IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/7047.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Voting with their feet ? access to infrastructure and migration in Nepal

Author

Listed:
  • Shilpi, Forhad
  • Sangraula, Prem
  • Li, Yue

Abstract

Using bilateral migration flow data from the 2010 population census of Nepal, this paper provides evidence on the importance of public infrastructure and services in determining migration flows. The empirical specification, based on a generalized nested logit model, corrects for the non-random selection of migrants. The results show that migrants prefer areas that are nearer to paved roads and have better access to electricity. Apart from electricity's impact on income and through income on migration, the econometric results indicate that migrants attach substantial amenity value to access to electricity. These findings have important implications for the placement of basic infrastructure projects and the way benefits from these projects are evaluated.

Suggested Citation

  • Shilpi, Forhad & Sangraula, Prem & Li, Yue, 2014. "Voting with their feet ? access to infrastructure and migration in Nepal," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7047, The World Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:7047
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2014/09/24/000158349_20140924134016/Rendered/PDF/WPS7047.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kanbur, Ravi & Venables, Anthony J. (ed.), 2005. "Spatial Inequality and Development," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199278633.
    2. Yuri Andrienko & Sergei Guriev, 2004. "Determinants of interregional mobility in Russia," The Economics of Transition, The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, vol. 12(1), pages 1-27, March.
    3. David McKenzie & John Gibson & Steven Stillman, 2010. "How Important Is Selection? Experimental vs. Non-Experimental Measures of the Income Gains from Migration," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 8(4), pages 913-945, June.
    4. Charles M. Tiebout, 1956. "A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 64(5), pages 416-416.
    5. Guriev, Sergei & Andrienko, Yuri, 2003. "Determinants of Interregional Mobility in Russia: Evidence from Panel Data," CEPR Discussion Papers 3835, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    6. Subrata Ghatak & Alan Mulhern & John Watson, 2008. "Inter‐Regional Migration in Transition Economies: The Case of Poland," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 12(1), pages 209-222, February.
    7. A. D. Roy, 1951. "Some Thoughts On The Distribution Of Earnings," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 3(2), pages 135-146.
    8. Robert E. Lucas, Jr., 2004. "Life Earnings and Rural-Urban Migration," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(S1), pages 29-59, February.
    9. Harris, John R & Todaro, Michael P, 1970. "Migration, Unemployment & Development: A Two-Sector Analysis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 60(1), pages 126-142, March.
    10. Gordon B. Dahl, 2002. "Mobility and the Return to Education: Testing a Roy Model with Multiple Markets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(6), pages 2367-2420, November.
    11. Grogger, Jeffrey & Hanson, Gordon H., 2011. "Income maximization and the selection and sorting of international migrants," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(1), pages 42-57, May.
    12. Shilpi Forhad, 2011. "Mobility Costs and Regional Inequality: Evidence from Bangladesh," Journal of Globalization and Development, De Gruyter, vol. 2(1), pages 1-32, August.
    13. Roback, Jennifer, 1982. "Wages, Rents, and the Quality of Life," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 90(6), pages 1257-1278, December.
    14. Paul E. Gabriel & Susanne Schmitz, 1995. "Favorable Self-Selection and the Internal Migration of Young White Males in the United States," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 30(3), pages 460-471.
    15. Nora Dudwick & Katy Hull & Roy Katayama & Forhad Shilpi & Kenneth Simler, 2011. "From Farm to Firm : Rural-Urban Transition in Developing Countries," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 2307.
    16. Kanbur, Ravi & Venables, Anthony J., 2005. "SPATIAL INEQUALITY AND DEVELOPMENT Overview of UNU-WIDER Project," Working Papers 127127, Cornell University, Department of Applied Economics and Management.
    17. Lori A. Beaman, 2012. "Social Networks and the Dynamics of Labour Market Outcomes: Evidence from Refugees Resettled in the U.S," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 79(1), pages 128-161.
    18. Isaac Bayoh & Elena G. Irwin & Timothy Haab, 2006. "Determinants of Residential Location Choice: How Important Are Local Public Goods in Attracting Homeowners to Central City Locations?," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(1), pages 97-120, February.
    19. Kaivan Munshi, 2003. "Networks in the Modern Economy: Mexican Migrants in the U. S. Labor Market," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(2), pages 549-599.
    20. Ravallion, Martin & Wodon, Quentin, 1997. "Poor areas, or only poor people?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1798, The World Bank.
    21. Greenwood, Michael J, 1975. "Research on Internal Migration in the United States: A Survey," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 13(2), pages 397-433, June.
    22. Ravi Kanbur & Tony Venables, 2005. "Introduction: Spatial inequality and development," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 5(1), pages 1-2, January.
    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. Vera Barinova & Sylvie Rochhia & Stepan Zemtsov, 2022. "Attracting highly skilled migrants to the Russian regions," Regional Science Policy & Practice, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14(1), pages 147-173, February.
    2. Giovanni Ferri & Roshan Borsato, 2018. "Urbanization And International Migration From Africa," CERBE Working Papers wpC29, CERBE Center for Relationship Banking and Economics.
    3. Neli Demireva & Fabio Quassoli, 2019. "The Lived Experiences of Migration: An Introduction," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 7(4), pages 1-6.
    4. Selod, Harris & Shilpi, Forhad, 2021. "Rural-urban migration in developing countries: Lessons from the literature," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    5. Suchi Kapoor Malhotra & Howard White & Nina Ashley O. Dela Cruz & Ashrita Saran & John Eyers & Denny John & Ella Beveridge & Nina Blöndal, 2021. "Studies of the effectiveness of transport sector interventions in low‐ and middle‐income countries: An evidence and gap map," Campbell Systematic Reviews, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 17(4), December.
    6. Chisari, Omar O. & Miller, Sebastián J., 2016. "Climate Change and Migration: A CGE Analysis for Two Large Urban Regions of Latin America," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 7510, Inter-American Development Bank.

