The Economic Value of Migration: Evidence from Russian Regions

Migration is one of the most discussed topics in Russia, especially in recent years. It is closely related to economic and social processes, and therefore is actively researched by scientists around the world. In this Thesis Project I study the impact of migration on the GDP of Russian regions. For a more detailed analysis I separate migration flows by the place of origin (domestic, foreign) and direction of movement (immigration, emigration). The analysis is based on 2011-2020 statistical data for all Russian regions except Crimea, Sevastopol, DNR, LNR, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions. I use migration lags to test the robustness of the results over time. I find a robust positive correlation between domestic and foreign immigration and regional GDP after 2 and 3 years respectively. I also establish the reverse causality in the study of emigration, which requires further research to examine. In the final section, I test the results for robustness to outliers in the sample. To do so, I exclude observations for 9 regions and repeat the study. The new results are consistent with the initial results and confirm their robustness.