Steven Liao

Visualizing Global Migration Flows, 1960-2000

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 23 Nov 2013 21:10:00 +0000

How has bilateral migration flows changed from 1960-2000? Using bilateral flow estimates for 191 countries between 1960 and 2000 from Abel (2013), the R packages igraph and animation, and some stylistic examples from Gabriel Michael, I create the above animation of change in migrant flows between selected countries (other country subsets are also available). Edge colors are weighted by flow size with darker red edges indicating higher flows while lighter yellow indicating lower flows. Replication code is available at GitHub.

Reference
Abel, Guy J. 2013. “Estimating Global Migration Flow Tables Using Place of Birth Data.” Demographic Research 28(March): 505–46.

ISA 2013: Yuan Swap Paper

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 15:41:00 +0000

Sent out my Yuan swap paper with Dan McDowell to ISA 2013. Paper can be accessed here. Abstract copied below:

For several years now China has implemented policies to promote the international use of its national currency, the Renminbi (RMB). As part of these efforts, the People’s Bank of China (PBC) has negotiated 21 bilateral currency swap agreements (BSAs) with foreign central banks that make it easier for firms in both China and its partner countries to settle cross- border trade and direct investment in RMB. The primary goal of this paper is to explain why China and these partner countries are cooperating via BSAs. We argue that trade and direct investment interdependence between China and potential partner countries should be associated with an increased probability of BSA cooperation. We theorize that trade and direct investment interdependence is linked to BSA cooperation via two mechanisms: (1) trade financing insulation from international liquidity shocks and (2) reduced transaction costs of cross-border trade and direct investment for local firms. Controlling for a number of other potentially relevant factors, our empirical results support a trade interdependence hypothesis: the probability that a country enters a BSA with the PBC increases as it becomes increasingly trade dependent on China. However, this effect is most robust when China is also highly trade dependent on the partner country.

High and Low Skilled Migrants on the Move

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 01 May 2012 16:01:00 +0000

Brain drain could drain the high-income economy

This special issue, dedicated to the theme of "Migration, Diaspora and the Brain Drain Cycle: Malaysia and Its Neighbours", has seven fine articles, six of which are specific to the country. In order to whet appetites, I [the author] have tried to condense the main takeaways of these six articles.

Immigration Stalls as Opportunities Wane on U.S.-Mexican Border

States in the southern and southwestern U.S. have passed immigration crackdowns, and the Supreme Court signaled last week it might be prepared to support an Arizona law requiring police to check the status of anyone they suspect is in the country illegally. Yet rather than an invasion, Cox’s experience reflects an April 24 report by the Pew Hispanic Center, which concluded that the flow of migrants came to a “standstill” between 2005 and 2010, and may even have reversed.

Handbook for Diaspora Engagement Policies

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 03:31:00 +0000

The International Organization of Migration (IOM) published a terrific handbook for diaspora engagement policies today: "Developing a Road Map for Engaging Diasporas in Development: A Handbook for Policymakers and Practitioners in Home and Host Countries."

In particular, chapter 4 reviews 77 diaspora-engaging institutions in 56 countries. I can see an early draft of a dissertation proposal coming from it.

Resource Page

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 19:45:00 +0000

I've constructed a new section in this blog that aggregates links to important databases or methods tools/websites that have been helpful for my own research.

Current databases cover migration, remittances, inequality, democracy, and labor mobility. Methods websites include R related statistical packages or advice. Resources for LaTeX, Sweave, and JAGS will be expanded soon.

Essentially, the page serves only as an aggregator. I have no intention to promote certain websites over others, so the short blurbs that follow the links are usually excerpts taken from the actually website.

Feel free to let me know if I'm missing any helpful resource that you know of. I would love to add it to the list.

MPSA 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 22:37:00 +0000

Dan McDowell and I will be presenting our paper “Redback Rising: Bilateral Swap Arrangements and China’s Strategy for RMB Internationalization,” at MPSA this Saturday (April 14). The panel takes place at 4:35pm.

It's still an early draft, but we are quite excited about it. Feel free to drop by to say hi or offer comments if you are there, we would really appreciate it!

