Determinants of Migration Following the EU Enlargement: A Panel Data Analysis

Abstract The Eastern enlargements of the European Union (EU) since the early 2000s have included post-transitional economies at a lower level of development than the existing member states and thus, have significantly affected the East-West migration flows and labour markets on both sides. This has provided a distinctive opportunity to study the effects of liberalisation and to identify economic factors leading to migration flows with the purpose of enabling better estimations of future migration trends. In this research, a panel data analysis with pair of country fixed effects and time fixed effects is used to explore several pull and push factors of the East-West EU migration flows in the period from 2000 to 2017. Results indicate that emigration rate responds rather quickly to the changes in GDP per capita and unemployment rate of the youth population in immigration country, with statistically significant elasticity coefficients, suggesting that international migration contributes significantly to adjusting the labour supply to fluctuations in economic activity.