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

nonmonetary effects of the financial crisis in propagation of the great depression this paper examines the effects of the financial crisis of the 1930s onthe path of aggregate output during that period our approach is complementary to that of friedman and schwartz who emphasized the monetary impact of the bank failures we focus on non monetary primarily credit related aspects of the financial sector output link and consider the problems of debtors as well as those of the banking system we argue that the financial disruptions of 1930 33 reduced the efficiency of the credit allocation process and that the resulting higher cost and reduced availability of credit acted to depress aggregate demand evidence suggests that effects of this type can help explain the unusual length and depth of the great depression this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

the north south divide questions of existence and stability this paper investigates the relationship between regional earnings and unemployment by use of information primarily from the general household surveys of 1975 and 1982 conventional earnings functions are augmented to capture the effects of the level and duration of unemployment and of regional differences in living costs in common with previous studies the authors find personal characteristics and the occupation or industry of employment to be important in earnings determination in this paper however they generally find that although higher unemployment is associated with reduced regional earnings ceteris paribus long term unemployment has little influence in regional earnings determination copyright 1990 by royal economic society

consequences of bank distress during the great depression the consequences of bank distress for the economy during the depression remain an area of unresolved controversy since john m keynes 1931 and irving fisher 1933 macroeconomists have argued that bank distress magnified the extent of the economic decline during the depression as the intermediaries controlling money and credit banks were in a special position to transmit their distress to other sectors but the mechanism through which banking distress mattered for the economy has been hotly contested milton friedman and anna j schwartz 1963 saw the contraction in the money multiplier driven in their view by panicked depositors withdrawals of deposits as the primary mechanism through which banking distress affected the real economy they described the mechanism transmitting banking distress to the real sector as operating at the national level through changes in the aggregate supply of money and interest rates bank distress reduced the money supply available to the public either through the closure of banks and the consequent freezing of bank deposits or the withdrawals of deposits by depositors that feared bank failure ben s bernanke 1983 building on fisher 1933 emphasized the transmission of monetary shocks via their effects on the balance sheets of borrowers and on the supply of credit by banks borrowers balance sheets were worsened by debt deflation as the result of fixed dollar debt obligations borrowers net worth and cash flow declined with the rising value of debt service costs relative to income borrowers with positive net present value projects but weak balance sheets had less internally generated retained earnings to invest and could not qualify for credit furthermore bernanke argued that the contraction of the money supply produced contraction of nominal income and prices relative to fixed debt service which weakened borrowers balance sheets and in turn weakened banks not only did firms financial distress reduce the number of qualified borrowers the contraction in banks net worth forced a reduction in the supply of bank loans to qualified borrowers many firms and individuals relied on banks for credit and as those banks suffered losses of capital due to asset value declines and contractions in deposits as depositors reacted to bank weakness by withdrawing their funds even borrowers with viable projects and strong balance sheets experienced a decrease in the effective supply of loanable funds bernanke termed the combined weakening of borrowers balance sheets and the contraction in bank credit supply a rise in the cost of credit intermediation the scarcity of perfect substitutes for the positive net present value investments of firms with weak balance sheets and for the credit supplied by existing banks implies that the weakening of firms and banks balance sheets the disappearance of banks and the contraction in surviving banks lending made it more difficult for the economy to channel funds to their best use thus what began as a contraction in aggregate demand became a contraction in aggregate supply which magnified adverse economic shocks and prolonged and deepened the depression the financial distress of firms and banks and the decline in bank lending were not only symptoms of the depression but means for magnifying the shocks that caused the depression bernanke s statistical evidence in support of this story is derived from time series analysis at the national level in calomiris graduate school of business 601 uris hall columbia university 3022 broadway new york ny 10027 and national bureau of economic research e mail cc374 columbia edu mason department of finance drexel university 3141 chestnut street philadelphia pa 19104 e mail joe mason drexel edu we thank valerie ramey david wheelock charles himmelberg steve zeldes gary gorton two referees and seminar participants at columbia university wharton northwestern university and the 2001 economic history association meetings for helpful comments on an earlier draft we gratefully acknowledge support from the national science foundation the university of illinois and the federal reserve bank of st louis

