Project description
How migrants and refugees affect host countries
Developing countries host 85 % of the world’s displaced population. What are the economic consequences of forced migration in these countries? The EU-funded FORCEDMIGDEV project will seek to answer this question by analysing the two dimensions of forced migration: internal displacement and international migration (refugees). Specifically, it will investigate the distributional and welfare effects of Syrian refugees in Turkey. The findings of this research will be useful for both developing and developed host countries as regards the effects of providing refugees with legal status. With respect to internally displaced migrants, the project will review available data from Brazil. The findings will be used to develop a quantitative spatial model that can be employed to assess the longer, micro and macro effects of internal displacement in Brazil.
Objective
The recent forced migration crisis has reached an impressive magnitude: by 2016, 68.5 million individuals had been forcibly displaced by violence, conflict and natural disasters. This crisis is vastly concentrated in developing countries, which host 85% of the world’s displaced population. Nevertheless, we still know relatively little about the economic consequences of forced migration in these countries.
FORCEDMIGDEV seeks to fill this gap. It is organised in complementary parts that analyse the two dimensions of forced migration – internal displacement and international migration (refugees) – which constitute very different economic phenomena. The first part develops a structural model to analyse the long-run impacts of refugee inflows in developing countries. The model is estimated and used to investigate the effects of the Syrian refugees in Turkey, the largest host country in the world. I am able to answer questions that are relevant for developing but also developed host countries. What are the distributional effects of refugee shocks? What are the welfare effects across regions? What are the effects of providing refugees with a legal status?
The second part combines reduced-form and structural methods to investigate the effects of severe climate shocks on internal displacement and its impacts on economic development. I take advantage of unique data availability in Brazil to estimate the reduced-form effects of internal displacement on a broad array of outcomes at destination. I then move to develop a novel quantitative spatial model that captures the equilibrium effects in origin and destination regions, while accounting for congestion and agglomeration externalities and labour market frictions. I estimate the model and use it to assess the long-run, micro and macro effects of internal displacement in Brazil. This part lies on the under-explored intersection of climate and development economics, which has a large potential to open new avenues for future research.
Fields of science
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Funding Scheme
ERC-STG - Starting GrantHost institution
WC1E 6BT London
United Kingdom