IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/red/sed018/876.html

The Benefits of Labor Mobility in a Currency Union

Author

Listed:
  • Christopher House

    (University of Michigan)

  • Christian Proebsting

    (EPFL)

  • Linda Tesar

    (University of Michigan)

Abstract

Cyclical unemployment rates differ substantially more between countries in the euro area than between states in the United States. We find that net migration is responsive to unemployment differentials, but the response is smaller in Europe relative to the U.S. This paper explores to what extent the lack of labor mobility in Europe makes it more difficult for the euro area to adjust to shocks. We develop a multi-country DSGE model of a currency union with cross-border migration and search frictions in the labor market. The model is calibrated to the 50-state U.S. economy and to the 31-country European economy and replicates, for each region, the relationship between net migration and unemployment differentials. The model allows us to quantify the benefits if Europe had enjoyed levels of labor mobility as high as those in the U.S. during the most recent crisis.

Suggested Citation

  • Christopher House & Christian Proebsting & Linda Tesar, 2018. "The Benefits of Labor Mobility in a Currency Union," 2018 Meeting Papers 876, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    • Handle: RePEc:red:sed018:876
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://red-files-public.s3.amazonaws.com/meetpapers/2018/paper_876.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Backus, David K & Kehoe, Patrick J & Kydland, Finn E, 1994. "Dynamics of the Trade Balance and the Terms of Trade: The J-Curve?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(1), pages 84-103, March.
    2. Basu, Susanto & Fernald, John G., 1995. "Are apparent productive spillovers a figment of specification error?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 165-188, August.
    3. Giovanni Peri & Francesc Ortega, 2009. "The Causes and Effects of International Migrations: Evidence from OECD Countries 1980-2005," Working Papers 78, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    4. Martin Beraja & Erik Hurst & Juan Ospina, 2019. "The Aggregate Implications of Regional Business Cycles," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 87(6), pages 1789-1833, November.
    5. Ortega, Francesc & Peri, Giovanni, 2009. "The Causes and Effects of International Labor Mobility: Evidence from OECD Countries 1980-2005," MPRA Paper 19183, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Julia Jauer & Thomas Liebig & John P. Martin & Patrick Puhani, 2014. "Migration as an Adjustment Mechanism in the Crisis? A Comparison of Europe and the United States," OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers 155, OECD Publishing.
    7. Robert Shimer, 2005. "The Cyclical Behavior of Equilibrium Unemployment and Vacancies," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 25-49, March.
    8. Diamond, Peter A, 1982. "Aggregate Demand Management in Search Equilibrium," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 90(5), pages 881-894, October.
    9. Robert E. Hall, 2005. "Employment Efficiency and Sticky Wages: Evidence from Flows in the Labor Market," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 87(3), pages 397-407, August.
    10. Robert Shimer, 2010. "Labor Markets and Business Cycles," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 9217.
    11. Emi Nakamura & Jón Steinsson, 2008. "Five Facts about Prices: A Reevaluation of Menu Cost Models," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(4), pages 1415-1464.
    12. Francesc Ortega & Giovanni Peri, 2009. "The Causes and Effects of International Migrations: Evidence from OECD Countries 1980-2005," NBER Working Papers 14833, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Lawrence J. Christiano & Martin Eichenbaum & Charles L. Evans, 2005. "Nominal Rigidities and the Dynamic Effects of a Shock to Monetary Policy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(1), pages 1-45, February.
    14. Greg Kaplan & Sam Schulhofer‐Wohl, 2017. "Understanding The Long‐Run Decline In Interstate Migration," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 58, pages 57-94, February.
    15. Sterk, Vincent, 2015. "Home equity, mobility, and macroeconomic fluctuations," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 16-32.
    16. Smets, Frank & Beyer, Robert C. M., 2015. "Labour market adjustments in Europe and the US: How different?," Working Paper Series 1767, European Central Bank.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Knutsson, Polina, 2020. "Lasting Effects of an Import Shock: Channels of Adjustment," Working Papers 2020:3, Lund University, Department of Economics.
    2. Guilherme Bandeira & Jordi Caballe & Eugenia Vella, 2019. "Fiscal Austerity and Migration: A Missing Link," Working Papers 2019009, The University of Sheffield, Department of Economics.
    3. Proebsting, Christian, 2022. "Market segmentation and spending multipliers," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 1-19.
