US labor market conditions and migration: a reassessment of Bahar (2025)

RODRIGUEZ, FRANCISCO and Bravo, Giancarlo (2025): US labor market conditions and migration: a reassessment of Bahar (2025).

Abstract

Bahar (2025) argues that there is a long-term cointegrating relationship between US job vacancies and Southwest border crossings. We show that his conclusion is based on a misspecified Engle–Granger test applied to first differences. Once the Engle Granger test is correctly applied to levels, evidence for a cointegrating relationship vanishes, invalidating the paper’s approach to estimating short- and long-run elasticities. Bahar’s approach is therefore uninformative about the relationship between US labor market conditions and migration.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Migration, Labor Markets, Cointegration
• Subjects: F - International Economics > F2 - International Factor Movements and International Business > F22 - International Migration; O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O1 - Economic Development > O15 - Human Resources ; Human Development ; Income Distribution ; Migration

References

Bahar, Dany. 2024. Online Appendix for *Not a Border Crisis, but a Labor Market Crisis: The Often Overlooked “Pull” Factor of US Border Crossings*. Supplementary material. Published December 6, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1111/pam.22665/suppl file/pam22665- sup-0001-onlineappendix.pdf.

Bahar, Dany. 2025a. “Not a border crisis, but a labor market crisis: The often overlooked “pull” factor of U.S. border crossings.” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 44, no. 2 (April): 674–680. https://doi.org/10.1002/pam.22665.

Bahar, Dany. 2025b. “Correction to ”Not a border crisis, but a labor market crisis: The often overlooked “pull” factor of U.S. border crossings”.” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (June). https://doi.org/10.1002/pam.70015.

Bahar, Dany, and Ricardo Hausmann. 2025a. Sanctions on Venezuela Are Not Driving Migration to the US Southwest Border: An Empirical Assessment. CGD Note 382. Center for Global Development. Accessed April 9, 2025. https://www.cgdev.org/sites/default/files/ sanctions-venezuela-not-driving-migration-southwest-border.pdf.

Bahar, Dany, and Ricardo Hausmann.. 2025b. “Stopping Venezuela’s Exodus Hinges on Restoring Hope.” Americas Quarterly (March). Accessed May 8, 2025. https://americasquarterly.org/article/stopping-venezuela s-exodus-hinges-on-restoring-hope/.

Engle, Robert F., and C. W. J. Granger. 1987. “Co-Integration and Error Correction: Representation, Estimation, and Testing.” Econometrica 55 (2): 251–276. issn: 00129682, 14680262, accessed May 8, 2025. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1913236. Greene, William H. 2012. Econometric Analysis. 7th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. isbn: 9780131395381.

Hamilton, James D. 1994. Time Series Analysis. Princeton University Press. isbn: 9780691042893. https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691042893/time-series-analysis.

Rodríguez, Francisco, and Giancarlo Bravo. 2025. Why Bahar and Hausmann Tell Us Nothing About Venezuelan Migration Flows to the United States. https://cepr.net/publications/ why- bahar- and-hausmann- tell - us- nothing- about- venezuelan- migration- flows- to- theunited-states/. Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Rodríguez, Francisco, David Rosnick, and Giancarlo Bravo. 2025. Did Sanctions Relief Drive Venezuelan Migration to the US? https://cepr.net/publications/did-sanctions-relief-drivevenezuelan- migration-to-the-us/. Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Schaffer, Mark E. 2010. EGRANGER: Stata module to perform Engle-Granger cointegration tests and 2-step ECM estimation. https ://ideas . repec . org /c/boc/bocode/s457210 .ht ml. Statistical Software Components S457210, Boston College Department of Economics, revised 03 Feb 2022.