Person:
Bossavie, Laurent

Last updated: October 30, 2024

Biography

Laurent Bossavie is a senior economist in the Social Protection and Jobs Global Practice, Europe and Central Asia unit, at the World Bank. His main areas of expertise are labor economics and the economics of migration. His work explores the role of labor and migration policies in shaping the labor market outcomes of workers in both high-income and developing countries. He has edited four books, and his research on these topics has been published in leading academic journals such as the Journal of Human Resources and the Journal of Development Economics. He holds a doctorate in economics from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy.

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The Journey Ahead: Supporting Successful Migration in Europe and Central Asia
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-31) Bossavie, Laurent; Garrote Sánchez, Daniel; Makovec, Mattia
The Journey Ahead: Supporting Successful Migration in Europe and Central Asia provides an in-depth analysis of international migration in Europe and Central Asia (ECA) and the implications for policy making. By identifying challenges and opportunities associated with migration in the region, it aims to inform a more nuanced, evidencebased debate on the costs and benefits of cross-border mobility. Using data-driven insights and new analysis, the report shows that migration has been an engine of prosperity and has helped address some of ECA’s demographic and socioeconomic disparities. Yet, migration’s full economic potential remains untapped. The report identifies multiple barriers keeping migration from achieving its full potential. Crucially, it argues that policies in both origin and destination countries can help maximize the development impacts of migration and effectively manage the economic, social, and political costs. Drawing from a wide range of literature, country experiences, and novel analysis, The Journey Ahead presents actionable policy options to enhance the benefits of migration for destination and origin countries and migrants themselves. Some measures can be taken unilaterally by countries, whereas others require close bilateral or regional coordination. The recommendations are tailored to different types of migration— forced displacement as well as high-skilled and low-skilled economic migration—and from the perspectives of both sending and receiving countries. This report serves as a comprehensive resource for governments, development partners, and other stakeholders throughout Europe and Central Asia, where the richness and diversity of migration experiences provide valuable insights for policy makers in other regions of the world.
Corruption as a Push and Pull Factor of Migration Flows: Evidence from European Countries
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-09-14) Bernini, Andrea; Bossavie, Laurent; Garrote Sanchez, Daniel; Makovec, Mattia; Garrote Sánchez, Daniel
Conclusive evidence on the relationship between corruption and migration has remained scant in the literature to date. Using data from 2008 to 2018 on bilateral migration flows across European Union and European Free Trade Association countries and four measures of corruption, this paper shows that corruption acts as both a push factor and a pull factor for migration patterns. Based on a gravity model, a one-unit increase in the corruption level in the origin country is associated with a 11 percent increase in out-migration. The same one-unit increase in the destination country is associated with a 10 percent decline in in-migration.
Impacts of Temporary Migration on Development in Origin Countries
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2023-04-17) Bossavie, Laurent; Özden, Çağlar
Temporary migration is widespread globally. While the literature has traditionally focused on the impacts of permanent migration on destination countries, evidence on the effects of temporary migration on origin countries has grown over the past decade. This paper highlights that the economic development impacts, especially on low- and middle-income origin countries, are complex, dynamic, context-specific, and multichanneled. The paper identifies five main pathways: (a) labor supply; (b) human capital; (c) financial capital and entrepreneurship; (d) aggregate welfare and poverty; and (e) institutions and social norms. Several factors shape these pathways and their eventual impacts. These include initial economic conditions at home, the scale and double selectivity of emigration and return migration, whether migration was planned to be temporary ex ante, and employment and human capital accumulation opportunities experienced by migrants while they are overseas. Meaningful policy interventions to increase the development impacts of temporary migration require proper analysis, which, in turn, depends on high-quality data on workers’ employment trajectories, as well as their decision processes on the timing of their migration and return. These are currently the biggest research challenges to overcome to study the development impacts of temporary migration.
