No.181 The Impact of Migration and Remittances on Labor Supply in Tajikistan

  • #Working Papers

This paper examines the labor supply effects of migration and remittances in Tajikistan – a major labor migrant sending and remittance dependent country in Central Asia. We contribute to the literature in two ways. First, we effectively address the common methodological issues that result in biased estimates in analyses of migration and remittances. Our empirical work accounts for the endogeneity of migration and remittances with respect to the labor supply decisions of household members left at home, and for the self-selection of migrants and remittance senders through the application of a control function approach. Second, we apply our empirical model to unique high-frequency household panel data that further helps to remedy methodological problems present in cross-sectional studies. The findings suggest that having a migrant member and receiving remittances increases the reservation wages of the household members left at home, thereby reducing their labor supply and economic activity rate. This result is robust to different model specifications and definitions of migration and remittances.

Keywords: Migration, remittances, labor market participation, economic activity rate, endogenous switching, Tajikistan

Author
Enerelt Murakami, YAMADA Eiji, Erica Paula Sioson
Date of issuance
January 2019
Related areas
  • #Asia
Research area
Economic Growth and Poverty Reduction
Research project