Migration and the Sending Economy: A Disaggregated Rural Economy-Wide Analysis

Most economic research on migration impacts focuses on the households that send the migrants and get the remittances, ignoring linkages with others in the sending economies. This paper offers an alternative, disaggregated economy-wide perspective on migration and its impacts. Data from the 2003 Mexico National Rural Household Survey are used to calibrate a series of interacting rural household models nested within a general equilibrium model of the whole rural economy. Simulations reveal that the impacts of international migration and remittances on sending areas depend critically on the ways in which local markets transmit influences among households.