Migration and Private Consumption in Europe: A Panel Data Analysis

The aim of this paper is to investigate the bilateral relationship between the migration rate and household final consumption expenditures through the perspective of an econometric analysis. Migration phenomenon and consumption of households are two important effects and parts of macroeconomic stability, first of all because they are mostly generated by the macroeconomic stability of a country, and second they are a part of it because involves both positive and negative consequences in the broad socio-economic context. Starting from the hypothesis that the main part of the Romanian migrants remittances are directed toward the consumption of the population, and that the remittances are positively correlated with the number of emigrants, the article examines the impact of private consumption on migration process and vice versa, capturing the transition period, the economic boom and the financial crisis, using panel data analysis over the period 1996-2011 for 26 European Union countries.