geographical mobility and potential wage gain of immigrants within spain ruiz a c geographical mobility and potential wage gain of immigrants within spain regional studies geographical mobility of workers within countries can be a means of equilibrating regional economic disparities within this context a relevant topic is the mobility of foreign workers in the destination country the spanish case is interesting because spain has one of europe s fastest growing immigration rates this paper is aimed first at studying the determinants of interregional geographical mobility of immigrants in spain and second at obtaining consistent estimates of an individual s opportunity wage as a mover or a stayer findings show that an expected wage gain exerts a positive influence on mobility and leads to a better allocation of resources

regional migration in britain an analysis of gross flows using nhs central register data the authors extend the use of a hiring function model whereby job seekers are matched with vacancies to the analysis of regional migration in britain annual data from the national health service central register for 1975 1989 are used to show that unemployment and vacancy rates distance and an index of similarities across regions in industry based employment composition help determine migration flows across regions the hiring function approach offers a consistent way of modelling gross and net flows and helps explain both the high level of gross relative to net flows and the tendency for migration to fall in a recession even when unemployment differentials widen excerpt

rent control and prices of owner occupied housing we examine the relation between rent control and prices of owner occupied housing in th e presence of different qualities of housing while a rent ceiling and the price of condominiums are substitutes if housing is undifferentiated it is shown that this is not necessarily the case when housing differs in quality a complete dismantling of rent control may in fact increase the price of condominiums

out of control what can we learn from the end of massachusetts rent control abstract this paper uses the sudden end of rent control in massachusetts in 1995 to estimate the effects of rent control i examine boston msa data from the american housing survey years 1985 1998 to determine how rent control affected the quantity price and quality of rental housing my results suggest rent control had little effect on the construction of new housing but did encourage owners to shift units away from rental status and reduced rents substantially rent control also led to deterioration in the quality of rental units but these effects appear to have been concentrated in smaller items of physical damage i also examine specifications that allow rent control to affect rent levels both directly through controlled status and indirectly through spillover effects from nearby rent controlled units these estimates imply that rent control may have small effects on the price of the non controlled rental housing stock

on the equilibrium properties of locational sorting models abstract important to many models of location choice is the role of local interactions or spillovers whereby the payoffs from choosing a location depend in part on the number or attributes of other individuals or firms that choose the same or nearby locations in equilibrium this paper develops the equilibrium properties of a broadly applicable and readily estimable class of sorting models that allow location decisions to depend on both fixed local attributes including unobserved attributes and local interactions describes the conditions under which equilibria exist and are unique and provides a test for uniqueness in empirical analyses of sorting equilibrium

rationing by waiting and the value of time results from a natural experiment the authors analyze data from a natural experiment with rationing by waiting in the situation motorists were confronted with a choice between waiting in line for low priced gasoline or purchasing at a higher price without waiting they view this as a revealed preference experiment and use their choices to estimate the value of time spent waiting as a function of individual characteristics in most cases the estimates of the value of time are quite similar to individuals after tax wages 13 references 7 tables

did migration in the 1980s narrow the north south divide this paper integrates empirical analysis of the decision to migrate from a region with that of destination choice thus we are able to study how net migration and not just gross outflows are influenced by regional labour market circumstances the results suggest that relative regional wages rates but not relative unemployment and vacancy rates are effective in reallocating labour from regions experiencing adverse demand shocks we find little evidence that manual labour is migrating from those regions with relatively high manual unemployment but that migration plays a more conventional role in the regional adjustment process for non manual workers

local pay determination theoretical models of local pay are reviewed ranging from neoclassical perspectives unemployment wage trade off models and segmented labor market approaches the empirical work on u s north south differentials is discussed for the u k studies of the extent of and trends in geographical pay differentials are considered as well as behavioral explanations focusing on the role of excess demand the issue of adjustment processes is then discussed both in theory and in relation to empirical work for the u s and u k this discussion focuses largely on geographical spillover effects in terms of origins evidence and issues of identification finally the impact of certain impediments in the adjustment process are considered specifically in relation to the u k these concern the role and influence of national wage bargaining as well as factors inhibiting labor migration stemming from the housing market and the climate of the national labor market copyright 1992 by blackwell publishers ltd

