Young Development Economists Webinar Series (YoDEV) – Travis Baseler (University of Rochester), 15th October 2020 at 2:30 p.m. (CET)

Travis Baseler (University of Rochester) on “Hidden Income and the Perceived Returns to Migration: Experimental Evidence from Kenya”, jointly organised by the Department of Economics and Management of Università di Pavia, Università degli Studi di Milano – Bicocca e Centro Studi Luca d’Agliano. The webinar will be held on Tuesday, 15th October 2020 at 2:30 p.m. (CET) via Zoom. 

Abstract: Urban workers in Kenya earn twice as much as rural workers with the same level of education. Why don’t more rural workers migrate to cities? I use two field experiments to show that low migration is partly due to underestimation of urban incomes, and that this inaccurate information can be sustained by migrants’ strategic motives to hide income to minimize remittance obligations. Parents underestimate their migrant children’s incomes by nearly half, and underestimation is greater when a migrant’s incentive to hide income is higher. Providing information about urban earnings increases migration to the capital city by 33% over two years.

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