When seven million people arrive at once, who gains and who loses?
Labor Supply Shocks and Capital Accumulation: The Short and Long Run Effects of the Refugee Crisis in Europe
Lorenzo Caliendo et al. (2023) · AEA Papers and Proceedings
Replication data ↗ (openICPSR)
The archive requires an account we do not hold, so the files were not opened. What follows rests on the published abstract and on this platform's own observations.
What the authors found
Caliendo, Opromolla, Parro and Sforza treat the arrival of more than seven million Ukrainian refugees after the 2022 invasion as an exogenous, once-and-for-all increase in European labour supply, geographically uneven and unevenly distributed across skill groups. Extending a dynamic trade and migration model with endogenous capital accumulation, they trace the general equilibrium effects — the key point being that capital adjusts over time, so short-run and long-run consequences differ in sign for some groups.
What our data adds
The shock is large enough to dominate the world net migration table in this database. Ukraine records the largest net migration figure of any country in the most recent year at 1,702,358 — a return flow, as displaced people move back — ahead of the United States at 1,230,663. Syria appears third at 421,693 on the same return dynamic. At the other end, Pakistan records net outflow of 1,235,336 and India 495,753. The four largest movements in the world right now are two returns from displacement and two labour outflows, which is not the composition most discussions of migration assume.
Largest net inflows. Ukraine and Syria are return flows after mass displacement, not arrivals.
| Figure | Value | Indicator |
|---|---|---|
| Ukraine, net migration, latest year | +1,702,358 | SM.POP.NETM |
| United States | +1,230,663 | SM.POP.NETM |
| Pakistan | -1,235,336 | SM.POP.NETM |
Every figure here is computed from observations in this database and can be charted, downloaded or queried.
What this cannot show
Net migration in this series is a five-year residual from population accounting, not a count of border crossings: it is derived by subtracting natural increase from population change, so it absorbs every error in both. It is also the one indicator in the people dataset with a value for every country and year, which should be read as a sign that it is modelled rather than measured. Nothing here observes wages, capital or skills, which are the paper's outcomes.