F22 - International MigrationReturn

This paper empirically analyses the determining factors of the growth in the migration rate in the countries of the Western Balkans. The analysis is carried out with panel data over 17 years from 2005 to 2021. The purpose of this paper is to analyse social variables such as unemployment and standard of living, and political variables such as corruption, political stability, government effectiveness, rule of law and the level of corruption in the migration of citizens. For this purpose, we employ different econometric models and techniques such as OLS, OLS robust fixed and random effects models, and GMM (generalized method of moments). The study's findings demonstrate that high levels of unemployment in the Western Balkan region are the primary cause of the surge in migration; thus, large levels of labour force migration are also present in these countries. The findings also show that variables related to the political situation have statistical significance in reducing migration. The paper does not find a statistically significant influence of the level of corruption on migration. The recommendations for the countries of the Western Balkan region are to create long-term sustainable employment policies and increase wages as preventive measures for migration.

In the context of increasing concerns about the demographic decline of Europe and the lack of sustainable policies to fight against it, the main purpose of this study is to estimate the migration intention of the Romanian students in economics and business administration and the influence of the determinant factors. Data are collected from a questionnaire survey applied to a sample of 1,155 students at the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi. We have applied a multinomial logistic regression model with both simple effects and interactions. The results have brought strong arguments proving the importance of personal value recognition, beliefs and attitudes, family background, as well as interactions between genders, attitude towards competition and active search for a job or between parental severity and migration legacy, as determinant factors of the students' intention to migrate to Western Europe. These results may serve regional, national and even community-based sustainable development policies for the conservation of human resources and mostly of higher-educated individuals.

Migration of population has been a significant feature of the international economy for a long time. It is an important source of income, foreign exchange and workforce for a large number of economies. The most studies dealing with the international migration consider it as efficient instrument for developing countries, because inflow of money (through remittances) has a positive impact on their economy. However, on the other hand, economically developed countries are threatened by outflow of money abroad. From this perspective, remittances may have negative consequences on the economy. This issue connected with remittances is very often neglected. The Czech Republic and most developed European countries are the immigration countries. It means that many foreigners come here because of work or study, especially from nonEU countries. The paper focuses on rarely discussed issues of migration standing on the border between demographics and economic statistics. It deals with positive and negative aspects of labour immigration with the specific focus on foreigners' behaviour - incomes, expenditures, savings and remittances. It is aimed to determine specific impact of migration and remittances on the economy of the Czech Republic.

This paper examines the effectiveness of remittances and official development assistance (ODA) in developing countries. It compares the outcomes of aid poured into the economies of the Third World for decades without any visible effect and remittances transferred by emigrants to their countries of origin which proved to be quite effective. We find that remittances have a stronger net positive effect on the increase of GDP per capita in developing economies than development aid. In addition, remittances tend to be higher than ODA funds, they are absorbed by 80-90 per cent (in comparison with 50 per cent of aid budgets spent on administrative and other costs) and do not hinge on institutional quality. The paper advocates the importance of remittances over ODA and supports the wide usage of coherent development policies executed by the developed Western economies with an aim to enhance transparent and efficient remittance transfers as one of the best methods to promote development in less-developed countries (e.g. economies in Africa, Asia or Latin America).

Together with mainly economic factors influencing the migration decisions, there is also a migration potential which is unique for every country and that largely pre-determines the outgoing migrations or labour mobility decisions. This paper compares the migration potential and migration decisions for the Czech Republic and Poland using the data for inter-regional and rural-urban migrations. These data that can be used as a proxy for migration potential, are very useful in predicting the propensity to international migration. We come to conclusions that migration potential and the propensity to migrate as a reaction to worsening of the economic conditions at home are highly correlated. The comparative analysis shows that while Poles are quite sensitive to worsening economic conditions at home, Czechs posses lower value of migration potential and therefore are not so inclined to migrations. The results might explain the high volume of migration from Poland after the EU 2004 enlargement.

