Development Economics · Forced Displacement & Conflict · Political Economy
Working Paper
Standard economic models treat migration as a human-capital investment driven mainly by economic returns. Migration under forced displacement is a different decision problem, often governed by whether conditions in the home country cross a minimum threshold of improvement rather than by compensatory tradeoffs across attributes. This project develops and tests a threshold model of return migration, combining classic migration theory with behavioral heuristics of threshold decision-making. Building on qualitative fieldwork with Venezuelan refugees in Colombia, it fields a conjoint survey in which respondents evaluate hypothetical country-condition profiles that vary across political, economic, and social features. The survey measures individual-level thresholds, formalizes a threshold migration framework in the context of the Roy model, and estimates the elasticity of return. The study is pre-registered, with data collection ongoing.
Keywords: return migration; forced displacement; threshold decision-making; lexicographic preferences; conjoint survey experiment; Venezuelan refugees; Colombia; Roy model; elasticity of return
Working Paper
Colombia hosts approximately 2.8 million displaced Venezuelans, the third-largest refugee population globally. Existing research documents this population's aggregate labor-market outcomes but not the employer decisions that produce them, nor whether hiring reluctance reflects economic constraints, political attitudes toward migrants, or both. Building on related summer 2025 fieldwork in which over half of displaced respondents in Bogota and Cartagena named specific firms they wanted to work for but could not access, this qualitative exploratory project will field a structured survey to SME employers and displaced Venezuelan job-seekers to measure hiring frictions on both sides of the labor market, which will facilitate the design of a future randomized evaluation of employer-side interventions.
Iranian Economic Review, 29(4), 1361–1376 · 2025
This study examines the determinants of profitability in the North Coal Enterprise (NCE), Afghanistan's only state-owned profit-generating company authorized to operate coal mines. Despite the partial privatization of several collieries, four major mines remain under NCE's management. Using annual data from 1989 to 2019 obtained from the Ministry of Industries and Mines and the Northern Coal Office, the study employs the ARDL model to estimate short- and long-term relationships between profitability (net profit-to-capital ratio), capital structure (debt-to-capital ratio), and liquidity (current ratio). The findings indicate that sales revenue has a positive long-term impact on profitability, while liquidity has a short-term positive influence. Conversely, capital structure shows a negative relationship with profitability. These results underscore the importance of sound financial management and effective liquidity control in maintaining NCE's profitability.
Part I: Baseline Findings – Impact Evaluation of Individual Livelihoods Assistance · International Organization for Migration (IOM), Baghdad · 2025
Executive Summary: Large-scale displacement and return can disrupt the economic and social fabric of communities, leading to intergroup tensions and increased competition over resources. Iraq has experienced high levels of displacement caused by the 2014 conflict with Daesh. As of August 2024, 1.1 million Iraqis remain internally displaced, while an additional 4.9 million have returned to their area of origin after displacement. IOM Iraq implements a range of livelihoods programmes to support economic recovery and resilience in communities affected by forced displacement, one of the largest interventions being microenterprise grants known as Individual Livelihood Assistance (ILA). This baseline report is the first in a series of publications produced as part of a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the impact of the ILA programme on economic outcomes and social cohesion across the Iraqi governorates of Anbar, Diyala, Salah al-Din and Ninewa. A total of 6,159 survey interviews were conducted with eligible applicants, members of their social and economic networks, and neighbouring community members between May and September 2024, before the announcement of programme beneficiaries and the start of aid delivery. The report describes baseline economic conditions and social cohesion among people targeted by the ILA programme and the surrounding communities, providing evidence of a robust correlation between measures of economic vulnerability and different dimensions of social cohesion. Based on these findings, this report provides evidence-based guidance for policymakers and practitioners supporting local recovery efforts in Iraq and similar post-conflict settings.