CAREER: Within City, Across Seasons or Across Borders: The Economics of Labor Movements

Stanford University, Stanford CA

Investigators

Abstract

This CAREER research project will study the economic impacts of labor migration of the poor. The research will use modern sophisticated methods to study the benefits and costs of labor movements across countries, within countries, and within cities. Many of the issues associated with labor migration are likely to increase in the future and understanding the possible spillover effects from migration is an important concern in the United States and the world. For example, many large cities in the world are facing congestion and environmental stress and whether and how to invest in transportation infrastructure is a key question to be discussed now. Understanding how to develop policies to maximize the role of migration as a poverty-reduction strategy has great promise for development around the world. The results of this research will provide guidance on policy relating to labor markets, urbanization, and international relations, thus helping the US develop well-informed policies that enhance economic growth as well understanding the possible spillover effects from migration. This is an important concern in the United States and the world. The proposal contains three interlinked projects to study internal and cross-border migration. The first project seeks to quantify the heterogeneity in returns to migration through a two-stage RCT. Prospective internal migrant will be offered either "low" or "high" subsidies. Some of those who receive "low" subsidies will be surprised with a "high" subsidy after they have made a migration decision. The second project will use an observational panel data and a suite of experiments to study the economic effects and distributional consequences of a large public transportation investment. The third project develops and estimates a binational regional spatial equilibrium model of migration focusing on the US-Mexico border migration using a dataset of Mexico-US migration flows. Providing quantitative and rigorous evidence of the benefits and costs of migration is indispensable now when there is increasing urbanization, movement of people across borders, and migration is a controversial topic world-wide. The proposed research will generate new datasets and disseminate the research findings. A theme running through the projects is the incorporation of microeconomic estimates and RCTs into spatial general equilibrium models. This method that also involve primary fieldwork data collection, is new and will help develop the methodology and estimation approaches to make progress. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.