Recent Portuguese Emigration: Some Empirical Evidence

Supplying work in the home country or abroad must be seen as a single decision. A study of the joint determinants of labor supply and emigration therefore enhances our knowledge about the allocation of time within an individual's life-cycle. Our empirical results show that there is a strong support for not considering symmetrically home wages and wages in country of destination. Imperfections in the capital markets seem to play an important role when workers have to finance their cost of moving. The results point to the existence of a large stock of potential emigrants in Portugal. The actual emigration will depend a lot on expectations about the evolution of real wages in Portugal and in the EEC partners. If workers do not believe in a rapid growth at home we will see a large outflow due to differential of wage levels.N/