In the process of European integration, regions close to a border are especially affected by labour market liberalisation. Using data from the IAB employment subsample (IABS) and the employment register (BeH) for the period before and after the opening of the border between Germany and the Czech Republic (1980-2001) I shed light on the development of wages. Both German employees and Czech commuters in the western German borderland of Bavaria are compared to other domestic and foreign workers. At the beginning of the 1990s, German legislation was relatively unrestrictive, so that it was quite easy for Czech workers to obtain a work permit beyond the border. Most of them had only low education. More than 5% of the eastern Bavarian male, low-skilled workforce was reported Czech in the early 1990s. Surprisingly, precisely in this period German employees seem to have benefited from integration, but suffered in the years afterwards, when regulations on labour permits for commuters were far stricter.

This paper analyzes possible incidence of Turkish EU accession on the emigration from Turkey to the European Union. Panel data estimators are applied on the emigration data from EU-18 into Germany in order to construct possible future scenarios of Turkish migration to the EU. Eventual migration flows from Turkey into the EU are forecasted based on the estimated results. We find that seemingly unrelated regressor is the most efficient estimator that can be applied in Turkey-EU migration framework. Our results reveal that both the network effect and target country labour market conditions represent the strongest determinants for migration, whilst the effect of per capita income is actually relatively low. In particular, Turkish per capita income does not have nearly any effect on migration, because it enters the model in two variables that work against each other. Furthermore, a very low importance of opening the German labour market for Turkish migrants is found. Estimated coefficients are used to predict migrations to Germany, and through appropriate extrapolations to the whole European Union (EU). Three scenarios of migration are created and the sensitivity of estimated coefficients on migration from Turkey into the Germany during next 25 years is further discussed in detail.

Migration studies cannot explain a paradox why migrations from regions or countries with lower economic performance to regions or countries with higher economic performance remain low even though the economic incentives of emigration are high. This gives EU stakeholders solid reasons for building serious administrative barriers and introducing "transition periods" for free movement of labour from EU-8. It is generally believed that removing barriers would cause mass labour migration. However, it might be that the problem lies elsewhere and labour migration might remain low with or without barriers. This paper analyses the pattern of Czechoslovak migrations in 1993-2004. After the split-up of Czechoslovak Federation citizens of both countries could reside and work in another country without any restrictions. This was even more simplified by the common cultural background and unique language proximity. Although the Slovak Republic was generally less successful in its economic growth than the Czech Republic, the analysis of the model of Czechoslovak migrations specified in this paper does not leed to the conclusion that economic differences between the two countries influence migration between Slovakia and the Czech Republic. It might be that economic disparities might influence migration however it happens only after they reach some critical level.

According to Abraham Maslow's motivational theory, human action is motivated by five levels of human needs. The model introduced in this paper exploits Maslow's theory to explain migration flows between regions. In the model, movement from one region to another influences migrant utility in three ways: through change in wage owing to different regional wage levels, through changes in utility connected with a migrant's safety needs, and through disarrangement of a migrant's social network. When safety and social needs are added to the model, equilibria arise in which wage differentials between regions persist.

EU enlargement is hardly to be seen as the major push factor for migration. There are mainly economic factors that influence the migration decisions. Besides it seems that there is a migration potential, unique for every country, that pre-determines the migration or labour mobility. In our paper we (i) analyze the impact of internal economic factors, such as GDP growth, unemployment and wages on the emigration rate and (ii) compare the migration potential for the country distinguished by the high ratio of outward migrations (represented by Ireland) with those of the post-communist economy as well as the ""new"" EU member (represented by the Czech Republic). We come to conclusions that economic factors have the decisive role on pre-determining the migrations and that migration potential and the propensity to migrate as a reaction to worsening of the economic conditions at home are highly correlated. These can explain why there was no mass emigration from the EU ""new"" Member States to the ""old"" Member States after the recent enlargement, as far as it comes to migration potential needed for inducing such labour moves. The potential emigrants from new EU Member States are simply not ready to go to wealthier Member States in search of better wage and employment opportunities.