Interregional labor migration and information flows

A model of interregional labor migration is developed that incorporates a complex system of information concerning migration and employment opportunities, as well as a heterogeneous population in which groups of workers differ in their assumed levels of skill, attitudes toward risk, and willingness to move. "Three channels are examined: interpersonal communication, general source information, and specific source information targeted at unemployed workers. In this process, trajectories of welfare levels (composed of wage plus nonwage benefits), information flows, vacancy and unemployment levels are generated for different worker and job types, regional aggregates, and the system as a whole. The behavior of the model is examined by means of numerical simulations and sensitivity analyses."     

Job search success and employability in local labor markets

This paper considers the relationship between an unemployed person’s employability and job search success. Using a broad employability framework (covering individual, personal and external demand, and other factors) the paper considers a range of demand and supply factors, that were generally identified in applied and theoretical literature, that influence success in getting employment. The model is then used to consider the competing efficient metropolitan labor market and the local labor demand hypotheses in terms of the importance for this sample of skills mismatch and spatial mismatch. The findings suggest that professional qualifications, “soft” verbal skills and using speculative applications to employers were significantly associated with job search success. Length of unemployment, age, and having last worked in a manual occupation were negatively associated with job success, the latter decreasing the odds of getting a job to around thirty percent, suggesting difficulties in occupational “switching” for many job seekers. Higher academic qualifications were also significantly negative, as were those claiming that promotion chances will influence their reservation wage. The geographic accessibility to local jobs was significantly and positively associated with job search success. The results suggest that a range of employability factors and both skills mismatch and spatial mismatch are important in explaining job search success. The degree of “skills” or “spatial” mismatch in a local labor market will be contingent upon the characteristics of the local economy, employers, job seekers and the jobs being considered.

Metropolitan migration and labor market changes by industry

The purpose of this paper is to analyze gross metropolitan migration of persons employed in selected two-digit industries. An empirically testable model was developed for migration, employment change, and earnings change and implemented using data from the Social Security Administration's ten percent Continuous Work History Sample. The results showed that a significant percentage of the migration flows can be explained by the variables in the model, and notes differences across industries. Specifically, differences in cyclic and structural economic variables are noted in terms of their importance across the specified industries. The public policy implications of these results are identified.Financial support from the Office of Policy and Planning, Employment and Training Administration, U.S. Department of Labor is gratefully acknowledged. However, any opinions are solely those of the author. The author would like to thank Michael Greenwood, Vernon Renshaw, and Burman Skrabble for several helpful comments. In addition, I would like to thank David Cartwright, Bruce Levine, Esther Schroeder, and Jim Woods for their valuable assistance with the data base.     

Rural-urban labor migration: The case of Korea

This paper examines the significance of selected economic determinants of rural-urban migration within the rural and urban labor markets of the postwar Korean economy. The analysis makes explicit provision for possible simultaneity among variables by specification and estimation of a simultaneous equations system which describes the rural and urban labor market and migration behavior. Results obtained support the economic opportunity hypothesis of migration. Reduced forms derived from this system provide useful means for estimating the potential migration response associated with alternative economic policies.The helpful suggestions received from Professors B. Delworth Gardner, Kenneth Lyon, Yun Kim, and Warren Mazek are gratefully acknowledged.     

Inter-regional labor market equilibrium: another pattern of spatial mismatch

The inability of the free market to lead to a balanced regional labor market equilibrium has been explained to a certain extent by the spatial mismatch hypothesis: “housing segregation” explains a deadlock situation where a “center” with high unemployment and low income coexists with “suburbs” with high labor demand and income. The author proposes a framework for a theoretical general equilibrium model that may explain the existence of a spatial equilibrium with inequalities in employment and income in various regions. This model explains the interregional imbalances on the labor demand side due to the changes in relative land prices and agglomeration economies and diseconomies in three separate types of economic sectors. On the labor supply side, the model suggests a pattern of a commuting–migration relationship by which labor migrates for housing reasons while retaining present jobs and commuting back to them. Government intervention through influence on travel costs, education, and land allocation can lead to the diminution of such interregional gaps.     

The regional labor market adjustment process: Determinants of changes in rates of labor force participation,unemployment, and migration

This paper employs a simultaneous-equations model to examine the regional labor market adjustment process for a sample of United States counties over the 1960–1970 period. The interaction between employment change and migration is well known, but that between employment change and labor force participation has been largely neglected. Labor force participation response, especially among women, is shown to be an important endogenous element in the labor market adjustment process. Important asymmetries are also evident between growing and declining regions, and these asymmetries suggest that the well-established link between employment and migration may have more force in growing than in declining areas.This study was supported by a grant from the Economic Development Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce.     

A multi-disciplinary interpretation of migration: Amenity capitalization in both land and labor markets

Various disciplines have produced models to explain and predict human migration. A model is presented providing a taxonomy through which interdisciplinary insights can be synthesized. The imperfect information view emphasizes the role of wage differentials as representing arbitragible real utility differentials. The perfect information approach holds that wage and rent differentials are compensating differentials, eliminating real utility variation over space. Moreover, markets compress diverse aspects of spatial variation in welfare, otherwise difficult to quantify, into compensating wage and rent differentials. Rents tend to capitalize the variation in a host of amenities, thereby substantially reducing the need for a potential migrant to discover and weight the importance of various amenities. Empirical results are presented which support the latter equilibrium view. Amenities, as proxied by rents, are superior goods, as indicated by net movements toward high rent locations. This suggests the increasing relative importance of amenities as a determinant of migration.     

