Impacts of Temporary Migration on Development in Origin Countries

Abstract

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

The Effect of Low-Skill Immigration Restrictions on Us Firms and Workers: Evidence from a Randomized Lottery

“…There is some potential for our estimates overstate the aggregate impact of H-2B visas, as "winning" firms may be, to some extent, stealing some business from "losing" firms. On the other hand, the group that is likely the largest beneficiary of the program-immigrant workers and their families (Gibson and McKenzie 2014;Bossavie et al 2022)-is not subject to this concern. There are also compelling reasons to think that there are benefits of increasing the H-2B visas quota that our short-run estimates under a fixed quota do not fully capture.…”

Strategy for Optimizing Human Capital Export from Pakistan: A Game-Theoretic Approach with a Focus on Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

“…The role of family and social networks in facilitating migration is a recurrent theme in Pakistani migration literature (Bossavie and Özden, 2023;Sitompul 2023). They have explored role of cultural norms and social structures in Influencing economic development and migration patterns in Pakistan providing a backdrop to understand the social dimensions influencing human capital export from Pakistan.…”

Capital Markets, Temporary Migration and Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Bangladesh

“…16 See for example Mendola and Carletto (2012) in Albania, Acosta (2006) in El Salvador, Amuedo-Dorantes and Pozo (2006) in Mexico, Binzel and Assaad (2011) in Egypt and Lokshin and Glinskaya (2009) in Nepal. For a recent summary of the literature on the topic, see Bossavie and Özden (2023) 17 We use the average annual survival rate of micro-enterprises from McKenzie and Paffhausen (2019), and average net incomes generated by household enterprises in Bangladesh from the HIES 2016/2017 to compute total incomes. We then compare this to the average initial capital investment reported in the World Bank Formal and Informal Enterprise Survey for Bangladesh.…”

“…This includes migration episodes that were planned as temporary from the outset as well as moves which were intended to be permanent but turned out to be temporary, ex-post. (For further discussion, see Bossavie and Özden (2023)). Earnings potential abroad may be misjudged or the migrants may be forced return home unexpectedly and prematurely, before a savings target is reached.…”