# **1 Introduction**

The European economic landscape has undergone major transformations since the early 1990s through international migration. During this recent period, the volume of migration in the European Union (EU) has more than doubled, with the number of foreign-born residents in EU countries reaching 60 million in 2019. This represents 12% of the EU resident population and over 23% of the stock of global migrants, while the EU population accounts for only less than 7% of the total world population. Among the current stock of the foreign born in the EU, more than 21 million individuals (or 35% of the total) are migrants from other EU member countries.<sup>1</sup> What motivates migration decisions? Individual rational actors decide to migrate because a cost-benefit calculation leads them to expect a positive net return – both monetary and non-monetary – from movement (Sjaastad 1962, Schwartz 1973, Todaro and Maruszko 1987). In this microeconomic model of individual choice, where both push and pull constructs shape migration patterns, potential migrants move to where the expected discounted net returns are greatest (Lee 1966, Borjas 1987).<sup>2</sup> Then, because of its large economic and social costs, corruption could be an important determinant affecting migration decisions. In particular, does a high level of corruption in a country promote emigration and deter immigration? In order to make progress on this important question, in this paper we use a gravity model specification to investigate whether corruption could be identified as a push factor and/or as a pull factor shaping migration patterns.

Using data on bilateral migration flows across EU28 and EFTA countries between 2008 and 2018, we show that four different measures of corruption – both subjective and objective indicators – are strongly linked with migration flows. Across all the specifications considered in this paper, corruption is found to act both as push factor and as a pull factor for migration decisions. A 1-unit increase in the corruption level in the origin country is associated with an 11 percent increase in the outflow of migrants, while the same increase in the destination country is associated with a 10% decline in in-migration.

> 1Of these intra-EU migrants, 11 million (or 18%) come from the EU15: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Another 10 million (or 17%), up from 4 million in 2000, come from the NMS13 (the New Member Sates of the EU): Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, the Slovak Republic, and Slovenia. An additional 10 million (or 17%) are migrants from other non-EU countries in the western Balkans, Turkiye, Eastern Europe, and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).

> 2Direct tests support this microeconomic model of individual choice in migratory responses. Graves and Waldman (1991) show that the elderly retire in counties where public goods are capitalized more into wages than into land prices. Kahn (2000) finds migration into counties with improving air quality. Banzhaf and Walsh (2008) assess the impact of toxicity-weighted emissions and air quality on the composition of the population.

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