Essays on labor economics

In the first chapter, I estimate a discrete choice dynamic programming model to understand how wages and border enforcement affect immigration from Mexico to the United States. I allow for a person's decisions to depend on the location of their spouse. Also, U.S. enforcement varied considerably along the border and over time, which caused migrants to vary where they crossed the border. To account for this, in the model illegal immigrants also choose a border crossing point. I estimate the model using data from the Mexican Migration Project. Simulations show that a 10% increase in Mexican wages would reduce the amount of time that individuals spend in the U.S. by about 9%. A 50% increase in enforcement would reduce migration by up to 9%, depending on the allocation of the new resources along the border.;In the second chapter, I estimate a discrete choice dynamic programming model of migration between Puerto Rico and the U.S. This is used to understand migration in the case of open borders, as all Puerto Ricans can move to the U.S. legally. I find that the wage differential between the U.S. and Puerto Rico explains about half of the observed migration. I use the estimated model to predict how Mexican migration to the U.S. would change in the case of open borders. I find that Mexican immigration to the U.S. would increase by approximately a factor of 5. This is due to lower moving costs and higher realized wages when a person is allowed to immigrate legally.;In the third chapter, I estimate a discrete choice dynamic programming model to calculate how wage differentials affected internal migration decisions in Malaysia in the 1980's. I find that wages motivate migration decisions; however, I do not find evidence that in-kind payments play a role. People move from low to high wage locations, and people with a low wage draw in their current location are more likely to move. In Malaysia at this time, there were significant urban-rural and regional earnings disparities. I find that migration increases earnings over a lifetime by about 10%.