David A. Jaeger () (Department of Economics, College of William and Mary) Holger Bonin () (IZA) Thomas Dohmen () (IZA) Armin Falk () (Department of Economics, University of Bonn) David Huffman () (IZA) Uwe Sunde () (IZA)
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Geographic mobility is important for the functioning of labor markets because it brings labor resources to where they can be most efficiently used. It has long been hypothesized that individuals' migration propensities depend on their attitudes towards risk, but the empirical evidence, to the extent that it exists, has been indirect. In this paper, we use newly available data from the German Socio-Economic Panel to measure directly the relationship between migration propensities and attitudes towards risk. We find that individuals who are more willing to take risks are more likely to migrate between labor markets in Germany. This result is robust to stratifying by age, sex, education, national origin, and a variety of other demographic characteristics, as well as to the level of aggregation used to define geographic mobility. The effect is substantial relative to the unconditional migration propensity and compared to the conventional determinants of migration. We also find that being more willing to take risks is more important for the extensive than for the intensive margin of migration.
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Paper provided by Department of Economics, College of William and Mary in its series Working Papers with number
50.
David A. Jaeger & Holger Bonin & Thomas Dohmen & Armin Falk & David Huffman & Uwe Sunde, 2007.
"Direct Evidence on Risk Attitudes and Migration,"
CReAM Discussion Paper Series
0703, Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM), Department of Economics, University College London.
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Find related papers by JEL classification: J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, and Vacancies - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty R23 - Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Francesco Daveri & Riccardo Faini, .
"Where do migrants go?,"
Working Papers
124, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
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Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)
Herings P. Jean-Jacques & Predtetchinski Arkadi, 2009.
"Bargaining with Non-convexities,"
Research Memoranda
042, Maastricht : METEOR, Maastricht Research School of Economics of Technology and Organization.
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