Migrazioni e Commercio nell'area del partenariato euro-mediterraneo

The pillar of the Euro-Mediterranean partnership, signed in Barcelona in 1995, is a free trade area between the European Union (at 15) and the Mediterranean Partner Countries (at 12). The most important target of this trade policy is to reduce migrations from the South to the North. The assumption of the EU policy makers is that trade an migration are substitutes, in other words when trade, and in particular exports, increase, migration should go in the opposite direction. Models of trade give ambiguous predictions on this issue - they depend on income differentials, skill distributions, trade liberalizations, etc. - and there are not empirical studies on the potential effect of trade liberalization on migrations in the area of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership. We try to fill this gap estimating a gravity model equation of bilateral migrations on bilateral exports from the Southern countries to those of the North over four decades, 1960-2000. We use five different specifications: from basic linear regression to different country of origin and of destination fixed effect models that control for unobserved determinants of migration. We find that South-North exports and migrations in the Mediterranean area are in the short run and medium run certainly not substitutes. This is in line with other empirical studies on the relationship between trade and migration between countries at different level of economic development. Since the economic integration in the Mediterranean region has not been completed, like in the case of North American Free Trade Agreement Area (NAFTA), we cannot estimate the long term effect of trade on migration.