Study title

The MESARAS-project was designed to investigate the interconnectedness of geographic mobility of highly qualified individuals and their personality and preferences. Therefore, and to ensure a substantial sample size (N=2589), beginning students in an economics programme (a programme offered at almost any university), who recently made an important mobility-related decision, have been selected as target group. All mobility episodes have been recorded on the level of postal code areas. This allows a geo-referenced analysis of individual mobility with two explicit benefits: First, mobility can be measured rather precisely as covered distance. Second, the data can be linked to other geo-referenced regional indicators (e.g. the INKAR data on the district level), which enables for instance to evaluate the impact of location-specific economic conditions on individual decisions. An additional, rather unique feature is that MESARAS-data not only provides information on past and current mobility episodes (or future plans), but also which alternatives have explicitly been considered recently. Hence, it is not only possible to see which alternative has been finally chosen, but also which alternatives have been deliberately dismissed. Due to the inclusion of a rich variety of items, the MESARAS-data supports an in-depth analysis of potential influences on individual migratory decision: Apart from socio-economic data, the survey comprises also various items to inquire risk attitude, (time) preferences, individual (labour market related) expectations and personality (including Big-5).