Royal Economic Society awards junior fellowship to Economics student

Mauro is a doctorate student working under the supervision of Dr Jackie Wahba and Dr Hector Calvo Pardo. His PhD thesis examines whether international migration leads to institutional gains in origin countries. So far this issue has attracted little attention in the economic literature, whose main focus has been on the economic implications of emigration for source countries. His research broadens the focus of such literature, by including another crucial aspect of economic development, namely institutional quality in source countries. His contribution is both theoretical and empirical. He provides a framework to explain the link between emigration and political institutions in origin countries. The main prediction is that an improvement in the quality of political institutions takes place whenever there is a positive net migration out-flows. Empirically, using a dynamic panel estimation for a sample of 105 countries in the period 1975 - 2005, he finds empirical support for such hypothesis.