Social learning along international migrant networksYuan Tian, Maria Esther Caballero and Brian Kovak Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2022, vol. 195, issue C, 103-121 Abstract: We document the transmission of social distancing practices from the United States to Mexico along migrant networks during the early 2020 Covid-19 pandemic. Using data on pre-existing migrant connections between Mexican and U.S. locations and mobile-phone tracking data revealing social distancing behavior, we find larger declines in mobility in Mexican regions whose emigrants live in U.S. locations with stronger social distancing practices. We document the absence of confounding pre-trends and use a variety of controls to rule out the potential influence of disease transmission, migrant sorting between similar locations, and remittances. Given this evidence, we conclude that our findings represent the effect of information transmission between Mexican migrants living in the U.S. and residents of their home locations in Mexico. Our results demonstrate the importance of personal connections when policymakers seek to change fundamental social behaviors. Keywords: Social learning; Migration; Mexico-U.S; Network; COVID-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:195:y:2022:i:c:p:103-121 DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2021.12.028 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D. More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier |
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