evidence that emerged from developing economies and one of the early explanations for this failure was risk-aversion. Simon [1964] and Myrdal [1968] had already noticed that migrants are _selectively_ drawn from rural areas based on personal characteristics that are closely associated with risk-taking such as young age so that one should expect risk-tolerant individuals to be more likely to migrate. In a theoretical model devised as a critique to the Todaro model, Katz and Stark [1986] showed that a small chance of reaping high rewards is a sufficient condition to trigger migration irrespective of wage differentials, a finding that would make risk-taking behavior consistent with economic migration. Recent empirical work in developed and developing economies supports this view. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), Jaeger et al. [2010] find that Germans who had spells of migration between 2000 and 2006 were more likely to be risk-tolerant individuals as opposed to those who did not move. Using the 2009 round of the Rural Household Survey (RHS) of China, Akg ̈u ̧c et al. [2016] find that risk-tolerance positively affects the decision to migrate and this holds for households as well as for household heads and their spouses. It is important to note here that this literature focuses on self-selection of individuals into migrants and nonmigrants. It does not address the question of whether exposure to poverty (instead of conflict) has an impact on risk preferences.<sup>4</sup> This paper uses household and conflict panel data from Nigeria for the period 2010-2016 to predict migration from conflict areas with a QM model. It finds the model to predict riskaverse individuals to leave conflict areas and risk-tolerant individuals to stay. Using a direct measure of risk preferences, it also finds these predictions to match observed risk preferences among leavers and stayers. If these results are confirmed, there is clearly a sharp difference between economic migrants and forced migrants in terms of risk preferences. Economic migrants are less risk-averse and migrate with the expectation of reaping large rewards and better living conditions. Forced migrants are more risk-averse and migrate in an effort to protect their lives and minimum living standards. As discussed in the conclusions, these findings have important policy implications for both the place of origin and the place of destination of migrants.

The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 summarizes traditional models of decision

> 4The theory and evidence on economic migration and risk preferences is more complex. For example, Bonin et al. [2009] find that first generation immigrants to Germany have a higher risk-aversion than natives using the 2004 GSOEP, the same survey used by Jaeger et al. [2010]. This is not necessarily in contrast with this latter paper because the samples compared are different but shows the importance of distinguishing between internal and external migration and between first and second generations of migrants. Some scholars have also provided arguments for economic migrants to be more risk averse. One hypothesis is that migration decisions are household based and that households strategically select individual members for migration in an effort to diversify and reduce risks (Stark and Levhari, 1982; Katz and Stark, 1986). While plausible, there is not much empirical evidence supporting this hypothesis and such hypothesis is not necessarily in contrast with the fact that, within the household, risk-tolerant individuals would be more willing to migrate. Another hypothesis states that risks associated with the place of destination decreases over time as people settle and find work and that these risks may be below those of the place of origin, encouraging therefore risk averse individuals to migrate. Again, the empirical evidence for this hypothesis remains inconsistent as compared to the findings described in the text.

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