Can Regional Employment Disparities Explain the Allocation of Human Capital Across Space? (original) (raw)

Regional Intergration and Migration: An Economic Geography Model with Hetergenous Labour Force

2002

This paper aims to analyse the effect of deepening regional integration on the incentive for factors of production, in particular labour, to spatially relocate. We adopt a general equilibrium, economic-geography model built on Krugman (1991) allowing for skill heterogeneity in the manufacturing sector. At a given level of trade costs, due to the productivity premium associated with the concentration of high-skilled workers in one region, this type of worker will be more willing to migrate than low-skilled ones. The paper shows the existence of a range of trade costs for which only high-skilled workers have an incentive to migrate. Therefore, introducing labour heterogeneity in the basic core-periphery model enables us to explain one of the most striking features of interregional migration patterns: the positive self-selection of the migrants.

The returns to job mobility and inter-regional migration

2008

This paper analyses extensively the effects of interregional mobility on the earnings of skilled workers. We interact returns to interregional migration with employer changes to separate the two effects and find that interregional mobility results in positive additional returns as compared to job mobility within a region in general. Partitioning the sample by experience level and tracing the exact paths of migration, it turns out that both the contemporaneous returns and the wage-growth effects exhibit large differences: for young workers we find the highest contemporaneous returns and the largest wage growth effects. Further analyses show that these returns to migration are strongly influenced by the characteristics of both the region of origin and the region of destination. In contrast to results from economic theory, the returns to interregional migration are most significant for people who move to rural districts in agglomerated areas. Altogether, the results indicate that switching to a different workplace in a similar region type pays more than moving to a different type of region.

Graduate migration, self-selection and urban wage premiums across the regional hierarchy

2019

We use Swedish longitudinal population register data on university graduates and estimate the effect of migration on earnings. Migration between regional labour markets is used to identify static and dynamic agglomeration effects on earnings. Heterogeneity in effects is examined by individuals’ position in the ability distribution and by origin-destination size categories of regional labour markets. The results indicate that the effect of upward migration (from smaller to larger labour markets) on earnings is positive throughout. Downward migration (from larger to smaller labour markets) is generally associated with negative or no convincing signs of positive effects on earnings. The estimates indicate positive short-term urban wage premiums (UWP) for all origin-destination flows of upward migration, especially high UWP for in-migration to the Stockholm labour market region. The UWP of upward migration is positive also for movers in the lower end of the ability distribution, but it ...

Does migration arbitrage regional labor market differentials?

Regional Science and Urban Economics, 1993

This paper examines the determinants of regional migration in the 1980s using a place-to-place migration model in which migration flows depend upon the relative economic opportunities in the origin and destination regions. Using the results of the model, we then examine the potential role for migration in diffusing the economic pressures associated with disparate regional economic growth. Although the results reinforce the notion that divergent regional growth was an impetus to migration in the 198Os, estimates of the employment status of movers suggest that the true effects of migration on unemployment differentials may be quite small.

Wage Formation, Regional Migration and Local Labour Market Tightness*

2006

Economic theory predicts that local labour market tightness affects local wage setting as well as individuals' migration decisions. But how should we measure local labour market tightness? In this paper we show that the common practice of using the local rate of unemployment as the tightness indicator may be misplaced. Instead, we propose a human capital adjusted outflow rate from unemployment that can be computed on the basis of micro register data. This outflow rate performs better than traditional measures of regional labour market conditions in panel data analyses of regional wages and interregional migration.

Effects of Regional Labour Markets on Migration Flows, by Education Level

LABOUR, 2013

European economies display large variations in unemployment rates across regions as well as between education groups. Insufficient labour mobility is widely believed to contribute to higher regional disparities and overall unemployment, but few studies have compared mobility responses of different education groups to regional shocks. This paper employs administrative registers covering the entire Norwegian population to compute annual time series from 1994 to 2004 of migration flows and regional labour market conditions by educational level for 90 travel-to-work areas. We find that regional disparities in unemployment rates are decreasing in education level, whereas the response of migration flows to regional unemployment shocks is increasing in education level. The results suggest that low regional mobility of low-educated workers may contribute to higher regional disparities and higher overall unemployment among the low educated.

Migration and Regional Sorting of Skills

2014

This thesis consists of an introductory part and four papers.Paper [I] estimates jointly the choice of whether to enroll in education and the choice of location among young people. Being a particul ...

Employment Status, Endogenous Regional Mobility, and Spatial Dependencies in Labor Markets

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2002

This paper investigates spatial correlation in the matching process of vacant jobs and job seekers. The importance of the interactions of regional labor markets in West Germany is highlighted in several dimensions. We test for spatial autocorrelation in regional hires, unemployment and vacancy levels, we examine the patterns of new matches in regions, identify clusters of regions of particularly intense interregional matching, and examine the effects of German re-unification. After setting-out a simple model of endogenous regional mobility and endogenous on-the-job search, we analyze the composition of new hires with respect to regional origin and previous employment status, the determinants of this composition, and the interaction of these characteristics. The results shed new light on the puzzle raised in the literature, which finds a large variation in unemployment rates, combined with little interregional migration. We find evidence in favor of labor market determined migration and against the 'internal migration puzzle' found for other European countries and partly for the United States.

Education and Income Dynamics in Urban and Regional Labour Market Mobility

ERSA conference papers, 2006

Well-functioning local labour markets are expected to become net receivers of labour from other regions. In addition these regions are also expected to attract the most qualified labour and thus be the winners in the competition for the best human capital. For an examination of the two concepts "braingain" (a relative gain of qualified persons) and "brain-drain" (a relative loss of qualified persons), we do introduce a concept of average education based on the number of years each person have been in education altogether. There are thus reasons to expect that the regions with the highest net inmigration to job also benefit from a "brain-gain" through the migration process and vice-versa that regions experiencing a strong net loss through the migration process also suffer from a "brain-drain" in this respect. Some regions may, however, compensate a negative net-migration with a "brain-gain" through the migration process, whilst some regions may experience a "brain-drain" through migration in spite of positive net in-migration. The "brain-gain"/"brain-drain" approach poses also important questions in terms of intra-and interregional competitiveness of human capital across the different industrial sectors, which is also taken into consideration in the analysis.