Reproducibility package for Do Bilateral Labor Agreements Increase Migration? Global Evidence from 1960 to 2020

This paper estimates the impact of bilateral labor arrangements (BLAs) on migration between two countries. We use comprehensive data on bilateral migration and BLAs across all country pairs for each decade from 1960 to 2020, and employ an empirical specification with a rich set of fixed effects. In our preferred and most stringent specification, we find that signing a BLA increases migration from an origin to a destination country by 76 percent (0.57 log points) in the decade of signing. The effect persists for up to three decades. The impacts are higher for corridors without a pre-existing regular flow and for destinations in the Gulf Cooperation Council. In contrast, the effect is virtually absent for origin countries in Africa, driven by countries with weak government effectiveness. The estimates imply that BLAs can lead to substantial welfare gains: migrants from low- and lower-middle-income countries can earn an additional US$120 million annually from a single BLA.