The Long-Term Impact of International Migration on Economic Decision-Making : Evidence from a Migration Lottery and Lab-in-the-Field Experiments
This paper studies how migration from a poor to a rich country affects key economic beliefs, preference parameters, and transnational household decision-making efficiency. The setting is the migration of Tongans to New Zealand through a migration l...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2016
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2016/10/26836670/long-term-impact-international-migration-economic-decision-making-evidence-migration-lottery-lab-in-the-field-experiments http://hdl.handle.net/10986/25165 |
| Summary: | This paper studies how migration from a
poor to a rich country affects key economic beliefs,
preference parameters, and transnational household
decision-making efficiency. The setting is the migration of
Tongans to New Zealand through a migration lottery program.
In a 10-year follow-up survey of individuals applying for
this program, the study elicited risk and time preferences
and pro-market beliefs. It also linked migrants and
potential migrants to a partner household consisting of
family members who would stay behind if the migrants moved.
Survey participants played lab-in-the-field games designed
to measure the degree of intra-family trust and the
efficiency of intra-family decision-making. Migration
provides a large and permanent positive shock to income, a
large change in economic institutions, and a reduction in
interactions with partner household members. Despite these
changes, the study finds no significant impacts of migration
on risk and time preferences, pro-market beliefs, or the
decision-making efficiency of transnational households. This
stability in the face of such a large and life-changing
event lends credence to economic models of migration that
treat these determinants of decision-making as
time-invariant, and contrasts with recent evidence on
preference changes after negative shocks. |
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