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Essays on Return Migration and Economic Growth
Ivanova, Renata ; Jeong, Byeongju (advisor) ; Akee, Randall (referee) ; Gang, Ira (referee)
This dissertation addresses different aspects of return migration of labor, which represents a challenging field for investigation due to data limitations and methodological issues. The dissertation consists of three chapters. The first chapter, written in co-authorship with Byeongju Jeong, models selection of migrants with respect to educational attainment. We attempt to explain relatively low return rates among migrants with only secondary education compared to those of low- and highly educated migrants observed in the data. We develop a two-country overlapping generations (OLG) model with emigration and return migration undertaken by agents heterogeneous in terms of education. Our model is built on the decision mechanism proposed by Borjas & Bratsberg (1996), which we augment by assimilation costs and immigration policy restrictions. The U-shape pattern of return rates with respect to education is driven by a combination of two forces: sizable wage differentials between the foreign and home countries, which decline with education, and uncertain opportunities for status adjustment to permanent residence. Our model predicts that migrants with secondary education have both incentives and opportunities to remain permanently in the foreign country. In the second chapter, using the example of Vietnam, we...
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Essays on Return Migration and Economic Growth
Ivanova, Renata ; Jeong, Byeongju (advisor) ; Akee, Randall (referee) ; Gang, Ira (referee)
This dissertation addresses different aspects of return migration of labor, which represents a challenging field for investigation due to data limitations and methodological issues. The dissertation consists of three chapters. The first chapter, written in co-authorship with Byeongju Jeong, models selection of migrants with respect to educational attainment. We attempt to explain relatively low return rates among migrants with only secondary education compared to those of low- and highly educated migrants observed in the data. We develop a two-country overlapping generations (OLG) model with emigration and return migration undertaken by agents heterogeneous in terms of education. Our model is built on the decision mechanism proposed by Borjas & Bratsberg (1996), which we augment by assimilation costs and immigration policy restrictions. The U-shape pattern of return rates with respect to education is driven by a combination of two forces: sizable wage differentials between the foreign and home countries, which decline with education, and uncertain opportunities for status adjustment to permanent residence. Our model predicts that migrants with secondary education have both incentives and opportunities to remain permanently in the foreign country. In the second chapter, using the example of Vietnam, we...
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