Split Decisions: Household Finance When a Policy Discontinuity Allocates Overseas Work

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Clemens, Michael A.; Tiongson, Erwin R.
• 署名单位: IZA Institute Labor Economics; Georgetown University; Asian Institute of Management
• 刊物名称: REVIEW OF ECONOMICS AND STATISTICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0034-6535
• DOI: 10.1162/REST_a_00657
• 发表日期: 2017-07
• 页码: 531-543
• 关键词: international migration; field experiment; MIGRANTS; remittances; education; IMPACT; income

摘要

Temporary overseas work can both raise a family's income and split the household geographically, with theoretically ambiguous net effects on spending, finance, and labor supply decisions. We study a policy discontinuity in the Philippines that quasi-randomly assigned temporary, partial-household migration for high-wage jobs inKorea. This allows quasiexperimental estimates of reduced-form effects of migration. We find that migration causes large changes in households' spending and savingnot only through remittances but also migration-induced shifts in household decision-making power. Migration does not reduce labor supply by nonmigrants. Common nonexperimental estimators would have been subject to substantial selection bias in this setting.