Double spatial dependence in gravity models: Migration from the european neighborhood to the European Union

Conventional econometric methods assume that bilateral gravity flows are independent. We focus on dependence within origins and within destinations. We show that when these flows are specified to be origin-destination dependent very different results are obtained. We also propose lagrange multiplier statistics to test for origin-destination spatial autocorrelation and for origin-destination spatial autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity, which are modeled using recently developed double spatial lag operators We apply these methods empirically in the context of migration from European Neighborhood countries to European Union member countries over the period 2000–2010. Hypotheses relating to the role of welfare benevolence, economic growth, economic inequality and immigration policy in destination countries, are tested.