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IZA Discussion Paper No. 17572
December 2024
Gravity Predictions of International Migration Flows
Jesús Fernández-Huertas Moraga, Gonzalo López Molina

What is the future of international migration flows? The growing availability of bilateral international migration data has resulted in an improved understanding of the determinants of migration flows through the estimation of theory-based gravity models. However, the use of these models as a prediction tool has remained a mostly unexplored research area. This paper estimates simple gravity models of bilateral migration flows for the whole world and projects these models into the future. Our results confirm a limited role for economic factors and a large one for demographic ones, in line with the literature. As a novel contribution, we show that estimates based on net flows are substantially lower than those based on gross flows. The reason is that network effects are historically more correlated with gross than with net flows.

Kommunikation
Mark Fallak
mark.fallak@liser.lu
+352 585-855-526
World of Labour
Olga Nottmeyer
olga.nottmeyer@liser.lu
+352 585-855-501
Netzwerkkoordination
Christina Gathmann
christina.gathmann@liser.lu

Das IZA@LISER-Netzwerk ist eine weltweite Gemeinschaft für exzellente Forschung in der Arbeitsmarktökonomie und angrenzenden Fachgebieten. Nach dem Wechsel von Bonn wird das Netzwerk nun am Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) koordiniert.

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