This paper investigates and exploits the exogenous variation in the number of a country's migrants abroad driven by regional and global trade integration to estimate the impact of international migration on economic institutions at home. While the significance of the country's geographical orientation in cross-border migration is well-documented, time-invariant geographic variables are eliminated by panel models with fixed-effects. Exploiting the time-varying joint effect of geography and trade on international migration that allows to account for both endogeneity and unobserved heterogeneity, this study finds evidence of adverse impacts of international migration on the home-country's economic institutions, with large negative estimates for the countries that are grappling with weak political institutions. The results are robust to alternative model specifications and estimation methods. In addition, this paper offers no empirical support for the recent claims that the effect of emigration on institutional quality is destination-specific.

本文调查和利用区域和全球贸易一体化驱动的一国海外移民数量的外生变化，以估计国际移民对国内经济制度的影响。虽然该国的地理定位在跨境移民中的重要性已得到充分证明，但具有固定效应的面板模型消除了时间不变的地理变量。本研究利用地理和贸易对国际移徙的时变联合效应，考虑到内生性和未观察到的异质性，发现国际移徙对母国经济制度的不利影响的证据，对国家的负面估计很大正在与薄弱的政治机构作斗争。结果对于替代模型规范和估计方法具有鲁棒性。此外，本文没有为最近关于移民对制度质量的影响是特定于目的地的说法提供实证支持。