THE REGIONAL DETERMINANTS OF SKILLED MIGRANTS ATTRACTION

Abstract

Workers’ mobility, particularly the skilled ones, appears in the literature as one of the major forms of knowledge spillovers. Thus, using a balanced panel of 5015 municipalities over the years 2001 and 2007, this study is aimed at appraising what cities’ characteristics attract skilled migrants. The model with no spatial control provides biased estimates. This sheds lights on the importance of controlling the spatial dependence and unobserved regional characteristics in the estimation of the model. After controlling for spatial dependence, there is evidence that skilled migrants prefer cities with higher expected income, population, GDP per capita and degree of industrialization. Furthermore, they prefer both cities with less crime and traffic and cities that provide better public transportation. The main findings reveal the relevance of surrounding regional characteristics to explain skilled migration flows.