Distinguished professor of economics Oded Stark delivers a special lecture on economics of migration at Korea University

KU-KIEP-SBS EU Centre invited Professor Oded Stark to deliver a lecture – entitled A Theory of Migration as Rank-Seeking Behavior – in Korea University’s International Studies Hall on Friday, 9 March at 5 p.m.

Eight faculty members including Professor Park, Sung-hoon (Graduate School of International Studies) and Professor Lee, Yun Jin (Department of Sociology) and a dozen of students attended the lecture.

Professor Stark laid out his theory on what motivates migration – built upon the assumption that human beings always pursue a state of being socially superior to others – in seven steps. His theory of migration, he argued, can mathematically explain how a country enters a so-called “steady-state” under rather artificial conditions where ranks are divided by income levels, everyone’s income is publicly known, and migration costs are negligible.

According to the Starkian theory of migration, it is possible to make exact calculations on how many people from each rank would migrate how many times until the receiving country reaches the steady-state.

“This formula enables us to figure out where migrators departing from a country in the steady-state went,” explained Professor Stark, emphasizing the significance of the theory.

In addition to the phenomenon of population outflow, Professor Stark also offered an econometrical model that explains how social welfare could be improved via migrations, and how the sense of economic disparities could be minimized. The lecture was then followed by a Q&A session.

“More and more people migrate, even when policies about migration are getting stricter. I wondered how economics could analyze phenomenon like this,” said Oh Yun-jong (‘14, Food and Resource Economics) who attended the lecture, “it was fascinating how such economic phenomena could be expressed in numbers.”

Professor Stark has taught at the University of Bonn, the University of Warsaw and Georgetown University, and has written a good number of books and journal articles on microeconomic theories, population economics, and economics of migration.