A Meta-Analysis of the Literature on Climate Change and Migration

49 Pages Posted: 21 Feb 2019

See all articles by Michel A. R. Beine

Michel A. R. Beine

University of Luxemburg; CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute)

Lionel Jeusette

Universite du Luxembourg

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Date Written: 2018

Abstract

Recent surveys of the literature on climate change and migration emphasize the important diversity of outcomes and approaches of the empirical studies. In this paper, we conduct a meta-analysis in order to investigate the role of the methodological choices of these empirical studies in finding some particular results concerning the role of climatic factors as drivers of human mobility. We code 45 papers representative of the literature in terms of methodological approaches. This results in the coding of more than 80 variables capturing the methodology of the main dimensions of the analysis. These dimensions include authors’ reputation, type of mobility, measures of mobility, type of data, context of the study, econometric methods and last but not least measures of the climatic factors. We look at the influence of these characteristics on the probability of finding any effect of climate change, of finding a displacement effect, of finding an increase in immobility and of finding evidence in favour of a direct versus an indirect effect. Our results high- light the role of some main methodological choices, such as the frequency of the data on mobility, the level of development, the measures of human mobility and of the climatic factors as well as the econometric methodology.

Keywords: climate change, human mobility, econometric regressions, meta-analysis, natural disasters

JEL Classification: C830, F220, J610, Q540

Suggested Citation

Beine, Michel A. R. and Jeusette, Lionel, A Meta-Analysis of the Literature on Climate Change and Migration (2018). CESifo Working Paper No. 7417, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3338771 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3338771

Michel A. R. Beine (Contact Author)

University of Luxemburg ( email )

L-1511 Luxembourg
Luxembourg

CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute)

Poschinger Str. 5
Munich, DE-81679
Germany

Lionel Jeusette

Universite du Luxembourg ( email )

L-1511 Luxembourg
Luxembourg

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