Essays on International Migration

The thesis is composed by four chapters on International Migration. The first chapter examines how the educational level attained by individuals affects their migration propensity. Using an original 2006 Ecuadorian survey, we implement a Regression Discontinuity Design and we control for potential endogeneity of the education explanatory variable with the 1977 school reform in Ecuador. We find that an increase in the educational level affects positively the migration propensity. Considering both country-specific characteristics and gender differentials, there is a positive and significant effects on the female migration propensity while no impact on male migration behavior. The results are consistent with theoretical models related to positive self-selection in response to labor market distortions. The second chapter inquires empirically how migrants' desire to send remittances back home fosters integration at destination. Starting from a model by Stark and Dorn (2013) in which the aspiration to remit is shown to induce migrants to acquire costly host-country specific social and human capital in order to obtain higher income, we measure migrants' integration effort by social participation. Our results confirm the theoretical model. The third chapter presents a theoretical framework to explain how cultural traits affect willingness to migrate, focusing in particular on the role played by radical Islam. In our model, more radical values imply a higher psychological cost of migrating deriving from the fact that connections with socio-religious friends and neighbors are not maintained after migration, thus deterring individuals from migrating (Mayers, 2000). We test the prediction of the model by using micro-level data from the Arab Barometer. The results indicate that, ceteris paribus, more radical individuals are less willing to migrate. This finding is robust to alternative specifications of the model and to the use of econometric techniques aimed at addressing the potential endogeneity of radical Islam. The result is also qualitatively unchanged when using aggregate data on actual outows of migrants. This paper contributes to the literature on the individual-level determinants of the willingness to migrate and the cultural determinants of economic outcomes. The fourth chapter aims to find how education is related to the probability to remit (i.e., extensive margin) and the level of remittances (i.e., intensive margin). Using the Spanish National Immigrant Survey from 2007 and selecting migrants from Ecuador. Our findings indicate that, after controlling for a wide set of individual covariates, there exists a negative association between remittances and migrants' educational level both at the extensive and intensive margin.