the welfare costs of rationing by waiting with price controls and rationing by waiting rational consumers increase the quantity boughtperpurchase this individually rational response is socially wasteful and the cost of making it is a deadweight loss this cost plus the value of time spent in queues may exceed the total rent transferred from suppliers to consumers by price controls i e the value of resources spent competing for the rent may exceed the rent itself this point is illustrated by an empirical application to gasoline price controls rent seeking exhausts an estimated 116 percent of the rent trangerred the efficiency of the price system is often illustrated lby pointing to the obvious wastes associated with alternative allocation mechanisms for example the queues that accompany price controls and first come first served allocations although rationing by waiting wastes resources in a dramatically visible fashion the magnitude of the waste and the factors that determine it seldom have been examined empirically moreover existing theory on the subject is incomplete unless the first come first served rule is precisely specified consumers will compete for available supplies in ways other than waiting in the model developed below queues cause consumers to compete by increasing amounts bought per trip to the market the analysis demonstrates that such individually rational adjustments only increase the welfare cost of rationing by waiting and thus are socially self defeating the theoretical model is illustrated empirically by estimating the welfare costs of a market wide ceiling on gasoline prices this application was motivated by the availability of two key pieces of information the value of time spent in gasoline queues and the effect of waiting lines on amounts bought per purchase this information was obtained from a survey of motorists conducted during the era of federal gasoline price regulations to focus on competition among consumers one of the inefficiencies that results from price controls is ignored the supply reduction leading to the

maximum score estimates of the determinants of residential mobility implications for the value of residential attachment and neighborhood amenities abstract this paper uses a semiparametric empirical technique maximum score to estimate the determinants of the decision of low income renters to move out of their dwelling the maximum score estimates prove to be far more precise than probit estimates the estimates are used to show that low income residents highly value remaining in their dwelling in addition these estimates are used to illustrate an alternative method to measure willingness to pay for neighborhood amenities which we argue to be superior to hedonic based wtp measures

ten propositions in uk housing macroeconomics an overview of the 1980s and early 1990s during the last ten years macroeconomists have increasingly come to realise that there are important interactions between housing and the wider economy in some cases this realisation has come too late to avoid the severe oscillations in the economy that have characterised the period since the mid 1980s this paper uses a macroeconometric model specifically designed to capture the interactions in order to reflect on the experience of the 1980s and early 1990s and to draw theoretical empirical and policy conclusions in terms of ten propositions

households willingness to pay for public housing in the presence of price controls nonmarket housing allocation mechanisms such as queueing prevent households from revealing their marginal willingness to pay for housing through market prices we derive the households marginal willingness to pay using the intuitive idea that the length of the queue for a specific house reflects the households willingness to pay for housing characteristics we apply our methodology to public housing in the amsterdam metropolitan area and show that on average the households marginal willingness to pay for a unit of public housing is close to its marginal costs this suggests that the welfare loss of public housing through distortions in housing supply is rather limited and is mainly through distortions in housing demand we provide indirect evidence of the latter by showing that queueing induces inefficient matching of households and housing

long run trends in internal migrations in italy a study in panel cointegration with dependent units the objective of this paper is to examine the long run determinants of internal migrations from southern italy in order to accomplish this task the paper develops a bootstrap test for panel cointegration analysis with dependent units monte carlo simulations show that the test based on the continuous path block bootstrap has good power and size properties and is robust to both short and long run dependence across units the empirical analysis points to income in the sending region as a key factor of the decline of migrations with unemployment and income differentials playing only a minor role copyright 2007 john wiley sons ltd

