GTAP Research: Labor Migration
The economics literature increasingly recognizes the importance of migration and its ties with many other aspects of development and policy. In 2003, Walmsley and Winters demonstrated utilizing a Global Migration model (GMig) that lifting restrictions on the movement of natural persons would significantly increase global welfare with the majority of benefits accruing to developing countries. Although an important result, the lack of bilateral labor migration data forced Walmsley and Winters to make approximations in important areas and naturally precluded their tracking bilateral migration agreements. Since then the model has been extended to incorporate bilateral migration flows and dynamics.In 2005, the Center for Global Trade Analysis, in collaboration with the Development Research Centre on Migration, Globalisation and Poverty, Sussex University, United Kingdom, the Department for International Development, United Kingdom and the World Bank, Washington D.C., USA, have developed a data base for use in analysis of Labor migration issues. The result of this collaboration has been a bilateral matrix of the home and host regions of the World's 176.6 million international migrants and the development of the GMig2 model and Data Base. The data was used by the World Bank in their production of the 2006 Global Economic Prospects and has appeared in the Guardian and on Vox.
More recently (2010) in collaboration with the World Bank, one thousand census and population register records were combined to construct decennial matrices corresponding to the last five completed census rounds (available at http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/global-bilateral-migration-database). See also http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node%2F6833 for more background information. This data base will be used to update the GMig2 Data Base based on the GTAP 8 Data Base.
In 2010, Aguiar and Walmsley also extended the GMig2 model in two significant ways. First by separating domestic and migrant workers, they have now allowed for the fact that domestic and migrants are not perfect substitutes; and second by combining the features of the dynamic GTAP (GDyn) model with GMig2 to obtain a dynamic migration model. As part of research into North American migration flows, undocumented workers were also distinguished.
Data Bases
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Global Bilateral Migration Database | Data - Global matrices of bilateral migrant stocks spanning the period 1960-2000, disaggregated by gender and based primarily on the foreign-born concept are presented.
Özden, Caglar, Christopher Parsons, Maurice Schiff, and Terrie Walmsley (2011), "Where on Earth is Everybody? The Evolution of Global Bilateral Migration 1960-2000", The World Bank Economic Review, 2011 -
Bilateral Migration Data Base - This is a bilateral matrix by 226 home and host regions for the World's 176.6 million international migrants. Three matrices are available:
- 226 x 226 Nationality and Foreign Born Matricies
- 226 x 226 Complete Matrix of International Migrants
- 87 x 87 Matrix of International Migrants (You will need the ViewHAR program to download this data)
Parsons, Christopher, Ronald Skeldon, Terrie Walmsley and Alan Winters, "Quantifying the international bilateral movements of migrants", DRC Working Paper No WP-T13, Sussex University, United Kingdom, 2005 or in Ozden C., and M. Schiff (eds), International Migration Policy and Economic Development: Studies Across the Globe, World Bank, 2007, Chapter1, 17-58. -
GMig2 Data Base - GMig2 Data Base contains data on bilateral migrant labor and wages by skill and bilateral remittance flows. An aggregation of this data base is available as part of GTAP Technical Paper No. 28.
Walmsley, Terrie, Syud Amer Ahmed and Christopher Parsons, "The GMig2 Data Base: A Data Base of Bilateral Labor Migration, Wages and Remittances", GTAP Research Memorandum No. 6, 2005
- Walmsley, Terrie, Angel Aguiar and Syud Amer Ahmed, "Labour Migration and Economic Growth in East and South-East Asia" Chapter 1 in Managing International Migration for development in East Asia, World Bank Group, 2014. Available at: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/825411468023944864/Managing-International-Migration-for-development-in-East-Asia
- Aguiar, Angel and Terrie Walmsley, "A Dynamic General Equilibrium Model of International Migration" Presented at the 13th Annual Conference on Global Economic Analysis, Penang, Malaysia, June, 2010
- Aguiar, Angel and Terrie Walmsley, "Economic Analysis of U.S. Immigration Reforms" Presented at the 12th Annual Conference on Global Economic Analysis, Santiago, Chile, June, 2009
- Walmsley, Terrie, Alan Winters, Syud Amer Ahmed and Christopher Parsons, "Measuring the Impact of the Movement of Labour Using a Model of Bilateral Migration Flows" GTAP Technical Paper No. 28, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, 47906, USA, 2007.
- Walmsley, Terrie and Syud Amer Ahmed, Asian Migration Prospects: 2007-2012, Asian Development Bank Working Paper, Asian Development Bank, forthcoming.
- Ahmed, Syud Amer and Terrie Walmsley, "Gains from the Liberalization of Temporary Migration", South Asia Economic Journal, 10(1), 2009
- Walmsley, T. L., S. A. Ahmed, and C. R. Parsons: The Impact of Liberalizing Labour Mobility in the Pacific region "The Impact of Liberalizing Labour Mobility in the Pacific region", in Trade, Migration and Labour Mobility, Mohammad A. Razzaque (ed), Commonwealth Secretariat, 2009.
- Work on Mode 4 and the movement of temporary workers began with research undertaken by Terrie Walmsley and Alan Winters for the Commonwealth Secretariat, United Kingdom. The results of this research demonstrated significant gains from the movement of natural persons.
- Walmsley, Terrie and Alan Winters, "Relaxing the Restrictions on the Temporary Movement of Natural Persons: A Simulation Analysis", Journal of Economic Integration, December, 20(4), 688-726, 2005.
- Winters, L. A., T. L. Walmsley, Z. K. Wang and R. Grynberg: "Liberalising Temporary Movement of Natural Persons: An Agenda for the Development Round", World Economy, 26(8), 1137-1161, 2003.
Walmsley, Terrie, "Modelling the Movement of Natural Persons", Center for Global Trade Analysis Documentation, 2002.
Last Modified: 9/27/2018 1:34:57 PM
