Does Migration Foster Exports? Evidence from Africa
This paper aims at assessing the impact of migration on export performance and more particularly the effect of African migrants on African trade. Relying on a new data set on international bilateral migration recently released by the World Bank spa...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2014
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2014/01/18757846/migration-foster-exports-evidence-africa http://hdl.handle.net/10986/16810 |
| Summary: | This paper aims at assessing the impact
of migration on export performance and more particularly the
effect of African migrants on African trade. Relying on a
new data set on international bilateral migration recently
released by the World Bank spanning from 1980 to 2010, the
authors estimate a gravity model that deals satisfactorily
with endogeneity. The results first indicate that the
pro-trade effect of migration is higher for African
countries, a finding that can be partly explained by the
substitution between migrants and institutions (the
existence of migrant networks compensating for weak contract
enforcement, for instance). This positive association is
particularly important for the exports of differentiated
products, suggesting that migrants also play an important
role in reducing information costs. Moreover, focusing on
intra-African trade, the pro-trade effect of African
migrants is larger when migrants are established in a more
geographically and ethnically distant country. All these
findings highlight the ability of African migrants to help
overcome some of the main barriers to African trade: the
weakness of institutions, information costs, cultural
differences, and lack of trust. |
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