do council housing policies reduce migration between regions data from the 1973 general household survey of great britain are used to examine whether the council house system which currently provides a dwelling for one british family in every three tends to discourage long distance migration controls are introduced for various socioeconomic variables and the importance of occupation sector of employment age and education in explaining migration is discussed comparisons are also made between local movements and long distance migration the findings indicate that over longer distances council tenants have much lower migration rates than owner occupiers

geographic labour mobility and the cost of housing evidence from italy in recent years internal migration in italy has declined markedly notwithstanding the widening of the north south gap in terms of unemployment rates and real income here the extent to which the housing market has contributed to the decline is examined preliminary to this analysis differentials in the cost of housing between the macro areas of the country are estimated using data on the market price of houses located in 96 provincial capitals econometric evidence is provided supporting the view that the north south housing price differential is a notable factor in explaining the falling pattern of mobility the positive impact on migration from the south to the north of a wider gap in the two areas in terms of income and employment prospects has been offset by the housing price differential which has steadily risen at least from the mid 1980s onwards yet a considerable share of the decrease in mobility remains unexplained possibly owing to the heterogeneity in the composition of migration flows

the impact of rent control on rents in the free sector in most cases rent control covers only a part of the housing stock this note provides a simple analysis of the impact which rent control and non price rationing exert on the rent in the free sector it is shown that depending on the rationing mechanism rents in the free sector can be higher or lower than in the absence of rent controls

the effect of rent control on housing quality change a longitudinal analysis it is widely believed that rent control leads to a decline in the quality of rental housing this study examines the effect of rent control on the quality of rental housing in new york city quality change is linked to the suppression of rent below market levels and other characteristics of the housing unit we develop a first order nonstationary heterogeneous markov model that allows for true state dependence observed heterogeneity nonparametric unobserved heterogeneity and a mover stayer structure the results offer some support for the belief that rent control leads to a deterioration in housing quality but suggest the need for additional investigation of this issue

wage determination in britain is there a local dimension church a and hutchinson g 1989 wage determination in britain is there a local dimension reg studies 23 289 300 this study presents an empirical regression analysis of wage determination in the five labour markets of motherwell preston reading torquay and the london borough of newham the data source is a newly available questionnaire survey of approximately 1 000 establishments undertaken in 1984 5 the explanatory variables include the plant s size ownership industrial type three proxies for labour quality the proportion of youths the proportion of females and the proportion of part time workers and a union recognition dummy variable the results discuss the relative importance of both national and local influences on pay levels church a et hutchinson g 1989 la determination des salaires en grande bretagne est ce qu il y a un optique local reg studies 23 289 300 cet article presente une analyse empirique de regression de la determination des salaires dans cinq bassins d empl

unemployment and the inter regional mobility of labour the relationship between unemployment and interregional labor migration in the united kingdom is explored using data from the labour force survey for 1984 and 1977 the authors conclude that the experience of unemployment increases the likelihood of migration and that households in areas of high unemployment are more likely to move they also find that during periods of higher overall unemployment migration propensities are reduced annotation

wage flexibility in regional labour markets evidence from italy and germany ammermuller a lucifora c origo f and zwick t wage flexibility in regional labour markets evidence from italy and germany regional studies this paper investigates the functioning of regional labour markets in italy and germany for different employee groups and regions it derives theoretical hypotheses on group specific correlations between regional unemployment and individual wages distinguishing between regions using micro data matched to local unemployment rates wage equations are specified and empirically tested for italy no evidence is found in favour of a relationship between wages and local unemployment in germany results appear to be sensitive to model specification and type of employees in both countries the reaction of wages to local unemployment varies significantly along the wage distribution being more sensitive around median quantiles ammermuller a lucifora c origo f et zwick t la flexibilite des salaires dans les marches du travail regionaux des preuves provenant de

