Abstract

In this paper, we analyse the effect of emigration from Poland on Polish wages. Focusing on the 1998–2007 period for Poland, we use a unique dataset that contains information about household members who are currently living abroad, which allows us to develop region-specific emigration rates and to estimate the effect of emigration on wages using within-region variation. Our findings show that emigration led to a slight increase in wages for high- and medium-skilled workers, which are the two groups with the largest relative outmigration rates. Workers at the low end of the skill distribution might have experienced wage decreases.