Taiwanese Emigration, Immigration, and Circulatory Migration

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:57:00 +0000

Taiwanese Immigrants in the United States.

Almost one-quarter of Taiwanese immigrants lived in the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA metro area in 2010.

Tradition and Progress: Taiwan's Evolving Migration Reality.

According to the Taiwan Ministry of the Interior (MOI), in 2007 there were 24,700 marriages between Taiwanese grooms and non-Taiwanese brides, representing 18.3 percent of all marriages and bringing the total number of foreign-born wives in Taiwan to 372,741. By the end of January 2010, the stock of foreign-born wives had increased to 401,685, with the majority from China (65.5 percent), Vietnam (20.5 percent), and Indonesia (6.5 percent).

Here, There, and Back Again: A New Zealand Case Study of Chinese Circulatory Transmigration.

Cultural anthropologists like Nina Glick Schiller and Linda Basch have pointed out that migrant networks, social relations, and cultural ties traverse both home and host societies. Their national boundaries "are brought together into a single social field." In the case of the new Chinese migrants, the origin-country governments' encouragement of long-distance nationalism is also a factor that should be recognized. In his study of Asians in Australia, demographer Graeme Hugo has noted, for example, "In Asia, Taiwan has had one of the most comprehensive reverse brain drain programs."

Tips for Refereeing and Discussing Papers

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 23:08:00 +0000

How to referee an academic paper?
How to be a discussant on a seminar paper?

(HT: Chris Blattman)

Individual Level H-1B Visa Data

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 23:02:00 +0000

H-1Bs: How Do They Stack Up to US Born Workers?

Combining unique individual level H-1B data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and data from the 2009 American Community Survey, we analyze earnings differences between H-1B visa holders and US born workers in STEM occupations. The data indicate that H-1Bs are younger and more skilled, as measured by education, than US born workers in the same occupations. We fail to find support for the notion that H-1Bs are paid less that observationally similar US born workers; in fact, they appear to have higher earnings in some key STEM occupations, including information technology.

Recent Remittance and Migration Studies.

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 22:49:00 +0000

Inverse relationship between remittances and unemployment (HT: People Move).

As a consequence of the global economic crisis, 2009 marked a hiccup in the trend of increasing remittance flows to developing countries. In most parts of the world, the growth rate of remittances was indeed negative. But what is striking is that there was an inverse relationship between remittances and unemployment. In other words, the greater the drop in remittances, the higher was the increase in the unemployment rate. In Moldova, for instance, remittances decreased by 36% in 2009, while the unemployment rate increased by 61%. By contrast, in Fiji, remittances increased by 24% and unemployment dropped by 7%.

Source: People Move

Impacts of Green Card Lottery on Ethiopian Households (HT: Development Impact).

Since migrants are typically positively selected (Chiswick, 1999 Chiquiar and Hanson, 2005;McKenzie etal, 2006), non-experimental estimates of the effects of emigration may be biased if there are concerns with the identifying assumptions...

... In my job market paper, I add to the literature by focusing on migrants from an extremely poor country – Ethiopia – who are randomly assigned the possibility of migration through the United States’ Diversity Visa lottery. My analysis is based on a specially designed survey (which I conducted) of households of previous DV lottery winners and lottery participants in Addis Ababa – the Ethiopian capital. I use comparisons between the lottery winners and the (non-winning) participants to infer the causal effects of having a family member migrate to the U.S....

...The study finds that having a family member win the lottery and migrate has significant positive effects on several dimensions of the remaining family’s standard of living. Families of DV migrants spend about 30% more on food, are thus better fed and have higher body mass indexes. Moreover, families of winners possess more and better quality consumer durables, which include personal computers, modern cooking stoves, household furniture and home entertainment appliances. Having a family member who won the DV lottery also gives families access to improved sources of drinking water and sanitation facilities. Winners’ families, however, have about the same savings and physical capital accumulation as other families. Most of the positive effects of emigration appear to be on the consumption side of the family budget.