    4. Parsley, David & Popper, Helen, 2019. "GDP Synchronicity and Risk Sharing Channels in a Monetary Union: Blue State and Red States," MPRA Paper 98981, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Kuester, Keith & Jung, Philip & Ignaszak, Marek, 2020. "Federal unemployment reinsurance and local labor-market policies," CEPR Discussion Papers 15465, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    6. Vassilis Monastiriotis & Stylianos Sakkas, 2021. "Employment mobility and labour market flexibility in the EU," JRC Working Papers on Territorial Modelling and Analysis 2021-01, Joint Research Centre.
    7. Rémi Odry, 2020. "Academic Convergence and Migration: the effect of the BolognaProcess on European Mobility," EconomiX Working Papers 2020-24, University of Paris Nanterre, EconomiX.
    8. Helge Berger & Giovanni Dell’Ariccia & Maurice Obstfeld, 2019. "Revisiting the Economic Case for Fiscal Union in the Euro Area," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 67(3), pages 657-683, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Christopher L. House & Christian Proebsting & Linda L. Tesar, 2018. "Quantifying the Benefits of Labor Mobility in a Currency Union," Working Papers 671, Research Seminar in International Economics, University of Michigan.
    2. Christopher L. House & Christian Proebsting & Linda L. Tesar, 2020. "Regional Effects of Exchange Rate Fluctuations," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 52(S2), pages 429-463, December.
    3. Etro, Federico, 2017. "Research in economics and macroeconomics," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(3), pages 373-383.
    4. Aparicio Fenoll, Ainoa & Kuehn, Zoë, 2016. "Education Policies and Migration across European Countries," IZA Discussion Papers 9755, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Emi Nakamura & Jón Steinsson, 2018. "Identification in Macroeconomics," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 32(3), pages 59-86, Summer.
    6. Tsasa, Jean-Paul K., 2022. "Labor market volatility in a fully specified RBC search model: An analytical investigation," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    7. George-Marios Angeletos, 2018. "Frictional Coordination," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 16(3), pages 563-603.
    8. Ginters Buss, 2017. "Wage Formation, Unemployment and Business Cycle in Latvia," Working Papers 2017/01, Latvijas Banka.
    9. Bielecki, Marcin, . "Długie oddziaływanie szoków finansowych z perspektywy wzrostu endogenicznego," Gospodarka Narodowa-The Polish Journal of Economics, Szkoła Główna Handlowa w Warszawie / SGH Warsaw School of Economics, vol. 2022(3).
    10. repec:bic:journl:v:23:y:2023:i:1:p:2173915 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Sniekers, F.J.T., 2013. "Endogenous Beveridge cycles and the volatility of unemployment," CeNDEF Working Papers 13-12, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Center for Nonlinear Dynamics in Economics and Finance.
    12. Dupraz, Stéphane & Nakamura, Emi & Steinsson, Jón, 2025. "A plucking model of business cycles," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    13. Andrés Rodríguez-Pose & Viola von Berlepsch, 2012. "When migrants rule: the legacy of mass migration on economic development in the US," Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography (PEEG) 1216, Utrecht University, Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Group Economic Geography, revised Aug 2012.
    14. Ron Boschma & Simona Iammarino & Raffaele Paci & Jordy Suriñach & Raul Ramos & Jordi Suriñach, 2017. "A Gravity Model of Migration Between the ENC and the EU," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 108(1), pages 21-35, February.
    15. Milo Bianchi & Paolo Buonanno & Paolo Pinotti, 2012. "Do Immigrants Cause Crime?," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 10(6), pages 1318-1347, December.
    16. Albert MILLOGO & Ines TROJETTE & Nicolas PÉRIDY, 2021. "Are government policies efficient to regulate immigration? Evidence from France," Region et Developpement, Region et Developpement, LEAD, Universite du Sud - Toulon Var, vol. 53, pages 23-49.
    17. d'Artis Kancs & Patrizio Lecca, 2018. "Long‐term social, economic and fiscal effects of immigration into the EU: The role of the integration policy," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(10), pages 2599-2630, October.
    18. James M. Malcomson & Sophocles Mavroeidis, 2007. "Matching Frictions, Efficiency Wages, and Unemployment in the USA and the UK," Working Papers 2007-02, Brown University, Department of Economics.
    19. repec:ers:journl:v:xxiv:y:2021:i:2:p:701-713 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Galí, Jordi, 2010. "Monetary Policy and Unemployment," Handbook of Monetary Economics, in: Benjamin M. Friedman & Michael Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Monetary Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 10, pages 487-546, Elsevier.
    21. Mann, Katja & Pozzoli, Dario, 2024. "Robots and immigration," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 227(C).
    22. repec:ipg:wpaper:17 is not listed on IDEAS
    23. Mário Amorim Lopes & Álvaro Almeida & Bernardo Almada-Lobo, 2017. "Physician emigration: should they stay or should they go? A policy analysis," FEP Working Papers 585, Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Economia do Porto.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:red:sed018:876. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christian Zimmermann (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sedddea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.