Impacts of Temporary Migration on Development in Origin Countries
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-04) Bossavie, Laurent; Özden, Çağlar
Temporary migration is widespread globally. While the literature has traditionally focused on the impacts of permanent migration on destination countries, evidence on the effects of temporary migration on origin countries has grown over the past decade. This paper highlights that the economic development impacts, especially on low- and middle-income origin countries are complex, dynamic, context-specific and multi-channeled. The paper identifies five main pathways: (i) labor supply, (ii) human capital, (iii) financial capital and entrepreneurship, (iv) aggregate welfare and poverty, and (v) institutions and social norms. Several factors shape these pathways and their eventual impacts. These include initial economic conditions at home, the scale and double selectivity of emigration and return migration, and employment and human capital accumulation opportunities experienced by migrants while they are overseas, among others. Meaningful policy interventions to increase the development impacts of temporary migration require proper analysis, which, in turn, depends on high quality data on workers’ employment trajectories. This is currently the biggest research challenge to overcome to study the development impacts of temporary migration.
Impacts of Extremist Ideologies on Refugees' Integration: Evidence from Afghan Refugees in Tajikistan
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-11-28) Bossavie, Laurent; Rozo, Sandra V.; Urbina, María José
Abstract amended in January 2024: This paper examines the effect of exposure to extremist ideologies in the home country on the subsequent integration of refugees in host countries. For this purpose, it combines a rich census of Afghan refugees living in Tajikistan in 2023, following the Taliban’s takeover in Afghanistan, with uniquely scraped district-yearly data on the territories controlled by the Taliban, U.S. allies, and contested territories between the two factions between 2017 and 2021. The empirical strategy compares the integration outcomes of refugees who experienced varying exposure to extremism generated by the exogenous and sudden dramatic shift in Taliban’s territorial control in their province of birth between 2017 and 2021. Findings suggest that refugees who were born in provinces with increased Taliban territorial control between 2017 and 2021, despite having comparable pre-migration characteristics to refugees born elsewhere in Afghanistan, are less integrated into their Tajik host communities than the other refugees. These refugees also show lower educational levels and more mental health problems.
Safe and Productive Migration from the Kyrgyz Republic: Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic
(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2022) Bossavie, Laurent; Garrote Sánchez, Daniel
The benefits of international migration for workers from the Kyrgyz Republic, their families, and the home economy are tremendous. The migration process, however, comes with a set of vulnerabilities and risks. Those have been brought to light by the COVID-19 pandemic, which heavily tested migration systems and strongly impacted labor migration. Relying on rigorous analysis of the existing microdata, Safe and Productive Migration from the Kyrgyz Republic: Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic shows that these vulnerabilities are present at each stage of the migration life cycle: predeparture, during migration, and after return. While COVID-19 has put these limitations at the forefront, this book highlights that many already existed before the pandemic and would persist in the long run in the absence of adequate policy responses. This book presents policy recommendations to enhance the benefits of international migration for the Kyrgyz Republic and reduce its risks. Beyond the COVID-19 context, these recommendations can also help mitigate the impact of other negative shocks to international migration from the country, including the adverse spillovers of the recent Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Given the strong similarities in migration systems and patterns between the Kyrgyz Republic and other migrant-sending countries, especially those in Central Asia, the policy lessons drawn from this book are relevant beyond the Kyrgyz context.
The Effects of Subsidizing Social Security Contributions: Job Creation or Informality Reduction?
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-01) Asik, Gunes; Bossavie, Laurent; Kluve, Jochen; Nas Ozen, Efsan; Nebiler, Metin; Oviedo, Ana Maria
This paper evaluates the impact of an employment subsidy scheme covering employers’ social contribution costs on registered employment in small firms in Turkey. It utilizes a rich, firm-level administrative data set with monthly frequency, which allows for closely following the dynamics of registered employment in firms before and after the implementation of the subsidy. The empirical approach utilizes the geographically targeted implementation of the subsidy to estimate its effects using a difference-in-difference specification. The paper finds that the subsidy scheme had a sizable and positive impact on registered employment in small firms. The results are robust across specifications and to the choice of the control group. Positive effects on formal employment are also fairly constant and sustained over time. Corroborative evidence suggests that the positive effects on registered employment are mainly driven by the formalization of existing workers as opposed to new job creation. Therefore, the results indicate that social security contribution subsidies in small firms can be effective in reducing informality in contexts where informal employment remains common.
