Interregional labour migration and real wage disparities: Evidence from Japan

This paper empirically tests the relationships between interregional labour migration and regional real wages based on a multi-region economic geography model, which describes bilateral migration flows. In particular, this paper highlights real wage disparities in the migration analysis. Our empirical methodology contains two steps. First, we structurally estimate a gravity model using manufacturing workers’ migration flows across the 47 Japanese prefectures. Second, using the estimates of the structural parameters, we examine the impact of the real wage on the net migration rate. We find that migrants respond to real wage disparities, rather than to nominal wage disparities.     

Searching,matching and migration

This paper is devoted to an analysis of migration and economic growth in the framework of a search equilibrium model with steady state analysis as well as with dynamic transition analysis. We define and characterize the properties of steady-state equilibrium with several conditions that we assumed in the migration process between rural and urban sectors. The main implication indicates that in the absence of urban–rural migration, the urban sector may have a higher unemployment rate with higher a productivity differential between urban and rural sector. We also analyze and define the properties of dynamic wage patterns, matching rates, and the unemployment rate in the search market.     

Internal migration and wages of Italian university graduates*

In this paper, we estimate wage gains due to geographic mobility of Italian university graduates three years after graduation. By means of a matching procedure we quantify wage premia associated with the choice of studying far from home, moving after graduation and moving back home after graduation. We find evidence of large heterogeneity in the returns to different migration patterns. The results show large gains for those who move after graduation and smaller gains for those who migrate to study. Conversely, those who choose to go back home after having studied in regions different from that of origin suffer small losses. Our findings are robust to a finer definition of mobility and to the subsample of individuals originating from the South.     

Cultural determinants of migration

The potential welfare benefits from free movement of people are large. Especially in Europe, actual flows are lower than one would expect on the basis of economic differences between regions and countries. This paper empirically investigates the importance of cultural barriers in explaining the limited migration flows in Europe. We show that cultural and institutional barriers are indeed important in explaining variation in observed migration flows.     

Modelling internal migration in Kenya: an econometric analysis with limited data

"In this paper the determinants of internal migration in Kenya are analyzed on the basis of a human capital model. Explanatory variables included in the specification are both economic (wage rates and employment rates) and noneconomic (for example, population density and educational attainment). Also incorporated are variables which reflect intervening opportunities.... The econometric results show that destination variables are important determinants of internal migration, as is distance between the districts. Further, the variables for the intervening opportunities add significantly to the explanatory power of the model."     

Income,self-selection,and return and onward interprovincial migration in Canada

"Estimated returns to migration based on comparison of individual migrants may be biased owing to self-selection in the migration process. Using data derived from the 1986 Canadian census, I will study the effects of expected wage differentials in determining the return or onward migration decision of nonnative adults aged 20 to 64 years. Evidence was found that return migrations were in the 'right' direction, as they are observed to respond to provincial economic variables (that is, average employment growth and income levels) in a rational manner. After accounting for self-selectivity, I found that...return migrants...are negatively selected, and experience lower income levels, following the return migration, than onward migrants would have, had they chosen the return migration option. This drop in expected wages decreases the propensity associated with making a return migration. Despite this drop in income, the large proportion selecting the return migration option suggests the importance of the province of birth in the mental map of nonnative migrants."     

Knowledge-based spatial differences in economic activity,job related migration and housing related migration

This paper analyzes the mutual effects of growth of cities and migration between cities. A model in which cities manufacture goods in a traditional sector and in a technological sector, and each city exhibits independently learning-by-doing in the latter sector is presented. The possibility that the development of one city prevents the development of the other is demonstrated. The higher wage in the developed city attracts the talented residents of the less developed city, to which less talented residents migrate in search of lower housing prices, thus creating bi-directional migration that reinforces the above result. An empirical analysis of the differences between job-related migration and housing-related migration in the U.S. is conducted, finding that these two streams are indeed in-line with the model’s prediction. Implications for regional development policies are discussed.     

