| Drawing on the literature of occupational status and social distance, a theory is developed of labor migration that is prompted by a desire to avoid “social humiliation.” A closed-economy general equilibrium model that incorporates occupational status and examines the interaction between the goods market and the labor market is constructed. This framework is then extended from a closed, single economy to an open economy setting in a world that consists of two countries or two regions. It is shown that as long as migration can reduce humiliation sufficiently, migration will occur even between two identical economies. Hence, a new model of migration is presented in which migration arises from a wish to reap social exposure gains. The model shows that... |