Return Migration and Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from South Asia
(World Bank, Washington, D.C., 2022-09) Bossavie, Laurent; Wang, He
Despite the magnitude of return migration from overseas to South Asia, the labor market outcomes of return migrants to this region have been understudied. This paper aims at filling this gap by examining systematic differences between the labor market outcomes of return migrants and nonmigrants in Bangladesh, Nepal, and Pakistan using nationally-representative surveys that include information on past migration. Conditional regression analysis is used with a focus on four labor market outcomes: (i) labor force status (ii) sectoral choice (iii) employment type, and (iv) earnings. The paper finds that return migrants are somewhat less likely to be employed than nonmigrants, which is mainly driven by returnees who returned at an older age. As evidenced in other contexts, return migrants in Bangladesh and Pakistan are more likely to become entrepreneurs compared with nonmigrants. Self-employed returnees are also more likely to hire paid employees and to be engaged in non-farm activities, compared with nonmigrant entrepreneurs. Return migrants who become employees earn a small wage premium relative to nonmigrants, compared with contexts where temporary migrants are higher-skilled. The returnee wage premium, however, is larger in the construction sector where most temporary migrants were employed overseas.
Skilled Migration: A Sign of Europe's Divide or Integration?
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-03-09) Bossavie, Laurent; Garrote-Sánchez, Daniel; Makovec, Mattia; Özden, Çağlar
Skilled Migration: A Sign of Europe’s Divide or Integration? examines the trends, determinants, and impacts of migration of high-skilled workers within the European Union in the past two decades. High-skilled migration, whether internal or international, is largely a symptom rather than a cause of the gaps in labor market and educational opportunities, productivity, welfare, and the quality of institutions across the regions. Free movement within the European Union is an incentive for workers and firms to take advantage of these gaps by moving from low- to high-productivity sectors and regions. This process, however, results in winners and losers depending on the extent of the complementarity and substitutability between migrants and natives and on the capacity of the sending regions to realize benefits from return or circular migration and other knowledge spillovers. This study assesses the economic benefits and the costs of skilled migration in the short and long runs, emphasizing the potential implications of a large outflow of highly qualified workers on the economies of the originating regions. This book uses empirical analysis to present recommendations for labor market and education policies and identify effective ways to address the various costs that migration induces among different skill groups within regions that send migrants and those that receive migrants. These methods must also improve cross-country coordination to more effectively unlock the overall benefits of migration.
Toward Safer and More Productive Migration for South Asia
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-05-16) Ahmed, Amer; Bossavie, Laurent
International migration for temporary employment is key to South Asia’s development path, in terms of both jobs and remittance flows. Overseas markets are a critical source of employment for South Asian economies that may not be able to absorb workers sufficiently or quickly enough into the domestic labor market. Migrant workers typically experience wage gains of at least three times their earnings back home, in addition to acquiring new skills and accumulating savings that can be used to start up entrepreneurial activities upon returning home. Remittances sent by migrants while abroad also boost household consumption and support macroeconomic stability in countries of origin. However, multiple challenges exist that prevent migration from achieving its full development potential. These challenges include high monetary costs, information gaps on employment opportunities in destination countries, a lack of protection while abroad, and high concentrations of migrants in few sectors and destinations. These often prevent the poorest from migrating overseas and may place those who actually migrate in situations of considerable vulnerability. Building on rigorous analytics, this book highlights policy actions that can be taken at all stages of the migration life cycle, including after return, to minimize the risks and maximize the benefits of migration for migrants themselves, their families, and the home economy. The book provides policy options to address information gaps on employment opportunities overseas at the departure stage, to prepare migrants adequately for their experience overseas, to diversify destinations and occupations abroad, and to maximize the benefits of return migration.