Recent Reports on High Skilled Migration

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 01:02:00 +0000

Highly Skilled Migrants Seek New Destinations as Global Growth Shifts to Emerging Economies

The emerging economies of Asia and Latin America continued to gain steam in 2011, fueled in large part by regional powerhouses China, India, and Brazil. Developing nations that were once primarily migrant-sending states are now experiencing a boom that is beginning to increase their attractiveness for highly educated and highly skilled migrants and beckoning their diaspora members home.

Substantial Investments to Court Diaspora Entrepreneurs for Development Gains

As the world economy continues to struggle to regain its footing following the 2007-09 global recession and contend with the fiscal crisis that has engulfed most wealthy states, it has become clearer that the road to recovery will be a long and winding one for many. Migrants and their descendants play a role in that recovery, whether by sending remittances, taking part in volunteer and philanthropic efforts in home countries, or creating jobs by initiating or supporting entrepreneurial efforts.

H-1B visa becoming less attractive?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 07 May 2011 15:42:00 +0000

Long-Prized Tech Visas Lose Cachet.

A visa program designed to supply skilled foreign workers to companies in the U.S. has slowed sharply, attracting about 50% fewer petitions so far this year than last year, and 80% fewer than in 2009.

Several factors have contributed to the decline in H-1B visas, including the lackluster pace of the U.S. recovery, more opportunities for skilled workers in their home nations and higher visa fees, which appear to have spurred Indian companies operating in the U.S. to seek fewer visas. Attacks on the program by congressional foes of U.S. immigration policies have also cast a shadow over it.

Recent Links on High Skill Migration

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 01:41:00 +0000

Russians protest by emigrating, not demonstrating (Washington Post)

While protesters have been marching in the Middle East demanding liberty, Russians have been mostly silent. Instead of packing the streets, some have been quietly packing their bags, pursuing freedom in a new wave of emigration.

People are not property: Please stop saying that countries “steal” doctors from Africa (Michael Clemens).

This week, Professor Jonathan Wolff has warned the world that the United States “steals doctors from poorer countries” because it “simply does not train enough doctors to meet its voracious appetite for medical attention.” This is a strong accusation. Professor Wolff, a philosopher, should reconsider several dubious assumptions that his strong claim requires.

How much does it cost to send money home?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 02:22:00 +0000

World Bank's Remittance Price Worldwide.

This website provides data on the cost of sending and receiving small amounts of money from one country to another. Called remittances, these international transfers are often initiated by migrant workers. The aggregate cash flows and the number of participants are enormous. In fact, the World Bank estimates that remittances totaled $440 billion in 2010, of which $325 billion went to developing countries, involving some 192 million migrants or 3.0% of world population. The money received is an important source of family (and national) income in many developing economies, representing in some cases a very relevant percentage of the GDP of the receiving countries. The site covers 200 "country corridors" worldwide. The corridors studied flow from 29 major remittance sending countries to 86 receiving countries, representing more than 60% of total remittances to developing countries.

For those interested in the causes and consequences of remittances, this should be an awesome data source. Here are examples of tables and figures you can create based on its monthly data.

Cool Global Migration Graphs

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 15:36:00 +0000

Global Migration Maps. This is the first time I actually saw migration visualized, most likely due to data limitations.

Migrations of people have existed for millennia and occur at a range of scales and time-periods (from small-scale journeys to work through to intercontinental resettlement). As a geographer I have long been interested in these and thought it was about time I mapped them! Using data from the Global Migrant Origin Database (thanks Adam for the tip) and R, my favourite stats software, I have produced the maps you see here (click on them for higher resolution). Each line shows the origins and destinations of at least 4000 people in a given year (2000 in this case). The more red the line the more people it represents. I have used great circle distance to plot them onto the Earth. The map below shows the same magnitude of flows but just for Europe. The Earth has been flattened for this one so the flows are represented by arbitrary arcs.

Some caveats though.

Firstly they are based on a dataset where many of the movements are best guesses rather than measured data. You can read more about this here. It would also be great to have actual flows rather than inferred flows based on the number of migrants in each country. If I made these maps again I might draw lines between capital cities or population centres to avoid the impression that the majority of migrations to/ from Russia start/end in Siberia for example.

