IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/red/sed015/190.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Migration and Consumption Insurance in Bangladesh

Author

Listed:
  • Melanie Morten

    (Stanford University)

  • Corina Mommaerts

    (Yale University)

  • Ahmed Mobarak

    (Yale University)

  • Costas Meghir

    (Yale University)

Abstract

We investigate the relationship between seasonal migration and informal risk sharing in rural Bangladesh. We use data from a randomized controlled trial which provided incentives for households to migrate (Bryan et al., 2014). Using this experimental variation, we first provide evidence of the effect of decreasing migration costs on endogenous risk sharing in the village. We then investigate the mechanisms of this effect. We undertake a semi-parametric analysis of the source of income shocks, source of insurance and measurement error. Next, we characterize a dynamic model of migration and endogenous risk sharing, incorporating investment in learning about migration possibilities. Estimation of the model is in progress; we plan to analyze the welfare effect of alternative policies to encourage migration, such as access to credit and further reductions in the cost of migrating.

Suggested Citation

  • Melanie Morten & Corina Mommaerts & Ahmed Mobarak & Costas Meghir, 2015. "Migration and Consumption Insurance in Bangladesh," 2015 Meeting Papers 190, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    • Handle: RePEc:red:sed015:190
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://red-files-public.s3.amazonaws.com/meetpapers/2015/paper_190.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Townsend, Robert M, 1994. "Risk and Insurance in Village India," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(3), pages 539-591, May.
    2. Richard Blundell & Luigi Pistaferri & Ian Preston, 2008. "Consumption Inequality and Partial Insurance," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(5), pages 1887-1921, December.
    3. Costas Meghir & Luigi Pistaferri, 2004. "Income Variance Dynamics and Heterogeneity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 72(1), pages 1-32, January.
    4. Gharad Bryan & Shyamal Chowdhury & Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak, 2014. "Underinvestment in a Profitable Technology: The Case of Seasonal Migration in Bangladesh," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 82(5), pages 1671-1748, September.
    5. Krueger, Dirk & Perri, Fabrizio, 2011. "Public versus private risk sharing," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 146(3), pages 920-956, May.
    6. Abowd, John M & Card, David, 1989. "On the Covariance Structure of Earnings and Hours Changes," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(2), pages 411-445, March.
    7. Khandker, Shahidur R., 2012. "Seasonality of income and poverty in Bangladesh," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(2), pages 244-256.
    8. MaCurdy, Thomas E, 1983. "A Simple Scheme for Estimating an Intertemporal Model of Labor Supply and Consumption in the Presence of Taxes and Uncertainty," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 24(2), pages 265-289, June.
    9. Melanie Morten, 2016. "Temporary Migration and Endogenous Risk Sharing in Village India," NBER Working Papers 22159, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Joseph-Simon Görlach, 2023. "Borrowing Constraints and the Dynamics of Return and Repeat Migration," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 41(1), pages 205-243.
    2. Mobarak, Ahmed & Levinsohn, James & Guiteras, Raymond, 2019. "Demand Estimation with Strategic Complementarities: Sanitation in Bangladesh," CEPR Discussion Papers 13498, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Orazio Attanasio & Corina Mommaerts & Costas Meghir, 2015. "Insurance in Extended Family Networks," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1996, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    2. Raül Santaeulàlia-Llopis & Yu Zheng, 2018. "The Price of Growth: Consumption Insurance in China 1989–2009," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(4), pages 1-35, October.
    3. Richard Blundell & Luigi Pistaferri & Itay Saporta-Eksten, 2016. "Consumption Inequality and Family Labor Supply," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(2), pages 387-435, February.
    4. Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay, 2016. "The Vulnerable Are Not (Necessarily) the Poor," Research on Economic Inequality, in: Inequality after the 20th Century: Papers from the Sixth ECINEQ Meeting, volume 24, pages 29-57, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    5. Masakatsu Okubo, 2015. "Earnings Dynamics and Profile Heterogeneity: Estimates from Japanese Panel Data," The Japanese Economic Review, Japanese Economic Association, vol. 66(1), pages 112-146, March.
    6. Dmytro Hryshko, 2012. "Labor income profiles are not heterogeneous: Evidence from income growth rates," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 3(2), pages 177-209, July.
    7. Orazio Attanasio & Peter Levell & Hamish Low & Virginia Sánchez-Marcos, 2015. "Aggregating Elasticities: Intensive and Extensive Margins of Female Labour Supply," NBER Working Papers 21315, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Otto Kässi, 2014. "Earnings dynamics of men and women in Finland: permanent inequality versus earnings instability," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 46(2), pages 451-477, March.
    9. Costas Meghir, 2006. "Dynamic models for policy evaluation," IFS Working Papers W06/08, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    10. Basu, Karna & Wong, Maisy, 2015. "Evaluating seasonal food storage and credit programs in east Indonesia," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 200-216.
    11. Bartoš, Vojtěch, 2021. "Seasonal scarcity and sharing norms," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 185(C), pages 303-316.
    12. Nicolas Roys, 2016. "Persistence of Shocks and the Reallocation of Labor," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 22, pages 109-130, October.
    13. Robin Jessen & Johannes König, 2023. "Hours risk and wage risk: repercussions over the life cycle," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 125(4), pages 956-996, October.
    14. Kai Liu, 2010. "Wage Risk, On-the-job Search and Partial Insurance," 2010 Meeting Papers 1136, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    15. Jonathan Heathcote & Kjetil Storesletten & Giovanni L. Violante, 2009. "Quantitative Macroeconomics with Heterogeneous Households," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 1(1), pages 319-354, May.
    16. Tom Krebs & Moritz Kuhn & Mark L. J. Wright, 2015. "Human Capital Risk, Contract Enforcement, and the Macroeconomy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(11), pages 3223-3272, November.
    17. Joseph G. Altonji & Anthony A. Smith Jr. & Ivan Vidangos, 2013. "Modeling Earnings Dynamics," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 81(4), pages 1395-1454, July.
    18. Lance Lochner & Youngki Shin, 2014. "Understanding Earnings Dynamics: Identifying and Estimating the Changing Roles of Unobserved Ability, Permanent and Transitory Shocks," NBER Working Papers 20068, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Richard Blundell & Hamish Low & Ian Preston, 2013. "Decomposing changes in income risk using consumption data," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 4(1), pages 1-37, March.
    20. Moira Daly & Dmytro Hryshko & Iourii Manovskii, 2022. "Improving The Measurement Of Earnings Dynamics," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 63(1), pages 95-124, February.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:red:sed015:190. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christian Zimmermann (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sedddea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.