Urban-Rural Gaps in the Developing World: Does Internal Migration Offer Opportunities?
综述了发展中国家城乡差距的文献，发现迁移者平均获益显著但小于截面差距，并指出信息、金融和土地市场摩擦阻碍迁移，解释了差距的持续存在。
This article provides an overview of the growing literature on urban-rural gaps in the developing world. I begin with recent evidence on the size of the gaps as measured by consumption, income, and wages, and argue that the gaps are real rather than just nominal. I then discuss the role of sorting more able workers into urban areas and review an array of recent evidence on outcomes from rural-urban migration. Overall, migrants do experience substantial gains on average, though smaller than suggested by the cross-sectional gaps. I conclude that future work should help further explore the frictions—in particular, information, financial, and in land markets—that hold back rural-urban migration and may help explain the persistence of urban-rural gaps.