Forced Return Migration

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 15:11:00 +0000

Today's TechCrunch article points to visa restrictions as the cause of high skill return migration in the Silicon Valley.

NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw visited Silicon Valley last month to meet immigrant entrepreneurs. At Microsoft’s Mountain View campus, he met with a dozen of them. More than half said that they might be forced to return to their home countries. That’s because they have the same visa issues that Kunal Bahl had. Unable to get a visa that would allow him to start a company after he graduated from Wharton in 2007, Kunal returned home to India. In February 2010, he started SnapDeal—India’s Groupon. Instead of creating hundreds of jobs in the U.S., Kunal ended up creating them in New Delhi.

Causes of Return for High Skilled Chinese Migrants in the US

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 00:10:00 +0000

FP article today mentioned that:

China is getting a major boost from the return home of Western-educated, skilled workers. They are returning because of frustrations with U.S. visa policies that make it extremely difficult for skilled workers from high-population countries to obtain permanent-resident visas; because of opportunities back home; and because the Chinese government is offering huge incentives to engineers and scientists. These returnees are teaching locals how to build world-class companies and how to innovate. In almost every high-growth tech company in China, you find returnees in senior management positions. In scientific research, top research labs have returnees in lead positions. And these scientists are beginning to make breakthroughs.

In short, the article suggests that these migrants return because of (frustrating) US naturalization policies, job market incentives back home, and active government recruiting policies.

Different Measures of Ethnic Diversity

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 16:43:00 +0000

KATE BALDWIN and JOHN D. HUBER (2010). Economic versus Cultural Differences: Forms of Ethnic Diversity and Public Goods Provision. American Political Science Review, 104, pp 644-662.

Arguments about how ethnic diversity affects governance typically posit that groups differ from each other in substantively important ways and that these differences make effective governance more difficult. But existing cross-national empirical tests typically use measures of ethnolinguistic fractionalization (ELF) that have no information about substantive differences between groups. This article examines two important ways that groups differ from each other—culturally and economically—and assesses how such differences affect public goods provision. Across 46 countries, the analysis compares existing measures of cultural differences with a new measure that captures economic differences between groups: between-group inequality (BGI). We show that ELF, cultural fractionalization (CF), and BGI measure different things, and that the choice between them has an important impact on our understanding of which countries are most ethnically diverse. Furthermore, empirical tests reveal that BGI has a large, robust, and negative relationship with public goods provision, whereas CF, ELF, and overall inequality do not.

Analyzing the Financial Records of Al Qaeda

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 03:50:00 +0000

A new RAND study of captured documents from Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) reveals some interesting facts about the organization. It found that “AQI was a hierarchical organization with decentralized decision making; AQI in Anbar was profitable enough to send substantial revenues out of the province in 2006; AQI relied on extortion, theft, and black market sales to fund its operations in Anbar; AQI needed large, regular revenue sources to fund its operations, but its administrative leaders did not hold much cash on hand.” Significantly, the study found that “disrupting AQI’s financial flows could disrupt the pace of their attacks.”

HT: Freakonomics

Rationality of Irrationality

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 19:42:00 +0000

Guessing North Korea's dangerous game. An interesting article applying Thomas Schelling's "rationality of irrationality" to recent North Korean moves.

Actually, Pyongyang seems to be following a familiar playbook in great-power politics. Its hardliners appear to have learned Thomas Schelling's teachings on the rationality of irrationality. Schelling saw the manipulation of shared risks as one of the best strategies to get one's way in international politics. Imagine, he suggested, a game in which you're walking on the edge of a cliff chained by the ankle to someone else. The first to cry uncle loses. What do you do?

HT: The Monkey Cage

Data Cleaning Tool

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 19:08:00 +0000

Google Refine.

Google Refine is a power tool for working with messy data, cleaning it up, transforming it from one format into another, extending it with web services, and linking it to databases like Freebase.

See sample video (1/3) below:

HT: Andrew Gelman

Why is nobody worried about the Asian brain drain?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 17:20:00 +0000

Willian Easterly asks this question.

