Underinvestment in a Profitable Technology: The Case of Seasonal Migration in Bangladesh
2014/01/01 by Gharad Bryan, Shyamal Chowdhury, Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak · 703 citations
Social Sciences · #Economics #Migration and Labor Dynamics #Poverty, Education, and Child Welfare #Urban and Rural Development Challenges
paper · open access · doi:10.3982/ecta10489
published in Econometrica 82(5), 1671-1748 (Wiley)
openalex publication_date 2014/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/02
Abstract
Hunger during pre-harvest lean seasons is widespread in the agrarian areas of Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. We randomly assign an 8.50 incentive to households in rural Bangladesh to out-migrate during the lean season. The incentive induces 22 % of households to send a seasonal migrant, their consumption at the origin increases significantly, and treated households are 8-10 percentage points more likely to re-migrate 1 and 3 years after the incentive is removed. These facts can be explained qualitatively by a model in which migration is risky, mitigating risk requires individual-specific learning, and some migrants are sufficiently close to subsistence such that failed migration is very costly. We document evidence consistent with this model using heterogeneity analysis and additional experimental variation, but calibrations with forward-looking households that can save up to migrate suggest that it is difficult for the model to quantitatively match the data. We conclude with extensions to the model that
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