Abstract
International migration has been a major influence on the economic and social development of nations. Nevertheless, a vast majority of the global population continues to reside in their country of birth. While income/wealth differentials between states create centrifugal forces responsible for migration, impediments to international mobility of human, financial, physical and social capital assets work in the centripetal direction. This paper reviews a large segment of the extant literature on international migration to probe economic influences on people’s international mobility and immobility decisions. It aims to refine and extend the neoclassical foundations of migration theory and to outline howpotentially complex decision mechanisms used by potentially mobile economic agents may be modified to simplify the complexity inherent in such choices so that immobility is often a default outcome of indecision.
Highlights
International migration has been a major influence on the economic and social development of nations
We argue that informed relocation decisions are inherently complex, risky and costly and, the default position in such complex choices for risk-averse and boundedly rational oeconomic hominum is to defer the relocation decision or reject it
We are interested in: (1) the international mobility/immobility of human capital, which cannot be physically separated from its human ‘carriers’; (2) other forms of capital that comprise the oeconomicos’ total wealth; and, (3) how these boundedly rational agents attribute ‘value’ to and choose between different locational options under conditions of uncertainty if they wish to take into account the impact of potential relocation on the value of their human and other capital assets
Summary
Wealth formation by economic agents and their international mobility. (Hicks, 1932). The paper aims to embed spatial relocation decisions in the broader process of human economic activity and wealth creation, where spatial mobility of human capital is only one, albeit a very important one, outcome of resource allocation In this context, we are interested in: (1) the international mobility/immobility of human capital, which cannot be physically separated from its human ‘carriers’; (2) other forms of capital (assets net of offsetting liabilities) that comprise the oeconomicos’ total wealth; and, (3) how these boundedly rational agents attribute ‘value’ to and choose between different locational options under conditions of uncertainty if they wish to take into account the impact of potential relocation on the value of their human and other capital assets.
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