migration, undercutting the incentive to migrate and to accumulate savings. Moreover, we show that providing accurate information on wage levels in destination countries can reduce both emigration rates and durations, leading to lower levels of repatriated savings and less domestic business creation after return.

Our model is closely tailored to the institutional context. Temporary migration is pervasive in Bangladesh, and domestic economic activity strongly depends on migrants’ remittances and repatriated savings. Our model captures the key determinants that together influence the decisions about whether to emigrate, the age of departure, the destination, the duration, and the employment decision upon return. Demand for migrant labor in the main destination countries varies with oil revenues, which in turn limits individual migration opportunities. In addition, labor contracts may be canceled prematurely, creating income and employment risks for migrants. Migration choices are further influenced by pre-migration employment outcomes, migration fees and other costs, access to credit, and the costs and returns of entrepreneurship. For instance, the duration of a worker’s migration is affected by migration costs and the extent to which these are covered on credit, but also by the level of assets required to start better-paying self-employment activities in Bangladesh. In turn, credit conditions influence a worker’s ability to access self-employment in Bangladesh, but also the incentive to migrate, and the amount of savings repatriated. Thus, cost-benefit analyses of implemented policies must account for potentially offsetting changes in migration, savings and investment behavior.

Our main data source is a new and unique survey of returning migrants that was specifically developed to answer these questions. The Bangladesh Return Migrant Survey (BRMS) was designed with the idea that temporary migration is an integral part of workers’ life-cycle career. Hence, it provides very detailed information on the entire employment and migration history of a sample of 5,000 migrant workers who had returned to Bangladesh at the time of the data collection. The survey is one of the very few comprehensive surveys on temporary migrants globally, and to the best of our knowledge, it is the first of its kind to have been conducted in a country in which emigration is based almost exclusively on regular temporary work contracts.<sup>3</sup> The dataset includes detailed information on migrants’ personal and family backgrounds, their labor market outcomes before migration, their expectations prior to departure about earning and saving prospects abroad, migration expenditures, sources of income and savings, employment histories at the foreign destination, and labor market activities and earnings after their return to Bangladesh.

> 3For less regulated contexts, in which emigration is more often undocumented, the Mexican Migration Project (MMP) and the Egypt Labor Market Survey (ELMS) have a similar design. While the Egyptian survey covers all workers in the country and is not specifically focused on temporary migrants, it includes a module on past migration of household members currently living in the Arab Republic of Egypt.

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