A spatio-temporal analysis of migration

Migration is a space- and time-dependent phenomenon. Traditional geographical migration models have considered the distance between source and destination countries or have applied suitable normalizations to treat the correlation among migratory flows. To disentangle cross-sectional dependence, spatial correlation is explored in mainly two directions. First, migratory flows from “neighbouring” countries are considered to be directly interconnected. Second, a set for exogenous drivers are allowed to be correlated among the different economic units. Swiss immigration, from 153 source countries from 1981 to 2011, is modelled using a dynamic spatial econometric model able to capture both path-dependency and spatial interactions. An out-of-sample forecasting, performed to assess the model’s accuracy, confirms the crucial role played by the spatial terms over the dynamic ones.