Three essays on international migration

This thesis consists of three essays concerning international migration. The first two papers are about flows of money from the United States to Mexico, and the third paper focuses on the flows of people from Europe to South America.; The first paper (Chapter II) analyzes the personal and family related factors that influence Mexican workers to remit. While remitting money or physical goods is important for the migrant, the decision to migrate and find a job is critical. In order to incorporate this fact, I develop a simultaneous-equation model that takes labor supply and remittances as jointly dependent variables and estimate this model using two-stage least squares. Empirical findings show that economic and demographic factors play an important role in determining the amount of money migrants send back home. This paper raises some interesting policy considerations. The fact that unauthorized migrants remit more money than legal migrants could make Mexico worse-off in the event a migratory agreement is reached.; The second paper (Chapter III) examines the impact foreign direct investment (FDI) and remittances have on the Mexican economy through gross capital formation (GCF). By using cointegration techniques, I find there is a positive relationship between both FDI and remittances on GCF. Furthermore, the impact of remittances is larger than the impact of FDI, suggesting remittances can be used as a potential tool for economic development.; The third paper (Chapter IV) investigates the determinants of Argentinean and Brazilian immigration from 10 European source countries for the period 1870-1910. By using panel data I am able to exploit the time-series and cross-section variation in immigration to these two countries. The model is estimated using the Hausman-Taylor Instrumental Variable technique. Results show economic opportunities measured through per capita GDP (or real wage), previous migration, and migration to the U.S. as an alternative opportunity played an important role in determining European migration to South America. Furthermore, the costs of migration measured through distance and language seemed to have little impact on the decision to migrate.