old homes externalities and poor neighborhoods a model of urban decline and renewal abstract this paper investigates urban decline and renewal in the united states using three panels that follow neighborhoods on a geographically consistent basis over extended periods of time findings indicate that change in neighborhood economic status is common averaging roughly 13 percent per decade roughly two thirds of neighborhoods studied in 1950 were of quite different economic status fifty years later panel unit root tests for 35 msas indicate that neighborhood economic status is a stationary process consistent with long running cycles of decline and renewal in philadelphia county a complete cycle appears to last up to 100 years aging housing stocks and redevelopment contribute to these patterns as do local externalities associated with social interactions lower income neighborhoods appear to be especially sensitive to the presence of individuals that provide social capital many of the factors that drive change at the local level have large and policy relevant effects

skill development and regional mobility lessons from the australia pacific technical college abstractdeveloping countries can lose part of their investment in training skilled workers who later emigrate one innovative response is for migrants destination countries to help finance skilled emigrants training ex ante linking skill creation and skill mobility we describe one such project the australia pacific technical college aptc which has financed vocational training in five pacific island developing countries for employment both at home and abroad including employment in australia the aptc has attained its goal of skill creation but not its goal of skill mobility we offer explanations for this result and lessons for future policy innovation

the influence of wages and house prices on british interregional migration decisions this paper considers the paradox of a consistent net outflow of people from areas of high job creation and wages over the past 20 years and suggests the explanation that different individuals have different motivations for moving the labour force survey indicates that workers moving for job reasons have migrated to areas of low unemployment and high nominal wages however the inflow into such areas has been more than compensated for by an outflow of people moving for non job reasons a logit analysis of destination choice indicates that job movers are attracted to areas with high wages but are not affected by high house prices in such areas in contrast active non job movers are deterred from areas of high house prices regional house price differences do not influence the destination choice of homemakers or the terminally sick but they do influence the destination choice of retirees all groups prefer to travel the least distance when moving

sticky labor in spanish regions abstract migration among spanish regions has fallen significantly since the 1970s in spite of large and widening regional unemployment rate differentials in this paper i argue that this evolution is the result of a large increase in the national unemployment rate the reduction in regional dispersion in other economic variables due in part to important institutional changes since 1975 and the rise of migration from richer to poorer regions or affluent migration

housing assignment with restrictions theory and evidence from stanford university s campus this paper studies housing markets where a subset of houses in a restricted area is available exclusively to a subset of eligible buyers an empirical part shows that houses on stanford campus available only to faculty trade at substantial discounts to comparable houses off campus the theoretical part describes an assignment model with heterogeneous houses and buyers which predicts such discounts if the matchup of quality and buyer pools is sufficiently different inside versus outside the restricted area the restriction can distort allocations by making eligible buyers choose either higher or lower qualities than ineligible buyers with the same characteristics

wage assimilation of immigrants and internal migrants the role of linguistic distance this paper investigates the wage assimilation of foreign immigrants and internal migrants in italy comparing them with stayers control for the selection in out migration is performed using a new

the emergence of migration theory and a suggested new direction abstract the literature on internal labour migration is surveyed using a fourfold taxonomic scheme the potential migrant as presented in the existing literature can be viewed as a supplier of labour an investor in human capital and a consumer of regional amenities such as public goods the paper develops a fourth approach which treats the household rather than the individual as the migrating unit and which views the potential migrant as a producer of home produced commodities the continuities as well as the contrasts between the four approaches are discussed in the paper

introduction to monetary and financial arrangements abstract recent years have seen major innovations in the nature of monetary banking and payment arrangements these innovations which are certain to continue into the foreseeable future will have huge implications for the conduct of monetary policy for the regulation of banking and for the design of payment systems indeed central banks now need to think about the conduct of monetary policy in environments where the evolution of banking and payments systems already has implied and will continue to imply a declining demand for their liabilities central banks also need to think about the conduct of monetary policy in increasingly global markets and in a context where the number of currencies is shrinking as different nations abandon their own monies in favor of the dollar or the euro and at least in the united states all legal impediments to the issue of currency substitutes by private agents have been repealed this has occurred at the same time that developments in communications and record keeping technologies have made it feasible for agents to issue various forms of electronic currency substitutes what would the widespread issue of private possibly electronic currency substitutes imply for price level and interest rate determination or for the conduct of monetary policy in general in addition the increasing frequency and severity of financial crises around the globe and the increasing exposure of economies like the u s to external events raise issues about the appropriate roles for national central banks and the appropriate roles for international agencies like the imf and recent changes in u s banking legislation will force a rethinking of how the supervision and regulation of the banking system should be conducted and of how far the safety net created by deposit insurance provision and lender of last resort services should be extended these issues will become particularly vexing as the scope of activities conducted by banks increases and as the notion of a bank becomes more amorphous the papers in this issue are intended to provide frameworks for advancing research on these and other topics journal of economic literature classification numbers e0 e5 g0

