Perspectives on Migration Theory – Economics

Abstract

Early work on migration was based on limited data referring to life-time migration and was primarily descriptive. Although numerous hypotheses were developed, the lack of data prevented the development of theoretical models. This condition prevailed during the last quarter of the nineteenth century and beyond the first quarter of the twentieth century. In the late 1930s, British economists began to develop theoretical underpinnings for their empirical research, and a short time later this theory would be further developed into the gravity model, which was the earliest theoretical approach to interregional migration. Later, economists would place migration in an investment context, and present discounted value would become a key concept underlying the study of migration decisions. This idea led to a focus on the time horizon of an intended move and also on the discount rate itself. Search-theoretic models also had their roots in present-value concepts. The more recent availability of microdata opened many new areas of migration research and provided numerous important insights into the study of migration. Now specific characteristics, such as age and education, can be taken into account, and the migration of individuals with these types of characteristics may be studied.