Leaping into the unknown? The role of job search in migration decisions

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Event Date

Location
Online

Speaker: Maria Balgova (IZA)

Abstract

In this paper, I show evidence that firms' recruitment across space significantly shapes inter-regional migration. I start by showing that the majority of US workers move to take up a specific job offer, rather than to search for employment. I then measure the opportunities to move by analyzing help-wanted ads in newspapers across the US, revealing significant differences in the size of local labour markets across workers. Finally, I build a dynamic discrete choice model which allows me to distinguish between speculative and non-speculative moves. I show that, holding the costs and benefits of migration constant, the workers with greater opportunity move more. This result suggests that there are potentially large social returns to efficient cross-regional hiring. It also demonstrates why spatial search frictions act as such a strong barrier to migration.

Read the paper here.

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This event is sponsored by the UC Davis Global Migration Center and is part of the Junior Economics of Migration Series.

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