job search in thick markets abstract i analyze empirically the effects of urban and industrial agglomeration on both search behavior and the efficiency of matching the analysis is based on a unique panel data set from the italian labor force survey micro data covering 520 randomly drawn local labor market areas 66 of the total over the four quarters of 2002 i compute transition probabilities from non employment to employment by jointly estimating the probability of searching and the probability of finding a job conditional on having searched i then test whether these are affected by market size industrial variety and or industry specialization the main results indicate that market size and industry specialization raise job seekers chances of finding employment conditional on having searched while industrial variety is not significantly different from zero finally the effect of agglomeration on non employed individuals search behavior cannot be significantly distinguished from zero

migration intentions in the u k which households want to migrate and which succeed the authors extend their earlier study of the impact of the council housing system on migration in the united kingdom in particular they examine the hypothesis that individuals differ in various unobserved ways and that personal characteristics that result in individuals becoming tenants may also discourage migration data are from the general household survey for 1973 and 1974 and pertain to both migration intentions and past migration the extent to which house tenure and other household characteristics affect the probability that a household embarking on a housing search will be successful in realizing its migration intentions is explored in addition the importance of both individual and aggregate local unemployment in determining migration intentions is discussed

willingness to move for work and unemployment duration in spain this paper examines unemployed workers willingness to move for work and its relationship to their unemployment duration in spain we use a hypothetical question in the spanish labour force survey would you accept a job offer which implied a change of residence the main finding is that while family responsibility age and education are important in determining individuals migration willingness the duration of unemployment does not show any significant effect even after controlling for unobserved fixed individual heterogeneity however the significant improvement in migration willingness after the exhaustion of unemployment benefits or when other household members become unemployed suggests that economic incentives could play an important role in increasing worker mobility we also find that job finding probability is significantly higher among those with positive migration attitudes than among others universidad del pais vasco

earnings unemployment and the regional employment structure in britain blackaby d h and manning d n 1990 earnings unemployment and the regional employment structure in britain reg studies 24 529 535 this paper investigates the effect of regional unemployment on regional earnings in britain data are obtained from the new earnings survey reports from 1970 to 1986 and the influence of the regional industrial and occupational structure is taken into account in general the results support the hypothesis that increases in regional unemployment relative to the national average are associated with decreases in regional earnings below that expected blackaby d h et manning d n 1990 revenus chomage et distribution regionale de l emploi en grande bretagne reg studies 24 529 535 cet article examine l effet du chomage regional sur les revenus en grande bretagne les donnees proviennent des rapports disponibles sur la periode de 1970 a 1986 concernant les revenus new earnings survey en outre on met en consideration l influence des structures industrialo regi

how different are the british in their willingness to move evidence from international social survey data drinkwater s and ingram p how different are the british in their willingness to move evidence from international social survey data regional studies this paper analyses people s willingness to move using data from the 1995 british social attitudes survey and international social survey programme the personal characteristics and sub regional indicators that are important in explaining the willingness to move within britain are identified it is also found that the willingness to move is only higher in a few other countries including the usa the equivalent desire to move is found to be much lower in eastern european countries and in several other european union member states compositional effects such as age and education are generally important in explaining differences in attitudes towards migration in comparison with other western economies however structural effects such as institutions history and culture tend to play a more dominant role in explaining differences compared with countries

