Migration as a Sequential Decision Problem under Uncertainty

Abstract

The main subject of the present chapter is the presentation of a logically consistent model for individual migration decision-making. More precisely, we consider the problem of a potential migrant who has the opportunity to move into one of N countries, indexed by j for at least one period. It is natural to assume that the migrant is incompletely informed about the pecuniary and non-pecuniary variables in the countries in question. As the migrant might encounter unexpectedly unfavourable values of these variables, he might decide to leave the country he tried out for at least one period and either move back into his home country or move to a different country. That is, at each decision time point the migrant must be able to revise his decision in face of incoming information.