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Education and geographical mobility: the role of the job surplus

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  • Michael Amior

Abstract

Better-educated workers form many more long-distance job matches, and they move more quickly following local employment shocks. I argue this is a consequence of larger dispersion in wage offers, independent of geography. In a frictional market, this generates larger surpluses for workers in new matches, which can better justify the cost of moving - should the offer originate from far away. The market is then "thinner" but better integrated spatially. I motivate my hypothesis with new evidence on mobility patterns and subjective moving costs;and I test it using wage returns to local and long-distance matches over the jobs ladder.

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  • Michael Amior, 2019. "Education and geographical mobility: the role of the job surplus," CEP Discussion Papers dp1616, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    • Handle: RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp1616
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    Cited by:

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    2. Benoit Schmutz & Modibo Sidibé & Elie Vidal-Naquet, 2021. "Why Are Low-Skilled Workers Less Mobile? The Role of Mobility Costs and Spatial Frictions," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 142, pages 283-304.
    3. Monica Langella & Alan Manning, 2019. "Diversity and Neighbourhood Satisfaction," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 129(624), pages 3219-3255.
    4. Ning Jia & Raven Molloy & Christopher Smith & Abigail Wozniak, 2023. "The Economics of Internal Migration: Advances and Policy Questions," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 61(1), pages 144-180, March.
    5. Amior, Michael, 2018. "The contribution of foreign migration to local labor market adjustment," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 91705, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    6. Joseph-Simon Görlach, 2023. "Borrowing Constraints and the Dynamics of Return and Repeat Migration," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 41(1), pages 205-243.
    7. Pelin Akyol & Zeynep Yılmaz, 2024. "Effects of Grandmothers' Proximity on Mothers' Labour Force Participation," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 86(5), pages 1122-1162, October.
    8. Simon, Andrew & Wilson, Matthew, 2021. "Optimal minimum wage setting in a federal system," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 123(C).

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    Keywords

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    JEL classification:

    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search
    • R23 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population

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