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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:

    1. Bassier, Ihsaan & Manning, Alan & Petrongolo, Barbara, 2023. "Vacancy duration and wages," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 121287, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    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. Bassier, Ihsaan & Manning, Alan & Petrongolo, Barbara, 2023. "Vacancy Duration and Wages," IZA Discussion Papers 16371, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. 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.
    7. 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.
    8. Simon, Andrew & Wilson, Matthew, 2021. "Optimal minimum wage setting in a federal system," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 123(C).
    9. Ihsaan Bassier & Alan Manning & Barbara Petrongolo, 2023. "Vacancy duration and wages," CEP Discussion Papers dp1943, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    geographical mobility; job search; education;
    All these keywords.

    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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