Civil War, Migration and the Effect on Business Cycles: The Case of Sri Lanka

Abstract

We estimated a stochastic growth model for Sri Lanka over the 1962–2015 period and found that permanent productivity shocks constituted the largest proportion of the variance in output growth. We computed correlation coefficients between permanent productivity shocks and some variables and found a negative correlation between the shocks and the growth in migration outflows. The findings are consistent with the negative effect of civil war on economic growth from an exodus of skilled workers. We further investigated the factors that drive migration from Sri Lanka to a major migration destination, namely Australia, for educated and skilled Sri Lankans. We regressed the growth rate of the Sri Lankan-born population in Australia on a civil war dummy variable, per worker Australian gross domestic product (GDP), adjusted for the restrictiveness of Australian immigration policy and an estimated labour wedge that represents labour market inefficiency in Sri Lanka. We found that Sri Lankan immigrants in Australia increased with per worker GDP in Australia, civil war and labour market inefficiency in Sri Lanka. The finding suggests that excessive protection of insiders in the Sri Lankan labour market should be abolished to mitigate migration outflows that have continued since the end of the civil war.