    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. Marcel Fafchamps & Forhad Shilpi, 2013. "Determinants of the Choice of Migration Destination," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 75(3), pages 388-409, June.
    2. Jens Ruhose, 2015. "Microeconometric Analyses on Economic Consequences of Selective Migration," ifo Beiträge zur Wirtschaftsforschung, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, number 61, May.
    3. Ning Jia & Raven Molloy & Christopher Smith & Abigail Wozniak, 2023. "The Economics of Internal Migration: Advances and Policy Questions," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 61(1), pages 144-180, March.
    4. Caliendo, Marco & Cobb-Clark, Deborah A. & Hennecke, Juliane & Uhlendorff, Arne, 2019. "Locus of control and internal migration," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    5. Zhiling Wang & Thomas de Graaff & Peter Nijkamp, 2018. "Barriers of Culture, Networks, and Language in International Migration: A Review," REGION, European Regional Science Association, vol. 5, pages 73-89.
    6. Parag Mahajan & Dean Yang, 2020. "Taken by Storm: Hurricanes, Migrant Networks, and US Immigration," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 12(2), pages 250-277, April.
    7. Ran Abramitzky & Leah Boustan, 2017. "Immigration in American Economic History," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1311-1345, December.
    8. Shilpi, Forhad, 2013. "Understanding the sources of spatial disparity and convergence : evidence from Bangladesh," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6519, The World Bank.
    9. Breinlich, Holger & Ottaviano, Gianmarco I.P. & Temple, Jonathan R.W., 2014. "Regional Growth and Regional Decline," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 4, pages 683-779, Elsevier.
    10. Fu, Yuming & Gabriel, Stuart A., 2012. "Labor migration, human capital agglomeration and regional development in China," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 473-484.
    11. Marcel Fafchamps & Forhad Shilpi & The World Bank, 2004. "Isolation and Subjective Welfare," Economics Series Working Papers 216, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    12. Djajic, Slobodan & Kirdar, Murat G. & Vinogradova, Alexandra, 2016. "Source-country earnings and emigration," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 46-67.
    13. Shilpi Forhad, 2011. "Mobility Costs and Regional Inequality: Evidence from Bangladesh," Journal of Globalization and Development, De Gruyter, vol. 2(1), pages 1-32, August.
    14. Michel Beine & Luisito Bertinelli & Rana Cömertpay & Anastasia Litina & Jean-François Maystadt, 2020. "The Gravity Model of Forced Displacement Using Mobile Phone Data," DEM Discussion Paper Series 20-13, Department of Economics at the University of Luxembourg.
    15. Bertoli, Simone & Moraga, Jesús Fernández-Huertas & Guichard, Lucas, 2020. "Rational inattention and migration decisions," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    16. Gröger, André, 2021. "Easy come, easy go? Economic shocks, labor migration and the family left behind," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(C).
    17. Rebecca M. Blank, 2005. "Poverty, Policy, and Place: How Poverty and Policies to Alleviate Poverty Are Shaped by Local Characteristics," International Regional Science Review, , vol. 28(4), pages 441-464, October.
    18. Brian Cushing & Jacques Poot, 2004. "Crossing boundaries and borders: Regional science advances in migration modelling," Advances in Spatial Science, in: Raymond J. G. M. Florax & David A. Plane (ed.), Fifty Years of Regional Science, pages 317-338, Springer.
    19. Alexandra SCHAFFAR, 2020. "Introduction - Les questions soulevées en économie des migrations," Region et Developpement, Region et Developpement, LEAD, Universite du Sud - Toulon Var, vol. 51, pages 5-16.
    20. Massimiliano Calì, 2012. "Trade Liberalisation Does Not Always Raise Wage Premia: Evidence from Ugandan Districts," SERC Discussion Papers 0114, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Transport Economics Policy&Planning; Population Policies; Economic Theory&Research; Anthropology; Public Sector Economics;
    All these keywords.

    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:wbk:wbrwps:7047. 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: Roula I. Yazigi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.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.