Risk-attitudes and Socio-economic Characteristics of Economic Migrants: An Empirical Analysis of U.S. Interstate Migration

In order to estimate individuals' risk-attitudes of economic migrants a static one-period decision model is developed and applied to U.S. interstate migration data. Risk-attitudes are estimated by non-linaer optimiziation. It turns out that economic migrants are significantly risk-averse in taking economic migration decisions. A statistically significant relation of risk-attitudes and socio-economic characteristics like gender, age, and education can only be found for certain specifications of the model