than women's. To...

We examine how shocks to migration opportunities affect schooling outcomes in origin communities. We focus on the migration between Mexico and the United States, and exploit the expansion of the Secure Communities program in the US - a federal datasharing program that substantially increased the...

This paper investigates how pro-environmental preferences interact with structural regional conditions in shaping interregional migration intentions across EU regions. Survey-based individual data are combined with regional indicators in multinomial logit models of short- and long-term migration...

This paper examines whether and how migration decisions respond to state-level changes in abortion policy in the United States. Using information on gestational age limit abortion restrictions and interstate migration from 2006-2019, we estimate a gravity model of migration. We predict bilateral...

Migration in the East Asia and Pacific (EAP) region is growing in importance, shaped by workers seeking opportunities abroad and governments implementing policies to meet skills needs and stimulate economic growth. Most migrants in the area are economic migrants, voluntarily moving abroad to...

We examine sorting behavior across metropolitan areas by skill over individuals' life cycles. We show that high-skill workers disproportionately sort into high-amenity areas, but do so relatively early in life. Workers of all skill levels tend to move towards lower-amenity areas during their...

We examine sorting behavior across metropolitan areas by skill over individuals' life cycles. We show that high-skill workers disproportionately sort into high-amenity areas, but do so relatively early in life. Workers of all skill levels tend to move towards lower-amenity areas during their...

This study investigates broadband internet's impact on rural-urban migration in China, using the Universal Broadband and Telecommunication Services pilot program as a quasi-experimental setting. Analyzing China Household Finance Survey data (2013-2021) through difference-in-differences...

We examine the impact of rural road connectivity on economic and social outcomes in the context of India’s PMGSY, the world’s largest rural road program. Using a novel village-level survey explicitly designed around PMGSY’s rollout, we exploit quasi-random variation in road placement to...

We investigate the causal relationship between inventor migration and regional innovation in the context of the large-scale migration shock from East to West Germany between World War II and the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961. Leveraging a newly constructed, century-spanning dataset on...

We investigate the causal relationship between inventor migration and regional innovation in the context of the large-scale migration shock from East to West Germany between World War II and the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961. Leveraging a newly constructed, century-spanning dataset on...

Distance is a primary deterrent to welfare-improving migration, yet less is known about how this deterrent effect varies across individuals. This study investigates gender differences in the distance dependence of internal migration. Analyzing rich, individual-level panel data from Japan with a...