Determinants of Iran's emigration flows: An application of the dynamic panel data approach

Emigration is such an important topic that has been attained a lot of interest especially in the last three decades. According to the statistics announced by the United Nations، outbound emigrants in recent years have been far from inbound emigrants in Iran. Therefore، investigating the role of various main determinants in the flow of outbound emigrants is so important and could be considered in order to make a policy for emigration control. In this study، we have made an indicator named quality of life by using factor analysis. Afterwards، the effect of quality of life indicator in addition to the other considered variables which investigate the economic and politic factors on emigrating from Iran to the selected OECD countries have been studied between 2002-2011 by the augmented gravity model and dynamic panel data. The results of this study indicate that quality of life، institutional and political factors have the greatest effects on emigrants respectively. In addition، the lag of emigration has positive and important effect on emigration and with increasing the distance the quantity of the Iranian emigrant will be decreased.