The Aggregate Productivity Effects of Internal Migration: Evidence from IndonesiaGharad Bryan, Melanie Morten
NBER Working Paper No. 23540 We estimate the aggregate productivity gains from reducing barriers to internal labor migration in Indonesia, accounting for worker selection and spatial differences in human capital. We distinguish between movement costs, which mean workers will only move if they expect higher wages, and amenity differences, which mean some locations must pay more to attract workers. We find modest but important aggregate impacts. We estimate a 22% increase in labor productivity from removing all barriers. Reducing migration costs to the US level, a high mobility benchmark, leads to an 8% productivity boost. These figures hides substantial heterogeneity. The origin population that benefits most sees an 104% increase in average earnings from a complete barrier removal, or a 37% increase from moving to the US benchmark.
Machine-readable bibliographic record - MARC, RIS, BibTeX Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w23540 Published: Gharad Bryan & Melanie Morten, 2019. "The Aggregate Productivity Effects of Internal Migration: Evidence from Indonesia," Journal of Political Economy, vol 127(5), pages 2229-2268. Users who downloaded this paper also downloaded* these:
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