The returns to migration and human capital accumulation pathways: non-metropolitan youth in the school-to-work transition

The school-to-work transition comprises a critical period of human capital development for young people. As school-to-work pathways become increasingly diverse and complex, there is growing evidence that transitions during this period significantly influence individual career trajectories and long-term earning capacities. For non-metropolitan youth, this period of the life course often involves migration to urban centres in the search for better educational and employment opportunities. Drawing on longitudinal data, this paper examines the influence of migration and school-to-work pathways on entry-level wages for non-metropolitan youth in Australia. Our results highlight that migration from non-metropolitan communities to urban centres leads to higher entry-level wages, but these wage gains are not immediate, rather they are realised at a period 3 years post-migration. Individuals remaining in non-metropolitan communities were found to experience pathways that lead to lower wage returns. Furthermore, unobserved attributes, such as motivation and aspirations, were found to be a major factor explaining the higher wage returns achieved by non-metropolitan migrants. Findings have important consequences for policy in their potential to contribute to new evidenced-based policy designed to entice the return of young people to non-metropolitan communities and ameliorate the long-standing net loss of young population from regional areas.     

Regional adjustment and migration flows in Canada, 1971 to 1981

The primary purpose of this paper is to consider and test for various interlinkages between migration flows, and also between migration and employment change. Three types of migration flows are distinguished: domestic in-migration and outmigration, and net international migration. The three migration equations are embedded in a model of regional adjustment that also includes regional employment and wage changes as endogenous variables. The data base utilizes Canadian census statistics for 1971 and 1981 in a cross-section analysis with 183 regions represented by counties, or theri equavalents. The empirical performance of the various interlinkages is broadly in line with expectations, but the results raise some important questions about interpretation.     

From school to university to work: migration of highly educated youths in China

A burgeoning body of the literature has studied the migration of university-bound students and university graduates in developed countries, but little research has been conducted on this issue in China. Using microdata from the 2005 1 % population sample survey, this paper examines, for the first time, the migration of university entrants and graduates in China by describing their migration patterns and modeling their choices of destination location. The migration patterns show that recent university graduates are highly concentrated in three eastern provincial units, Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangdong, and that the destinations of university entrants tend to be more dispersed geographically. The results from conditional logit models indicate that highly educated youths, in particular those who study in a regular university, have a strong tendency to stay in the same province after graduation. The migration of university entrants is determined mainly by regional differences in university enrollment, while the distribution of national key universities, economic opportunities, and the cost of living plays a less important role in their location choices. The migration of university graduates is driven primarily by regional differences in wage levels. Comparing with vocational college entrants, regular university entrants are attracted to regions with more national key universities. Comparing with vocational college graduates, regular university graduates are attracted to regions with higher wage levels. Our findings suggest that increasing labor market returns is a more effective approach than investing in higher education to curb brain drain in China’s less developed regions.     

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.     

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."     

Urban-rural migration: Uncertainty and the effect of a change in the minimum wage

This paper extends the neoclassical, Harris-Todaro model of urban-rural migration to the case of production uncertainty in the agricultural sector. A unique feature of the Harris-Todaro model is an exogenously determined minimum wage in the urban sector that exceeds the rural wage. Migration occurs until the rural wage equals the expected urban wage (expected due to employment uncertainty). The effects of a change in the minimum wage upon regional outputs, resource allocation, factor rewards, expected profits, and expected national income are explored, and the influence of production uncertainty upon the obtained results are delineated.     

The hukou system and selective internal migration in China

This paper investigates the role of selective migration policies in the self-selection of migrants, taking China's specific household registration (hukou) system as a case study. We first incorporate the hukou system into the self-selection framework, demonstrating that it leads to a U-shaped selection pattern of migrants from inland to coastal regions. Based on four periods of census data in China, we further employed the binary logit and conditional logit models to verify our proposed theory. The results imply that the hukou system influences migrant selection through restricting hukou-related social amenities and distorting return to education by wage discrimination.     

Explaining inter‐provincial migration in China

China's growth has led to massive flows of migrants. To analyse the determinants of inter‐provincial migration hypotheses from the classical migration theory, the new economic geography, gravity approach, and the new economics of labour migration have been derived. All traditional assumptions could be confirmed. Inter‐provincial differentials of urban poverty and differentials in inequality do matter. Inequality is regarded as opportunity and motivation to move. The analysis of push‐pull factors of gross migration suggests that pull factors are average wages, unemployment rates, urbanization and income disparity. Urban poverty can be regarded as a counter‐pull factor. Rural poverty and average wage are push factors.     

