@techreport{NBERw10633,
 title = "Are Migrants More Skilled than Non-Migrants? Repeat, Return and Same-Employer Migrants",
 author = "Jennifer Hunt",
 institution = "National Bureau of Economic Research",
 type = "Working Paper",
 series = "Working Paper Series",
 number = "10633",
 year = "2004",
 month = "July",
 URL = "http://www.nber.org/papers/w10633",
 abstract = {I examine the determinants of inter-state migration of adults within western Germany, using the German Socio-Economic Panel from 1984-2000. I highlight the prevalence and distinctive characteristics of migrants who do not change employers. Same-employer migrants represent one fifth of all migrants higher education and pre-move wages than non-migrants. Conditional on age, same-employer migrants are therefore more skilled than non-migrants. By contrast, although other migrants have higher education than non-migrants, they do not have higher pre-move wages. Furthermore, they have in their ranks disproportionate numbers of the non-employed, unemployed and recently laid off. It therefore seems inappropriate to characterize them as more skilled than non-migrants. The results for same-employer migrants indicate that skilled workers have a low-cost migration avenue that has not been considered in the previous literature. I also analyze the relation between repeat and return migration and distinguish between short and long-distance migration. I confirm that long-distance migrants are more skilled than short-distance migrants, as predicted by theory, and I show that return migrants are a mix of successes and failures.},
}