Economic causes and consequences of international migration of labor. Wirtschaftliche Auswirkungen der internationalen Arbeitsmigration

Abstract

Migration waves in Europe in the past century had diverse causes but currently prevailing purposes for migration are of economic origin. International labour migration is mainly promoted by economic interests. This paper puts together important facts regarding motivation to labour migration and provides explanations of their impacts on the macroeconomic level. Understanding of broader migration patterns and identification of key determinants of migration described in this paper may allow the evaluation of applied migration policies and the determination of macro- and microeconomic benefits and costs of international labour migration. A partial objective of the practical part of the paper is to evaluate relationships between the rate of migration and the unemployment rate in countries of the Visegrad group using adequate quantitative methods. To determine parameters of a regression function were used methods of regression and correlation analysis including testing the statistical significance. Based on these results, the existence of correlation is evident between the crude rate of net migration and the unemployment rate in the Czech Republic and Hungary but calculated correlation indices in Poland and Slovakia were evaluated as statistically insignificant which can be attributed to higher structural problems of those two economies.