Long‐run trends in internal migrations in italy: a study in panel cointegration with dependent units

The objective of this paper is to examine the long‐run determinants of internal migrations from southern Italy. In order to accomplish this task, the paper develops a bootstrap test for panel cointegration analysis with dependent units. Monte Carlo simulations show that the test, based on the Continuous‐Path Block bootstrap, has good power and size properties and is robust to both short‐ and long‐run dependence across units. The empirical analysis points to income in the sending region as a key factor of the decline of migrations, with unemployment and income differentials playing only a minor role. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.