Hybrideseminar: Multilateral Trade or Bilateral Labour Agreements: What Matters More for Migration?

In recent decades, regional trade agreements (RTAs) have expanded significantly in both number and scope, increasingly including provisions that go beyond trade, such as those facilitating labour mobility. Many of these agreements aim to lower administrative barriers to cross-border movement among member countries. This paper examines the impact of RTAs and bilateral labour agreements (BLAs) on migration patterns, with a particular focus on the specific provisions contained within these agreements. Using a unique dataset that integrates bilateral migration patterns from 1960 to 2020, the World Bank's database of 400 trade agreements, and newly coded content from over 500 BLAs, this study provides new empirical insights into how the design of agreements shapes migration. By jointly analyzing the effects of RTAs and BLAs, the paper highlights which types of provisions most strongly influence migration, addresses biases in earlier research, and uncovers variation in effects depending on countries’ levels of development.