rent assistance and housing demand abstract we examine the effect of a rent subsidy program rent assistance on the demand for rental housing in the netherlands the ra program lowers the marginal price of housing services if households consume more than a minimal amount to estimate the effect of the program we develop a structural model of housing demand that takes account of the partial take up of the subsidy we estimate a reduced form that is compatible with the structural model and we test the restrictions that the structural model imposes on the reduced form these restrictions are not rejected if we allow for application costs we use the model to decompose the observed difference in housing demand into income price and preference heterogeneity effects to examine the effect of application costs and to study the total effect of ra on housing demand

the misallocation of housing under rent control the standard analysis of price controls assumes that goods are efficiently allocated even when there are shortages but if shortages mean that goods are randomly allocated across the consumers that want them the welfare costs from misallocation may be greater than the undersupply costs we develop a framework to empirically test for misallocation the methodology compares consumption patterns for demographic subgroups in rent controlled and free market places we find that in new york city which is rent controlled an economically and statistically significant fraction of apartments appears to be misallocated across demographic subgroups jel c25 d12 d61 r20

the incidence of uk housing benefit evidence from the 1990s reforms this paper estimates the incidence of the most important uk rent subsidy housing benefit hb it exploits changes to housing benefit in 1996 and 1997 that reduced the maximum subsidy payable the research design is based on the fact that the changes only applied to new claimants and not to pre existing claimants we use difference in differences to estimate the size of the treatment effect we show that the changes did have an effect on the level of housing subsidy with an estimated fall of 10 15 in benefit receipt in the treatment group relative to the control group there is also evidence that rents paid fell by 6 11 we find no evidence this can be explained by a fall in housing consumption by the treatment group our estimates imply that between 60 and two thirds of the incidence of the subsidy reduction was on landlords

exploring the household impacts of migration in britain using panel survey data bramley g champion t and fisher t 2006 exploring the household impacts of migration in britain using panel survey data regional studies 40 907 926 this paper explores the relationship between migration and household formation drawing on british panel data the starting point is a hypothesis that migration might be associated with higher rates of separate household formation the paper asks whether this is the case how this comes about and why using data from the british household panel survey bhps this paper assesses this link and explores two distinct approaches to measuring it based on household headship rates and household transitions descriptive data show an apparently strong link at least for younger age groups the transitions approach provides more insights into how migration affects different kinds of household changing events the paper offers hypotheses about possible causal effects and goes on to use multivariate models to explain the levels of and changes in household status

panel thoughts on the future of payments and central banking maintaining a uniform electronic currency the role a central bank should play in operating or regulating a payments system is not a new issue back in 1913 for example congress decided that the federal reserve would play a major role providing the country with a national check clearing system and a single uniform currency and while that role has not changed much over the years in 1980 congress revised its view of the payments system with the passage of the depository institution deregulation and monetary control act among other things the act requires the federal reserve to price its check clearing services and earn a competitive return or exit the business today the role of the federal reserve in providing a national currency is being reexamined this reexamination is driven by recent technological advances banks now have the ability to offer a new kind of currency electronic cash also known as ecash that could readily compete with federal reserve notes so the question naturally arises should congress allow banks to issue their own private currency a privilege banks used to have before the civil war to answer that question we need to address several concerns including one that is often overlooked the loss of a uniform currency allowing banks to issue currency e cash usually raises concerns about the loss of seigniorage the effectiveness of monetary policy and the overall stability of our monetary system allowing banks to issue their own currency will no doubt reduce seigniorage because e cash will be a close substitute for federal reserve notes the success of e cash will be at the expense of the united states treasury related to the concern over the loss of seigniorage is the concern that as the demand for federal reserve notes declines so will the impact of monetary policy furthermore the introduction of e cash may not only weaken monetary policy but it may also make markets less stable based on the history of private money systems some economists worry that banks would be tempted to overissue their currency while these are legitimate concerns a concern that is often overlooked when the e

