Migration and Cross-Border Financial Flows

Pre-print, Working paper: The gravity model has provided a tractable empirical framework to account for bilateral flows not only of manufactured goods, as in the case of merchandise trade, but also of financial flows. In particular, recent literature has emphasized the role of information costs in preventing larger diversification of financial investments. This paper investigates the role of migration in alleviating information imperfections between home and host countries. We show that the impact of migration on financial flows is strongest where information problems are more acute (that is, for more informational sensitive investments, between culturally more distant countries, and when the source country of migrants is a developing country) and for the type of migrants that are most able to enhance the flow of information on their home country, namely, skilled migrants. We interpret these differential effects as additional evidence pointing to the role of information in generating home-bias and as new evidence of the role of migration in reducing information frictions between countries.

Author(s)

Maurice Kugler, Oren Levintal, Hillel Rapoport

Date of publication
  • 2015
Keywords JEL
F21 F22 O1
Keywords
  • Gravity models
  • Information asymmetries
  • International loans
  • International financial flows
  • Migration
Internal reference
  • G-MonD Working Paper n°40
Version
  • 1