Essays on International Migration and Development

Abstract

This thesis sheds light on the effects of reducing or escalating international policy barriers on emerging economies, and how these relate to international migration. In the first chapter, I analyze the effect of a protective FDI policy on international migration outflows from Indonesia. I find a substitution effect from FDI to international migration, but also an increase in skilled migrants. In the second chapter, I investigate the effect of a migration ban on the capacity of communities to absorb income shocks from natural disasters. In this case, I also find negative effects on communities in terms of an increase in poverty. Differently from the previous two chapters, the third chapter focuses on a context where barriers to international migration have been suddenly eliminated: I exploit the fall of the Communist regime in Albania in the 1990s at the subsequent mass emigration of Albanians to identify the causal effect of migration on female labour force participation. I find that migration has positive effects on female employment, but this effect is only prevalent among women that reside in areas with high access to preschools. I dig more in-depth into this gender issue by analyzing the effect of fertility on female employment in Albania in Chapter 4. I show that increasing the number of children decreases women's labour supply.