Abstrakt
The first chapter is based on household survey data from Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia and provides the first preliminary evidence on the scale of recent emigration from the South Caucasus and its impact on the economic development of the region. In my second chapter I focus specifically on the effect of international migration and remittances on the labor supply of the non-migrant household members.
For the empirical analysis I use the Albania 2005 Living Standards Measurement Survey. The rich dataset allows me to control separately for the effects of migration and remittances and to deal with the potential endogeneity problems inherent in this type of analysis by instrumenting for the household migration 1 decision and remittance receipts.
The expected negative impact on unemployment, due to an income effect of remittances, among the female population in Albania is not confirmed by the data. The third chapter draws upon previous studies on migration from Albania.
The chapter adds to the literature on migration from former communist economies by being the first survey that compares the findings from the existing studies on Albanian migration to derive conclusions on the consequences of accession of Albania and other similarly affected countries to the EU.