Social Science > Emigration and Immigration

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Myrto Oikonomou
Cross-border migration can act as an important adjustment mechanism to country-specific shocks. Yet, depending on who moves, it can have unintended consequences for business cycle stability. This paper argues that the skill composition of migration plays a critical role. When migration flows become more concentrated in skilled labor an important trade-off arises. On the one hand, migration releases unemployment pressures for the origin countries. On the other hand, it generates negative compositional effects (the so-called “brain drain” effects) and skill imbalances, which reduce supply capacity in origin countries. This paper analyses quantitatively the impact of cyclical migration in an open-economy Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model with endogenous migration flows, trade linkages, search and matching frictions, and skill heterogeneity. I apply this framework to the case of the Greek emigration wave following the European Debt Crisis. What I find is that emigration flows implied strong negative effects for capital formation, leading to more than a 15 percentage point drop in investment. Rather than stabilizing the Greek business cycle, labor mobility led to a deeper and more protracted recession.
Ruchir Agarwal
,
Patrick Gaulé
, and
Geoff Smith
This paper studies the impact of U.S. immigration barriers on global knowledge production. We present four key findings. First, among Nobel Prize winners and Fields Medalists, migrants to the U.S. play a central role in the global knowledge network—representing 20-33% of the frontier knowledge producers. Second, using novel survey data and hand-curated life-histories of International Math Olympiad (IMO) medalists, we show that migrants to the U.S. are up to six times more productive than migrants to other countries—even after accounting for talent during one’s teenage years. Third, financing costs are a key factor preventing foreign talent from migrating abroad to pursue their dream careers, particularly for talent from developing countries. Fourth, certain ‘push’ incentives that reduce immigration barriers—by addressing financing constraints for top foreign talent—could increase the global scientific output of future cohorts by 42 percent. We concludeby discussing policy options for the U.S. and the global scientific community.
International Monetary Fund. European Dept.
This Selected Issues paper estimates the fiscal impact of demographic changes in Portugal and the euro area over the period 2015–2100. Under the baseline projections of the United Nations, Portugal is among the countries in the euro area that is expected to be most hurt by demographic developments. During 2015–2100, its population is expected to shrink by about 30 percent while the old-age dependency ratio is expected to more than double, driven mostly by low fertility, higher longevity, and migration outflows. Age-related public spending would increase by about 6 percentage points of GDP under the baseline over the period 2015–50, and the public debt path would become unsustainable in the absence of offsetting policies.
International Monetary Fund
This Selected Issues paper analyzes the growth prospects of the Greek economy. It is estimated that exceptional factors boosted growth by 1 percentage point per year in recent years and, under current trends and policies, growth is likely to drop to about 3 percent by the end of the decade. The paper places the recent strong growth performance of the Greek economy in a historical and international context. It also assesses the impact of exceptional factors on growth, and presents statistical estimates of potential growth.