Mahdi Ghodsi

This paper studies the determinants of the intentions to emigrate and conditional on migration aspirations, the destination choice in a number of Central East and Southeast European economies (CESEE). Using data from the OeNB Euro Survey, we apply a two‐stage Heckman procedure to identify the drivers of migration intentions – specifically individuals' demographic and household attributes, financial conditions, past economic experiences, and future expectations. In the second stage, conditional on the stated intention to migrate, we examine the determinants of destination choice, distinguishing between EU15, EU‐CEE, and extra‐EU countries. This micro‐level evidence indicates that economic and financial conditions (past, present, and expected) play an important role in shaping migration intentions, while non‐economic factors, including individual demographic and family attributes, as well as network ties, also exert important influence. Destination preferences, conditional on an already existing intention to migrate are not simply a mechanical extension of intention determinants. The choice of the destination region is determined mostly by marital status, educational attainment, and GDP per capita variables in the origin and destination region. This reflects the conceptualisation of migration as a two‐stage decision process, distinguishing between entry into the pool of potential migrants and destination choice within that pool. This stage‐specific perspective thus allows to differentiate determinants of intentions and destination choice of prospective mobility, that empirical results based on actual migration decisions cannot deliver.

This paper analyses how different types of technical barriers to trade (TBTs) imposed on imports of information and communications technology (ICT) goods globally affected the value and volume of imported goods during the period of 1996–2018. Key words cited in the TBTs give an indication of the aims behind the imposition of TBTs. The results indicate that TBTs have a strong positive impact on the value of imports. While many key words cited in TBTs notified to the World Trade Organization (WTO) affect the value and volume of imports in a positive way, certain other TBTs function as trade barriers.

This study investigates the causal relationship between patent grants and firms' dynamics in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) industry, as the latter is a peculiar sector of modern economies, often under the lens of antitrust authorities. For our purpose, we exploit matched information about financial accounts and patenting activity in 2009-2017 by 179,660 companies operating in 39 countries. Preliminarily, we show how bigger companies are less than 2% of the sample, although they concentrate about 89% of the grants obtained in the period of analyses. Thus, we test that patent grants in the ICT industry have a significant and large impact on market shares and firm size of smaller companies (31.5% and 30.7%, respectively) in the first year after the grants, while we have no evidence of an impact for bigger companies. After a novel instrumental variable strategy that exploits information at the level of patent offices, we confirm that most of the effects on smaller companies are due to the protection of property rights and not to the innovative content of inventions. Finally, we never observe a significant impact on either profitability or productivity for any firm size category. Eventually, we discuss how our findings support the idea that the ICT industry is a case of endogenous R&D sunk costs, which prevent profit margins from rising in the presence of a relatively high market concentration.

We analyze the heterogeneous effects of technical regulations and safety standards embodied in nontariff measures on foreign direct investment using global firm‐level panel data of bilateral cross‐border ownership relationships over the period 2008–2018. We develop a novel measure of time‐varying bilateral ad valorem equivalents of sectoral nontariff measures, which reveals that technical barriers to trade (TBTs) played a much greater role as a trade‐inhibiting factor in comparison with import tariffs and sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures over the period 1996–2018. Estimations using the Poisson pseudo‐maximum likelihood framework reveal the importance of nontariff measures as a driver of foreign direct investment.