Research Seminar Series on “Global Challenges”: Clément Imbert (SciencesPo), 6th November 2025 at 12:15 p.m. (CET), University of Milan

Clément Imbert (SciencesPo) on “Floating population: migration with(out) family and Chinese economic development” (with Joan Monras, Marlon Seror and Yanos Zylberberg) jointly organised by Centro Studi Luca d’Agliano, BAFFI and the Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods (University of Milan) in collaboration with the Dipartimento di Economia, Metodi Quantitativi e Strategie di Impresa (Università Milano Bicocca), the Dipartimento di Ingegneria Gestionale (Politecnico di Milano) and the Department of Economics of the University of Insubria.

The seminar will be held on Thursday, 6th November 2025 at 12:15 p.m. (CET) in a hybrid format:
> DEMM seminar room, via Conservatorio 7, 2nd floor;
> Teams

In-person meetings will be organised before and after the seminar. If you wish to meet the speaker, please select one option here (by 4th November). 

ABSTRACT: In developing countries, rural workers who migrate to urban areas face large monetary and non-monetary costs, which gives them an incentive to leave family behind. This option is absent from standard equilibrium models of migration. Using Chinese data from 2000 to 2005, we develop and estimate the first quantitative spatial model in which households can choose whether to migrate, who migrates, where they go, and how consumption is allocated across members and locations. We show that the ability of rural workers to become a “floating population” that consumes partly at origin through remittances to family left behind was essential for Chinese economic development.