We study the effects of emigration on bribery experience and attitudes towards corruption in the migrants' countries of origin. Using data from the Gallup Balkan Monitor survey and instrumental variable analysis, we find that having relatives abroad reduces the likelihood of bribing public officials, renders bribe-taking behavior by public officials less acceptable, and reduces the likelihood of being asked for bribes by public officials. Receiving monetary remittances does not change the beneficial effects regarding bribe paying and attitudes toward corruption; however, remittances counteract the beneficial effect on bribe solicitations by public officials. Overall, our findings support the conjecture that migration contributes to the transfer of norms and practices from destination to source countries.

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Does an extra year of schooling augment one's propensity to migrate? In a naive regression, which does not account for the potential reverse causality and omitted variables, the coefficient of education is likely to be biased. To deal with the problems of endogeneity, we use parental education as an instrument for own education. The data come from a survey on preparedness to emigrate from Kosovo, carried out in the summer of 2008. Two-stage residual inclusion multinomial probit results suggest that an extra year of education increases the probability of taking concrete steps to realise migration intentions by up to 9 percentage points.

Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia in February 2008, but substantial proportions of its population are expressing their lack of confidence by preparing to emigrate. In this paper, we present evidence from a customized post‐independence survey (1,367 face‐to face interviews) on emigration intentions in Kosovo, carried out in June 2008. Thirty per cent of the respondents from the Albanian‐speaking majority have taken concrete steps to move abroad, and emigration intentions have again risen to their pre‐independence peak. Strikingly, it is the better educated and those with higher incomes that are more likely to exit. Ethnic Serbs (the largest minority group) are less likely to emigrate than Kosovo’s ethnic majority.