ERC Starting Grant

Forced Migration and Development

FORCEDMIGDEV

Summary

The recent forced migration crisis has reached an impressive magnitude: by 2024, 123.2 million individuals had been forcibly displaced by violence, conflict and natural disasters (data from UNHCR). This crisis is vastly concentrated in developing countries, which host 85% of the world’s displaced population. Nevertheless, we still know relatively little about the economic consequences of forced migration in these countries. FORCEDMIGDEV seeks to fill this gap. It is organized in complementary parts that analyse the two dimensions of forced migration – internal displacement and international migration (refugees) – which constitute very different economic phenomena. The first part develops a structural model to analyse the long-run impacts of refugee inflows in developing countries. The model is estimated and used to investigate the effects of the Syrian refugees in Turkey, the largest host country in the world. I am able to answer questions that are relevant for developing but also developed host countries. What are the distributional effects of refugee shocks? What are the welfare effects across regions? What are the effects of providing refugees with a legal status? The second part combines reduced-form and structural methods to investigate the effects of severe climate shocks on internal displacement and its impacts on economic development. I take advantage of unique data availability in Brazil to estimate the reduced-form effects of internal displacement on a broad array of outcomes at destination. I then move to develop a novel quantitative spatial model that captures the equilibrium effects in origin and destination regions, while accounting for congestion and agglomeration externalities and labour market frictions. I estimate the model and use it to assess the long-run, micro and macro effects of internal displacement in Brazil. This part lies on the underexplored intersection of climate and development economics, which has a large potential to open new avenues for future research. 

Research Output

Rural Migrants and Urban Informality: Evidence from Brazil (with Imbert, C.) [CEPR]  

Econometrica, conditionally accepted pending replication package approval.

Who Benefits from Social Housing? Experimental Evidence from a Large-Scale Program in Brazil (w/Belchior, C. and Gonzaga, G.)

[VoxEU Talks] New draft coming soon! 

This is a significantly revised version of "Unpacking Neighborhood Effects: Experimental evidence from a large scale housing program in Brazil" (2023) [IZA]

Dry Lives: Climate Adaptation and Mortality in the Semi-arid Regions of Brazil (with Britto, D; Imbert, C; Sampaio, B.; and Fonseca, A.)

Slums (with Britto, D; Conwell, L.; Sampaio, B.; and Fonseca, A.)

Firms, Informality and the Spatial Effects of Mass Migration: Evidence from the Syrian Refugees in Turkey (w/Loayza, N. and Utsumi, T.)