浅谈水利水电工程移民补偿的投资概算问题

从移民补偿投资概算的特点出发,分析并探讨了移民补偿投资概算工作中存在的问题,提出了应对策略,并进行了具体阐述,以期指导移民补偿投资概算工作,保证水利水电工程项目的顺利开工和建设。     

Hotelling's migration model revisited

"In the present article Hotelling's model of population growth and migration of 1921 is 'revisited'. After a discussion of the stationary solutions and their stability the main point is made. The model itself is structurally unstable, but can be easily stabilized by adding a simple autonomous migration component. By this, the solution curves, in the shape of constant amplitude population waves over space for the original model, either become damped in one direction and explosive in another or are replaced by just one single spatial limit cycle."     

A generalized spatial price equilibrium model

The classical spatial price equilibrium model assumes that transport costs are known as a function of the flow on an arc of the network. In reality, transport costs are derived from the action of profit-maximizing transport firms called carriers. This paper extends the spatial price equilibrium concept to include carriers and illustrates how this model can be used in the study of the U.S. coal market.     

A dispersed equilibrium commodity trade model

For many bulk commodities, such as mineral ores, crude oil, building materials and food grains, the suppliers are increasingly in the position of being price-takers. This means that, in the short run, their main decisions relate to spatial choice of markets and setting of production levels within the currently available capacity. In this paper, an entropy maximisation framework is introduced to handle dispersion about the profit-maximising choice of markets and production levels by the suppliers. The model also uses information theory to implicitly account for certain rigidities in trading relationships resulting from non-price factors. Although demand functions must be provided exogenously, cost functions can be inferred from regional vintage production data, which in turn allow profit functions to be defined for each producing region or country. A unique and stable dispersed price equilibrium of the Walrasian type is established for this spatial system under quite general conditions.Lively discussions with David Batten and Börje Johansson over the last couple of years were of considerable help in motivating the structure of the model presented in this paper. Also, perceptive in-house reviews by the author's colleagues, Joe Flood and Bertil Marksjö, greatly sharpened up the presentation.     

A behavioral model of international labor and nonlabor migration: the case of Turkish movements to West Germany, 1960-1986

"In this paper behavioral models of international labor and nonlabor migration are presented. The models are based on the concept of chain migration, where the immigrant stock, differentiated by the duration of stay, induces and directs future migration flows. Three roles of the immigrant stock in inducing the inflow of potential migrants are identified: provider of assimilation aid; transmitter of information; and source of family reunification. Operationalized versions of the models are empirically tested for Turkish labor and nonlabor migration to West Germany, 1960-86. The results support the importance of information for labor migrants, and reunification ties for nonlabor migrants."     

The socially optimal and equilibrium locations of two stores or libraries with consumer search

This paper examines the socially optimal (and also equilibrium) locations of two stores or libraries on a linear market of unit length. If each consumer has probability \(w\) of finding a desired product at each store, then the socially optimal locations are never completely centralized for full information, but are completely centralized for \(w \le 0.5\) when costly visit search is necessary. The Nash equilibrium locations of two stores, and various alternative models for the socially optimal locations of two stores, are also examined.     

Monitoring labor inputs: automated-data-collection model and enabling technologies

The work presented in this paper is part of a larger initiative to meet a major challenge faced by the construction industry, namely measuring project performance automatically. The idea leading to the present development is that measuring the location of workers at regular time intervals, using Automated Data Collection (ADC), enables the generation of labor-input data automatically. The paper presents the difficulties and challenges of developing such an Automated Project Performance Control (APPC) system, and proposes a solution using ADC. Enabling technologies for ADC are identified and systematically evaluated. Based on the findings, a theoretical ADC model is presented. The main finding of the paper is that an ADC system is feasible using three different technologies. A number of additional applications of the principles presented in the paper are also discussed.     

Interregional migration in an extended input-output model

"This article develops a two-region version of an extended input-output model that disaggregates consumption among employed, unemployed, and inmigrant households, and which explicitly models the influx into a region of migrants to take up a proportion of any jobs created in the regional economy. The model is empirically tested using real data for the Scotland (UK) regions of Strathclyde and Rest-of-Scotland. Sets of interregional economic, demographic, demo-economic, and econo-demographic multipliers are developed and discussed, and the effects of a range of economic and demographic impacts are modeled. The circumstances under which Hawkins-Simon conditions for non-negativity are breached are identified, and the limits of the model discussed."     

A dynamical model of labor-market change in international labor migrations when demand for labor is exogenous

"Relatively little is known about the long-run behavior of international labor migrations. One of the biggest concerns in immigration debates relates to the continued pressure on the borders of the wealthy countries. This immigration pressure will decline significantly only if the poor nations manage to provide more high-wage jobs. An earlier model of international labor migration is used to derive additional insights into the growth and decline of labor supply in different labor markets resulting from migration. Particular attention is paid to labor demand growth requirements in a sending country so that out-migration will slow down and eventually stop."