In this paper we study how European integration might affect the mobility of workers in CEE. Unlike previous migration studies we base the empirical analysis on the economic geography theory à la Krugman (1991). The economic geography framework offers the advantage that we do not require ex ante data for the explanatory variables. Parameters for the theoretical model are estimated econometrically using migration data from the past. Our simulation results show that in the CEE even moderate changes in explanatory variables (e.g. transport costs) can easily lead to sizeable and unpredictable migration flows, which confirms the importance of a general equilibrium framework. Our empirical findings predict that European integration would trigger a selective migration between the CEE accession countries. However, according to our simulation results, labour mobility is sufficiently low in CEE to make a swift emergence of a core-periphery pattern very unlikely.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Economics and Econometrics Research Institute (EERI) in its series EERI Research Paper Series with number
EERI_RP_2006_01.
Find related papers by JEL classification: F12 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Models of Trade with Imperfect Competition and Scale Economies L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms R12 - Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity; Interregional Trade (economic geography) R23 - Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: