Home > Research > Publications & Outputs > A gravity analysis of refugee mobility using mo...

Electronic data

  • Phone Gravity

    Rights statement: This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Journal of Development Economics. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Journal of Development Economics, 150, 2021 DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2020.102618

    Accepted author manuscript, 1.38 MB, PDF document

    Available under license: CC BY-NC-ND

Links

Text available via DOI:

View graph of relations

A gravity analysis of refugee mobility using mobile phone data

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
Close
Article number102618
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>1/05/2021
<mark>Journal</mark>Journal of Development Economics
Volume150
Number of pages14
Publication StatusPublished
Early online date7/01/21
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

The objective of this study consists in analyzing the determinants of the internal mobility of refugees in Turkey. We track down this mobility relying on geolocalized mobile phone calls data and bring these measures to a micro-founded gravity model in order to estimate the main drivers of refugee mobility across 26 regions in 2017. Our results show that the movements of refugees are sensitive to income differentials and contribute therefore to a more efficient allocation of labor across space. Comparing these findings with those of individuals with a non-refugee status, we find that refugees are more sensitive to variations of income at origin and to distance, while less responsive to changes in income at destination. These findings are robust to the way mobility is inferred from phone data and to the choice of the geographical unit of investigation. Further, we provide evidence against some alternative explanations of mobility such as the propensity to leave refugee camps, transit through Turkey, social magnet effects and sensitivity to agricultural business cycles.

Bibliographic note

This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Journal of Development Economics. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Journal of Development Economics, 150, 2021 DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2020.102618