This paper studies how birth town migration networks affected long-run location decisions during historical US migration episodes. We develop a new method to estimate the strength of migration networks for each receiving and sending location. Our estimates imply that when one randomly chosen African American moved from a Southern birth town to a destination county, then 1.9 additional Black migrants made the same move on average. For White migrants from the Great Plains, the average is only 0.4. Networks were particularly important in connecting Black migrants with attractive employment opportunities and played a larger role in less costly moves. (JEL J15, J61, N32, N92, R23, Z13)

中文翻译：

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移民网络和选址决策：来自美国大规模移民的证据

本文研究了出生城镇移民网络如何影响美国历史移民事件中的长期选址决策。我们开发了一种新方法来估计每个接收和发送位置的迁移网络强度。我们的估计表明，当一名随机选择的非裔美国人从南部出生城镇搬到目的地县时，平均会有 1.9 名黑人移民采取同样的行动。对于来自大平原的白人移民来说，平均值仅为 0.4。网络在将黑人移民与有吸引力的就业机会联系起来方面尤为重要，并且在成本较低的迁移中发挥了更大的作用。(JEL J15, J61, N32, N92, R23, Z13)