Empirical modeling of internal migration and commuting flows for economic regions in Norway

This article provides empirical results for internal migration and commuting flows using panel data for 89 economic regions in Norway for the years 2001–2014. The emphasis is on the potential effects of different incentive variables. We consider both in- and out-migration as well as in- and out-commuting with a common set of explanatory variables. We perform panel data analysis for four educational groups using seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) models, acknowledging that the effects of the incentive variables may vary across educational groups. Generally, we find weak responses to the incentive variables for the eight response variables, but they differ somewhat across the educational groups. The group comprised of those with a low education appears to be most responsive. An increase in an economic region’s relative wage rate leads to higher in-migration and lower out-migration for individuals with low education. Furthermore, an increase in an economic region’s relative unemployment rate leads to lower in-migration whereas out-migration is left unaffected for individuals with this type of education. Besides, an increase in the relative unemployment rate leads to a significant reduction in in-commuting for this group.