Suchergebnisse

The rate of migration observed between two countries does not depend solely on their relative attractiveness, but also on the one of alternative destinations. Following the trade literature, we term the influence exerted by other destinations on bilateral flows as Multilateral Resistance to Migration, and we show how it can be accounted for when estimating the determinants of migration flows in the context of a general individual random utility maximization model. We propose the use of the Common Correlated Effects estimator (Pesaran, 2006) and apply it to high-frequency data on the Spanish immigration boom between 1997 and 2009. Compared to more restrictive estimation strategies developed in the literature, the bias goes in the expected direction: we find a smaller effect of GDP per capita and a larger effect of migration policies on bilateral flows.

The Exchange Market Pressure (EMP) index, developed by Eichengreen et al. (1994), is widely used as a tool to signal whether pressure on a currency is softened or warded off through monetary authorities' interventions or, rather, a currency crisis has originated. In this paper we show how the index is sensitive to some assumptions behind the aggregation of the information available (exchange rates, interest rates and reserves), especially when emerging countries are involved. Specifically, we address the way exchange rate variations are computed and the impact of different definitions of the reserves, and we question the constancy of the weights adopted. These issues compound with the choice of a fixed threshold when crisis episodes are identified through the EMP index. As a result, one should exert caution in subsequent econometric analyses where a dependent binary variable is built to identify crisis periods.