Internal Migration in the Context of Trade Liberalisation in Vietnam

Abstract

This study aims to examine the determinants of internal migration in the context of trade liberalisation in Vietnam. The methods of instrumental variables (IV) and two stage least squares (2SLS) estimations were employed on panel data on gross province-toprovince migration flows from 2002-2005 to solve the problem of endogeneity of explanatory variables. The empirical analyses showed that although overall internal migration was medium in Vietnam in this period, it did depend on distance, density of population, income (GDP per capita), employment (working time rate), quality of labour (rate of unskilled workers), living conditions (hospital beds per capita) and degree of openness.