Are Immigrants More Mobile Than Natives? Evidence From Germany

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in Are Immigrants More Mobile Than Natives? Evidence from Germany Matthias Schündeln D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E S ABSTRACTAre Immigrants More Mobile Than Natives? Evidence from Germany * Low rates of internal migration in many European countries contribute to the persistence of significant regional labor market differences. To further our understanding of the underlying reasons I study internal migration in Germany, using the Mikrozensus, a very large sample of households living in Germany. The first contribution of this paper is to quantify the low mobility of the German population by estimating the unobserved cost of migration. I then focus on the differences between immigrants and natives, and start by presenting reducedform econometric evidence for the hypothesis that immigrants, once they are in the country of destination, are more mobile than natives. Observable, individual-level characteristics can only explain part of this finding. To estimate differences in the responsiveness to labor market characteristics that are due to unobserved characteristics, I then estimate conditional logit models of the migration decision across the German federal states. I find significantly higher responsiveness to labor market differentials in the immigrant population than in the native population. Unobserved moving costs for immigrants are estimated to be only about 37% of this same cost for natives. The findings bear on the assessment of the economic impact of immigration, and the paper contributes to the current immigration-related policy debates that feature prominently in many European countries, and that likely will continue to be important in light of the ongoing EU expansion and the expected resulting east-west migration.JEL Classification: J61, R23

Immigration and structural change: Evidence from post-war Germany

“…tives (Borjas, 2001;Røed and Schøne, 2012;Schündeln, 2007). We also find that districts with high inflows of expellees between 1950 and 1961 tended to experience faster sectoral change.…”

“…He also finds that wage convergence across US states is faster in high-immigration periods. In a similar spirit, Schündeln (2007) presents evidence for Germany that immigrants react stronger than natives to regional wage and employment differentials (even after controlling for individual characteristics). Using German micro data, Schündeln estimates that the unobserved costs of moving between German states are about 2.7 times larger for natives than they are for immigrants.…”

Migración interna y urbanización sin eficiencia en países en desarrollo: evidencia para Ecuador

“…Primero, se encuentra que el salario tiene un efecto positivo en la decisión de migrar pero pierde capacidad explicativa cuando se incorporan las variables que capturan las características estructurales del país: la diversidad étnica y la especialización productiva. Estos resultados son coherentes parcialmente con las conclusiones obtenidas por Rebhun y Goldstein (2009), pero la migración interna puede generar pérdidas en las provincias expulsoras como lo señala Burda (1993) y otras investigaciones recientes (Schündeln, 2014;Xiaoling et al, 2013). Segundo, se encuentra que las variables relacionadas con el capital humano pueden ser mecanismo clave para reducir la migración interna, en particular en las regiones que la emigración expulsa la mano de obra productiva y genera disminución de capacidad productiva en ellas.…”

“…No obstante, las personas no siempre optimizan su utilidad, sino que la migración puede provocar desutilidad o pérdidas sociales (Xiaoling, Li, Zong, Hua, Rong y Abuduhade, 2013;Schündeln, 2014). Aunque la migración urbana-urbana puede jugar un rol clave en la asignación del trabajo en el mercado laboral y puede ser relevante su participación en la migración interna (Yap, 1976), el tipo de migración interna que predomina es la migración rural-urbana (Niu y Qi, 2013), al menos en los países en desarrollo.…”

Explaining the low labor productivity in East Germany – A spatial analysis

“…It is well established that unobserved migration costs seem to be high in Germany, given that in general we do not observe significant migration flows in response to economic conditions (e.g. Schündeln, 2005, andDecressin, 1994). If we find 8 significant differences in worker characteristics between East and West, these could be caused either by the different educational backgrounds, or by self-selected migration of high-skilled East German workers into the West.…”