a theory of price control price or rent control is but one of many forms of legislative action which interfere with private contracting in the market place to delimit the scope of my analysis i shall use the term price control to refer only to any set of regulations which satisfies the following three conditions first the control must fix the price or income terms of private contracts this categorically excludes any laws which regulate the distribution of income among the contracting parties on a share or percentage basis 2 second the control must involve no appropriation of proceeds to or from the government taxation and subsidization are thus excluded finally the fixing of price must not be associated with direct government sales purchases or manipulation of resources so as to maintain the regulated price 3 by this stipulation price support is also excluded even on such terms legal regulations to control price are still many and varied to evaluate our understanding of the class of phenomena which we seek to explain it is essential that we discover implications refutable by facts by this criterion the available body of economic theory pertaining to price control is deficient indeed the massive literature on the subject offers few such implications 4 an alternative approach to analyzing the observable effects of price control is presented here

equity and efficiency aspects of rent control an empirical study of new york city modem rent controls arose during world war ii to deal with the war related influx into urban areas since then numerous cities have either considered adopted or eliminated rent controls the policy debate about the desirability of rent controls continues unabated and becomes particularly acute when high inflation rates drive up rents rapidly rent controls have both efficiency and distributional consequences the economics literature has produced theoretical insights about the inefficiencies created by rent controls this literature is frequently cited by opponents of rent controls who argue that the efficiency costs of rent controls are manifested in a decaying housing stock and altered mobility patterns proponents of rent control invariably argue that the distributional impacts of rent controls outweigh efficiency costs considering the large number of cities that have investigated or adopted rent controls relatively little empirical research documents either the efficiency or distributional effects of rent controls the most notable exceptions are the studies of new york city by de salvo 3 olsen 13 and roistacher 15 and the studies of los angeles by rydell et al 16 and fallis and smith 4 more recently linneman lo and marks 12 have further examined ramifications of rent controls in new york city and vancouver this paper fills some gaps in knowledge about the effects of rent controls we examine rent controls in new york city in 1968 using the new york city housing and vacancy survey 2 the paper extends the work of olsen 13 although there are important differences in both the questions addressed and methodology used this paper examines in detail the distributional consequences of rent controls for new york city residents both

estimating equilibrium models of sorting across locations while there is growing interest in measuring the size and scope of local spillovers it is well understood that such spillovers cannot be distinguished from unobservable local attributes using solely the observed location decisions of individuals or firms we propose an empirical strategy for recovering estimates of spillovers in the presence of unobserved local attributes for a broadly applicable class of equilibrium sorting models our approach relies on an iv strategy derived from the internal logic of the sorting model itself we show practically how the strategy is implemented provide intuition for our instruments discuss the role of effective choice set variation in identifying the model and carry out a series of monte carlo simulations to demonstrate performance in small samples

on the job search some empirical evidence from britain abstract this paper considers evidence from the labour force survey concerning job search by employed workers the unconditional probability of observing on the job search is decomposed into the product of two constituent probabilities upon which maximum likelihood estimation is performed the analysis facilitates the identification of who searches and whether search takes place in work or from unemployment temporary or part time employment encourages continued search by men but not women skilled workers search more than the unskilled and demonstrate a preference for employed search inter industry wage relativities encourage search on the job job tenure is a significant determinant of the quality of a job match and the subsequent likelihood that on the job search is undertaken employed job seekers adopt search strategies that are more readily integrated into a working environment

spatial housing economics a survey this introduction to the virtual special issue surveys the development of spatial housing economics from its roots in neoclassical theory through more recent developments in social interactions modelling and touching on the role of institutions path dependence and economic history the survey also points to some of the more promising future directions for the subject that are beginning to appear in the literature the survey covers elements of hedonic models spatial econometrics neighbourhood models housing market areas housing supply models of segregation migration housing tenure subnational house price modelling including the so called ripple effect and agent based models possible future directions are set in the context of a selection of recent papers that have appeared in urban studies nevertheless there are still important gaps in the literature that merit further attention arising at least partly from emerging policy problems these include more research on housing and biodiversity