The role of emigration and migration in Swedish industrialization

It is possible, within a general equilibrium framework, to reveal some of the important mechansims in the rather complicated interplay among the variables causing demoeconomic development. The model for this study is a computable general equilibrium model within the tradition of multisectoral growth models and is designed to fit Swedish prewar development and to enable counterfactual analysis. The model is reviewed briefly followed by comments on the database, estimation procedure and validation; displays of some comparative static experiments; and an evaluation of the capability of the model in replicating Swedish demoeconomic development between 1871-90 before examining the counterfactual simulations which address the role of external and internal migration in Swedish industrialization. There are at least 2 reasons for carrying out comparative static experiments: by undertaking parameter changes and exploring the equilibrium effect on the model, further insights will be realized concerning the behavior of the model and its validity; and some of the comparative static experiments are interesting from the point of view of policy analysis because they reveal the static, total effect on the economy of changes in some variables discussed by 19th century Swedish politicians. The experiments are organized into 2 groups: rural and population experiments. The base run simulation from 1871-90 indicates that the model captures the essential factors of the demoeconomic development of Sweden. The model's ability to replicate historical trends in some of the crucial variables permits use of the base simulation as a reference point when undertaking counterfactual simulations. The 1st simulation evaluates the effects of emigration on the Swedish economy; the remaining 2 simulations assess the importance of rural to urban migration. The model indicates that without emigration real rural wages would have been 1.8% lower in 1880 and 10.0% lower in 1890. Urban wages would have been unaffected in 1880 but 1.5% higher in 1890. Emigration apparently had a positive effect on the standard of living in the rural areas, but possibly even larger rural to urban migration than occurred in the simulation would have happened in the absence of emigration. Rural to urban migration apparently had a significant growth creating effect. The reallocation of labor force to the more dynamic and high wage urban sector with its modern technology and higher rate of productivity change was of great importance to the economic performance of the national economy. More rural to urban migration has a temporary growth creating effect, but in the long run this effect disappears, because it also decreases the wage gap between rural and urban areas and consequently has a boomerang effect on itself.     

Spatial patterns and determinants of skilled internal migration in China, 2000–2005

This paper examines the spatial patterns and determinants of China's interprovincial skilled migration by using data from 2005 one per cent population sample survey. While the coastal region benefits from the influx of skilled labour, the rest of China suffers from severe brain drain. Estimates from zero‐inflated negative binomial gravity models indicate that employment opportunities, especially interregional wage differentials, play a dominant role in attracting skilled labour, and that the impact of amenities on skilled migration turns out to be small and less clear. Findings suggest that China's skilled people prioritize their career prospects over the quality of life in the migration decision‐making process.     

Wage returns to interregional mobility among Ph.D graduates: Do occupations matter?

This paper addresses the wage returns to interregional mobility among Italian Ph.D workers. We control for selection bias in both migration and occupation choice by estimating a double sample selection model. While OLS estimates indicate a positive wage premium of mobility across all types of occupations examined, wage equations estimated by correcting for double sample selection evidence a wage penalty for movers within academia, no effects for movers carrying out R&D activities but positive returns if they work within the industry sector. The selection process appears to be stronger when mobility choice is considered in comparison to the choice of occupation.     

A comparison of retirement migration from Paris and London

"Retirement migration from Paris and London [is] compared by means of data from the OPCS Longitudinal Study for London and from the Echantillon Demographique Permanent for Paris. The levels of retirement migration for men and women from different zones of each capital city are examined and the social class differences in retirement migration in London and Paris and the different role which housing tenure plays in the two cities are highlighted. The authors go on to examine the regions to which Londoners and Parisians move on retirement and the type of housing which they take. In all cases, marked differences are found in migration behaviour between newly retired men and women in Paris and London, linked to urban structures and cultural differences."     

Efficiency wages,agglomeration, and a developing dual economy

In analyzing the implications of rural-urban migration in the presence of efficiency wages and external economies of scale in the urban sector, this paper focuses on structural transformation of a developing dual economy. It compares the agglomeration effects in the urban sector under exogenous wage distortion with that under exogenous wage distortion and external economies of scale and also with the agglomeration under efficiency wages and external economies of scale. It shows that because of the employment enhancing effect of rural-urban migration with efficiency wages, the agglomeration economies are bigger with efficiency wages than with minimum wage distortion in the Harris-Todaro model. In exploiting the existing external economies of scale, this agglomeration reduces the sectoral wage differential, and changes the effects of factor accumulation and commodity price changes in a way that is different from the effects under migration with exogenous wage distortion.Received: February 2003/Accepted: October 2003