Migration Incentives and Flows between Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine and the European Union: a Forecasting Model

Abstract

ABSTRACT. The main objective of this paper is to elaborate econometric model forecasting the stocks of migrants from the Eastern European states (EES) in the Visegrad group (V4) countries and the European Union Member States (EU MS) in case of visa abolition.We use the data span of 2008-2012 and the econometric techniques known as Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR), Panel data Least Squares (PLS) and General method of moments (GMM) to build three types of possible scenarios for migration from the Eastern European countries (Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine) to the V4 and to the EU as a whole in the next 35 years, i.e. until the year of 2050 with a simulated shock of visa abolition set at the year of 2015.Our results show that hypothetical visa abolition is not going to dramatically increase migration from the Eastern European countries in the EU Member States. Even though the immediate effect of visa abolition would probably result in the slight increase of migration stocks in the V4 and EU countries, the annual migration stocks comprised of residents of Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine in the EU MS in a long term might be around from one and a half to just above three - three and a half million people. Furthermore, a successful accession period with high growth and implementation of the reforms is actually leading to elimination of the migration pressures. More precisely, the citizens of Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine that had the strongest incentives to migrate have already done so long before the visas are eventually abolished.JEL Classification: C33, F15, F22, J11, J61Keywords: international migration, transition economies, Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, panel data, seemingly unrelated regressions.(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)IntroductionThis paper outlines and predicts the determinants of migration from the Eastern European countries (hereinafter denoted as EEC and represented by Belarus, Moldova and Elkraine - see Figure 1) to the Visegrad four countries (denoted as V4 and) the ELI Member States. The paper's main objective is in identifying the determinants of labor force flows and, based on these determinants and using their extrapolations, conducing the forecasting of migration flows from Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine to the V4 and to the EU as a whole in the next 35 years, i.e. until the year of 2050 with a simulated shock of visa abolition set at the year of 2015.Abolition of tourist visas to the EU countries for the citizens of Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine, as well as opening the EU labour market for the citizens of these Eastern European countries, might lead to the higher numbers of migrants. Therefore, it seems useful to conduct some econometric analysis and run extrapolations that would attempt to predict migration flows in case of such events.To our best knowledge, there has never been any similar analysis and extrapolations of migration flows originating at EEC and heading towards the EU that were conducted in the migration research literature. Our elaboration is based on several studies that predict Eastern migrations to the EU after 2004, but unlike those studies, it works with the more recent data, takes into consideration the outcomes of recent world economic crisis, and utilizes more advanced econometric techniques. Hence, our article represents an interesting and timely contribution to the plethora of the research literature. Generally, there is a plethora of theories about migration potential and migration decisions that can be found in research literature. It appears that potential migrants are not simply lured by the vision of economic profit and the reality might be much more complicated.The research literature (see e.g. Lee, 1966; Bauer and Zimmermann, 1999; Wang, 2010; or Lapshyna, 2012) implies that it might be possible to arch the existing theories within the concept of so-called push and pull factors coined by the founder of the neoclassical migration theories George Ravenstein (1885). …