Aid-financed scholarships for African students to study in the US or Europe would be worth a lot more than a million “capacity-building” projects. The usual argument against such scholarships is fear of brain drain — that the African students would not return home.

So why would Asian students return more than African students? The answer to this is highly related to the causes of return migration, and for those who know my current research you would probably know my answer. Looking forward to analyzing my data and see if the results support my theory!

Plans and Aspirations

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 05:24:00 +0000

Gallup's recent survey on "migration aspirations" suggests that United States attracts less educated migrants, developed Asia poised to lose most educated, and developing regions loses potential population across the board, etc.

These conclusions are based on three of their indices: Potential Net Migration Index, Potential Net Brain Gain Index, and Potential Net Youth Migration Index. Indices are based on responses from the following questions:

Ideally, if you had the opportunity, would you like to move permanently to another country, or would you prefer to continue living in this country?

(If "would like to move permanently to another country") To which country would you like to move?[Open-ended, one response allowed]

Ideally, systematic data that trace actual migrant movements across borders and record their individual characteristics (skill level, income, etc) would be the most reliable source for making inferences like this. However, as people who study migration or return migration probably understand, this type of data rarely exists. Another alternative is to make inferences based on survey data. First, you ask whether respondents plan to emigrate and where they plan to move to (in the case of emigration studies) or whether respondents plan to return to their home countries (in the case of return migration studies). Then you estimate probabilities of emigration or return migration based on individual characteristics and generate estimates for the coefficients of the variables of interest.

My main concern about the above conclusions is how Gallup made inferences based on aspirations. For example, when I asked my wife the above 2 questions, her response was that if she had the opportunity, which may imply both budgetary and time permitting, she would want to move to Paris because it sounds so romantic to live there. However, if I changed the wording of the same question to whether you plan on moving to another country and where would you move, her answer changed to "no, there are many realistic concerns I have to take into account."

Although you could argue that my wife's case may just be an anomaly, it seems pretty plausible to say that answers based on hypothetical questions ("if you had the opportunity") would be very different from questions that are based more on reality ("do you plan to migrate") even when both intentions may not ultimately realize. My bet is that responses to the latter type of question would be closer to actual migration outcomes.

Therefore, here I pose a question to Gallup and readers of this blog: if you had the budget to conduct such a survey, why not ask plans instead of "aspirations"? Am I missing something?

Foreign Aid and Armed Conflict

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 01:31:00 +0000

Foreign Aid Shocks as a Cause of Violent Armed Conflict by Nielsen et al. (forthcoming in AJPS). Manuscript here.

In this study we resolve part of the confusion over how foreign aid affects armed conflict. We argue that aid shocks – severe decreases in aid revenues – inadvertently shift the domestic balance of power and potentially induce violence. During aid shocks, potential rebels gain bargaining strength vis-à-vis the government. To appease the rebels, the government must promise future resource transfers, but the government has no incentive to continue its promised transfers if the aid shock proves to be temporary. With the government unable to credibly commit to future resource transfers, violence breaks out. Using AidData’s comprehensive dataset of bilateral and multilateral aid from 1981-2005, we evaluate the effects of foreign aid on violent armed conflict. In addition to rare-event logit analysis, we employ matching methods to account for the possibility that aid donors anticipate conflict. The results show that negative aid shocks significantly increase the probability of armed conflict onset.

We already know how cool AidData is, so this is definitely going to be an exciting read for people interested in the intersection of IPE and security (like me).

Global attitudes database and US migration map

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 15:33:00 +0000

Pew Global Attitudes Project.

Since its inception in 2002, Pew Global Attitudes Project has surveyed more than 240,000 people in 57 countries. This interactive database provides users with the ability to access key trends on questions ranging from attitudes toward the U.S. to people's assessments of their own lives and views about the current state of the world and important issues of the day. These key trends can be accessed by question topic or by country.

Where Americans are moving?

More than 10 million Americans moved from one county to another during 2008. The map below visualizes those moves. Click on any county to see comings and goings: black lines indicate net inward movement, red lines net outward movement.