Unilateral Facilitation Does Not Raise International Labor Migration from the Philippines

Beam, Emily; McKenzie, David; Yang, Dean

doi:10.1257/rct.1888

Cited by 26 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Other papers have tested for information barriers in the context of international migration. Beam, McKenzie, and Yang (2016) and Beam (2016) find no effect of information provision on eventual international migration from the Philippines. One explanation for this is that other constraints are more likely to be contemporaneously binding for international migrants than internal ones.…”

Section: Comparison To Literature On Information Frictions In Migrationmentioning

confidence: 94%

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Hidden Income and the Perceived Returns to Migration

Baseler¹

2018

AEA Randomized Controlled Trials

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Urban workers in Kenya earn twice as much as rural workers with the same level of education. Why don't more rural workers migrate to cities? In this paper, I use two field experiments to show that low migration is partly due to underestimation of urban incomes by rural Kenyans, and that this inaccurate information can be sustained by migrants' strategic motives to hide income to minimize remittance obligations. I first show that rural Kenyans underestimate bigcity incomes considerably, despite the fact that two-thirds of households have a member who has migrated in the past. Parents underestimate their migrant children's incomes by 50% on average, and underestimation is larger when the migrant's incentive to hide income is highin particular, when parents believe remittance obligations are high and when migrants have no stated desire to induce additional migration. In a first experiment that provides rural households with urban labor market information, treated households update their beliefs about the returns to migration and are 8 percentage points more likely to send a migrant to Nairobi. In a second field experiment, I test whether hidden income is directly distorting the decision to migrate by randomly informing rural households about the extent of hidden income among migrants in Nairobi. I find that hidden income dampens migration aspirations: learning about the average degree of hidden income increases planned migration to Nairobi by 13 percentage points.

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Section: Comparison To Literature On Information Frictions In Migrationmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…5 Beam et al (2016) offer information about job search and passport processing to prospective migrants from the Philippines, but find no effect on migration. Beam (2016) induces rural individuals in the Philippines to attend job fairs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Hidden Income and the Perceived Returns to Migration

Baseler¹

2018

AEA Randomized Controlled Trials

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“…Bilateral facilitation policies involve more demand-side-oriented cooperation with governments or employers in destination countries and include the formalization of agreements to allow labor migration of specified numbers and types of workers. Beam, McKenzie, and Yang (2015) found that without parallel bilateral facilitation, efforts at unilateral facilitation were largely unsuccessful in increasing migration rates.…”

Section: Basic Elements Of a Bilateral Labor Agreementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Pacific Island countries invest significant time and effort compiling and collating the necessary documentation for workers' visa applications to Australia and New Zealand, to ensure that visas are expedited quickly enough to meet flight departure and employment commencement timeframes (Luthria 2013a). Support for securing a passport is also found to increase job-search effort and the likelihood of obtaining a job interview for an overseas job (Beam Beam, McKenzie, and Yang 2015). This has been extremely important to maintaining relationships between employers and officials in these countries.…”

Section: Basic Elements Of a Bilateral Labor Agreementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Managed Labor Migration in Afghanistan

Smith¹

2018

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International labor migration is becoming an increasingly important employment strategy for developing countries. However, while increasing mobility creates huge potential increases in global welfare, accessing these gains requires careful management and facilitation of labor flows to avoid low-level equilibria. Sending countries will need to design labor-sending systems that balance increased mobility with protection throughout the entire migration process, while ensuring that supply and demand for specific skills are matched. This note proposes a structure for designing a labor-sending system and applies this structure to an assessment of the existing labor-sending system in Afghanistan, which is currently in very nascent stages and is missing many fundamental elements. It then applies the findings of this assessment to propose a way forward in building Afghanistan's labor-sending system, along with an estimate of how long it will take for the system to become operational.

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“…As described above, the high fixed costs of migration seem to deter internal and international migration in Myanmar, particularly by the poorest households. While provision of information and assistance with documentation may make migration more successful, these actions do not seem to encourage additional migration (Beam, McKenzie, and Yang 2015). However, relaxing financial constraints by providing subsidies or loans to potential migrants may allow additional households to migrate.…”

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confidence: 99%

Myanmar's Future Jobs

Cunningham¹,

Muñoz²

2018

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Excellent administrative support was provided by Khay Mar San and Corinne Bernaldez. The reports was prepared under the guidance of Victoria Kwakwa, Vice President for East Asia and Pacific; Ulrich Zachau and Ellen Goldstein (former and current Country Directors for Myanmar), Abdoulaye Seck and Gevorg Sargsyan (former and current Country Managers for Myanmar) and Jehan Arulpragasm and Philip O'Keefe (social protection sector managers) at the World Bank. The preparation benefitted from detailed peer review guidance provided by Tom Farole, Gabriel Demombynes, Parmesh Shah, and Maryla Maliszewska as well as Lars Sondergaard, Shabih Mohib, Rawang Rojvanit, and many colleagues at the World Bank who provided insights, suggestions, and improvements to the report process and the final document. The team wishes to thank the participants in numerous consultation meetings with the Ministries of Planning and Finance; Labor, Immigration and Population; Agriculture, Livestock, and Irrigation; and Commerce as well as the Union of Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry. We are particularly grateful for their written comments on the final draft of the report. The report also benefitted from broad consultations with civil society, the Myanmar academic community, the private sector, and international development partners. The team is deeply grateful to Dr. Sean Turnell and the Myanmar Development Institute for their gentle guidance throughout the process. Myanmar's Future Jobs: Embracing Modernity Main Report 1 ABOUT THIS REPORT Jobs are a priority policy area for Myanmar. Myanmar has enjoyed rapid economic growth and structural transformation in recent years. This has been accompanied by an expansion of jobs in the private domestic sector, but given the magnitude of the number of jobs in Myanmar-more than 24 million-the new sectors have made only a small dent in expanding job quantity or quality. Economic growth and private sector development are necessary, but not sufficient, to create the jobs that Myanmar needs. The jobs picture in Myanmar is complex. More than one-third of workers own a family farm, and another 16 percent are agricultural laborers. Another one in four people own their own non-farm household businesses. Among wage earners who do not work in agriculture, half are in small firms-and thus are likely to receive few worker protections-while the other half work in large, domestic or foreign private sector firms or in government jobs. This heterogeneous job picture requires heterogeneous solutions. The challenge for some job sectors (such as large private sector firms) is to increase the number of jobs, while for others, (such as farms or household enterprises) it is to increase workers' productivity and jobs quality-which might even lead to fewer, yet better, jobs in these job sectors.

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Unilateral Facilitation Does Not Raise International Labor Migration from the Philippines

Cited by 26 publications

References 22 publications

Hidden Income and the Perceived Returns to Migration

Hidden Income and the Perceived Returns to Migration

Managed Labor Migration in Afghanistan

Myanmar's Future Jobs

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