Rational inattention and migration decisions

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Bertoli, Simone; Fernandez-Huertas Moraga, Jesus; Guichard, Lucas
• 署名单位: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); Universite Clermont Auvergne (UCA); Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-1996
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jinteco.2020.103364
• 发表日期: 2020
• 关键词: international migration; INFORMATION; rational inattention; gravity equation

摘要

Acquiring information about destinations can be costly for migrants. We model information frictions in the rational inattention framework and obtain a closed-form expression for a migration gravity equation that we bring to the data. The model predicts that flows from countries with a higher cost of information or stronger priors are less responsive to variations in economic conditions in the various destinations, as migrants rationally get less information before deciding where to move. The econometric analysis reveals systematic heterogeneity in the pro-cyclical behavior of migration flows across origins that is consistent with the existence of information frictions. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.