education and skills mismatch in the italian graduate labour market this paper focuses on education and skills mismatch among italian graduates indicators for over and under utilization of education and under utilization of skills are included as explanatory factors in a wage equation testing theories that could explain the effect of over schooling on wages we find little evidence to support assignment theory and also identify a relatively weak wage effect arising from educational mismatch associated with employers as opposed to employees perceptions of the job requirements our interpretation is that some employers have re categorized jobs as requiring a degree when they were previously filled by non graduates and many have not altered pay scales accordingly

nominal loss aversion housing equity constraints and household mobility evidence from the united states abstract this paper exploits the recent variation in us house prices to examine the effect of equity constraints and nominal loss aversion on household mobility detailed data from the 1985 1996 national longitudinal survey of youth nlsy79 were matched with house price data from 149 metropolitan areas to estimate instrumental variables linear probability and semi parametric proportional hazard models of intra metropolitan mobility household mobility is significantly influenced by nominal loss aversion there is little evidence that low equity because of fallen house prices constrains mobility

migrant inertia accessibility and local unemployment a labour markets model is constructed in which migration may exhibit distance deterrence and cumulative inertia migration probabilities fall with distance and length of residence respectively the combination of these two processes yields higher equilibrium unemployment rates in remote areas fewer out migration opportunities in remote areas generate longer residence durations which become self perpetuating via cumulative inertia such areas accu mulate net in migrants until the local unemployment rate rises sufficiently to balance inflows and outflows in equilibrium local unemployment rates compensate for endogenous varia tions in residence duration some evidence is presented for britain which supports the pre diction of higher unemployment in remote areas inertia or negative duration dependence and distance deterrence in migration behaviour generates higher equilibrium unemployment rates in remote areas all other things being equal cumulative inertia reflects a process whereby individuals form attachments to area friends job etc which grow over time distance deterrence arises because of increasing movement costs over longer distances and friction in information flows about relevant opportunities both processes are intuitively plausible and have been tested empirically clearly both issues are likely to affect adjustment patterns in the face of shocks to labour markets the argument advanced in this paper however and one that is perhaps not quite so obvious is that the combination of the two processes can also affect the underlying equilibrium itself the existence of persistent spatial differentials in unemployment is charac teristic of most countries and would appear to motivate areas of government policy various explanations for such differentials have been proposed the analysis presented here is intended primarily to deepen our understanding of the causes of these sustained differentials and hence to inform policy traditional explanations for sustained local unemployment differentials may be divided into three types one argument is in terms simply of labour immobility the perceived costs of moving outweigh the benefits and hence labour market imbalances persist alternatively one may combine mobile lab our with spatial wage rigidities such that equilibrium local unemployment patterns compensate for local variation in wages and other exogenous factors climate environment etc in people s preference functions finally there is the issue of labour heterogeneity e g by occupation a compensating varia tions equilibrium may exist for each homogeneous class of labour such that a region s aggregate unemployment rate reflects the local composition of

an empirical puzzle falling migration and growing unemployment differentials among italian regions abstract we investigate the causes behind the low and falling mobility levels in southern italy we argue that a combination of demographic factors high mobility costs and inefficiencies in the job matching process may account for the fall in interregional migration

employment status and the decision to migrate the purpose of this paper is to examine the demographic and socioeconomic determinants of migration for both the employed and unemployed hypotheses concerning the effects of age education and public services are developed and tested using data on interstate migration of the u s labor force from 1965 to 1970 for individuals at risk to either primary or repeat migration the age and education selectivity of migration were in general confirmed however for unemployed potential primary migrants education selectivity was not observed it was also found that the provision of welfare services have little or no impact on the migration decision of the unemployed however unemployment was shown to significantly affect the role played by educational quality and training accessibility within the migration decision excerpt