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DP1540
Where do Migrants Go? Risk-Aversion, Mobility Costs and the Locational Choice of Migrants
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Publication Date:
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December 1996
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Link to this Page:
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www.cepr.org/pubs/dps/DP1540.asp
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As part of their effort to pool individual risk, households consider spreading their members over a plurality of locations, both inside and outside their country of origin. At the same time, the world is ridden with ‘Chinatowns’ and ‘Little Italies’: people, whenever they move, tend to bunch in the same location. Bunching would appear fundamentally at odds with the desire to diversify risk. In this paper we provide a framework to reconcile both spatial bunching and the spread of migrants, combining risk-aversion and concavity of mobility costs at the household level. Evidence from Southern Italy is consistent with the main predictions from our model.
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