Professional networks and high-skilled migration – The historical and contemporaneous perspective (B09)

• Subject Area: Economic Policy, Applied Economics ; Economic and Social History
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 280092119

Social networks play a key role in human interactions. We will empirically study the role of professional networks in migration decisions of high-skilled individuals from both a historical and a contemporaneous perspective. While traditionally, the economic literature focused on wage differentials between home and destination countries, (biased) expectations about job perspectives and everyday life in the potential destination country can be equally important for individual decisions to migrate. Networks are key to transmit such information. We will analyze whether and how professional networks facilitate international high-skilled migration using new data that measure professional networks at an unprecedented level of detail and address the endogeneity of network formation by exploiting exogenous shocks.

• DFG Programme: CRC/Transregios
• Subproject of: TRR 190: Rationality and Competition: The Economic Performance of Individuals and Firms
• Applicant Institution: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
• Project Heads: Professor Dr. Oliver Falck; Professor Dr. Fabian Waldinger