This paper aims to analyse the role played by the poor quality of local institutions in determining the Romanian labour migration during the transition period. Our approach is comparative, taking into account both the possibility of international labour migration and internal labour mobility. Furthermore, we allow the migration decision to vary according to the migrant’s gender. We show that institutional quality, proxied by the provision of compulsory education and healthcare services influences differently the migration decision according to the mobility pattern adopted. Moreover, the intensity of our results differs according to gender