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

estimating uk regional price indices 1974 96 hayes p 2005 estimating uk regional price indices 1974 96 regional studies 39 333 344 this paper examines the behaviour and construction of regional expenditure indices published in the croner reward regional cost of living surveys for 1974 96 it identifies a number of problems in using these data as an appropriate deflator to the new earnings survey regional wages series in examining labour supply side decisions instead an alternative method with which to construct regional prices is recommended using a combination of data from croner reward from the published retail price index rpi and from the expenditure and food survey efs formerly known as the family expenditure survey whilst these new data suggest that regional inflation rates were not significantly different from one another over the sample period they point to an episode of increased regional price variation over the late 1980s and early 1990s this paper suggests that these alternative indices would be of interest when examin

a real options approach to bankruptcy costs evidence from failed commercial banks during the 1990s literature identifies three main aspects of liquidation costs firm size asset specificity and industry concentration this paper unifies the theory behind these aspects of bankruptcy costs by treating them as components of a broader option valuation problem faced by the liquidating trustee testing the hypothesized asset price relationships on fdic failed bank liquidation data yields the appropriate results furthermore it appears that liquidation time alone can be used as an effective second order proxy for asset value growth where market value estimates are unavailable

housing tenure job mobility and unemployment in the uk this article examines the effects of housing tenure on individuals job and unemployment durations in the uk we examine job to job transitions and transitions from unemployment we take account of whether or not the arrival of a job was synonymous with a non local residential move tenure endogeneity and unobserved heterogeneity we find that home ownership is a constraint for the employed and public renting is more of a constraint for the unemployed employed home owners have a lower transition into employment with a distant move and unemployed public renters have a lower probability of gaining employment in more distant labour markets the nature of housing tenure has long been blamed for discouraging spatial mobility and thereby having an impact upon labour market outcomes in the early 1980s in the uk the main culprit was deemed to be local authority housing mccormick 1983 hughes and mccormick 1981 1987 examined the longer distance migration rates of those in local authority housing and found that they had lower longer distance migration rates compared to both owner occupiers and those in private rented accommodation although the latest research suggests that these effects may have lessened hughes and mccormick 2000 the relative immobility of public renters may stem from public housing rents being below market rates the restricted transferability within public housing high waiting lists and security of tenure public renters are then locked in and face higher costs if they accept a job that involves a long distance move more recently the blame has been pinned on private home ownership oswald 1996 1999 in a series of papers using macro time series and cross section data for oecd countries and regions within a number of those countries has argued that home own ership causes unemployment one explanation revolves around the reduced mobility of home owners relative to private renters owing to the costs of buying and selling homes subsequent and arguably more sophisticated micro econometric tests have placed doubt upon the alleged relationship coulson and fisher 2002 for the us find that unemployment duration is shorter for home owners relative to renters though neither is unobserved heterogeneity nor the endogenous nature of housing tenure accounted for van leuvensteijn and koning 2004 do account for the endogeneity of home ownership and find using dutch data that employed home owners are less likely to become unemployed relative to employed renters more recently munch et al 2006a using danish data find shorter unemployment spells amongst home owners compared to renters after controlling for the endogeneity of home ownership

multiproduct equilibrium price dispersion abstract the model of burdett and judd econometrica51 1993 955 969 is generalized to the case of may goods consumers choose the best price observed for each good there are two classes of equilibria those that involve constant expected profits for each good independently of price and those with increasing profits for each good in price a continuum of the latter type always exists these equilibria are qualitatively different than the unique equilibrium of the single good case journal of economic literature classification numbers d83 d43 l13

equilibrium pricing in a partial search market the shopbot paradox abstract price competition is explored when consumers costlessly learn product prices but not ancillary fees and have greater disutility to paying these fees there is a unique symmetric nash equilibrium price between the competitive bertrand and monopoly diamond prices

fundamentals panics and bank distress during the depression we assemble bank level and other data for fed member banks to model determinants of bank failure fundamentals explain bank failure risk well the first two friedman schwartz crises are not associated with positive unexplained residual failure risk or increased importance of bank illiquidity for forecasting failure the third friedman schwartz crisis is more ambiguous but increased residual failure risk is small in the aggregate the final crisis early 1933 saw a large unexplained increase in bank failure risk local contagion and illiquidity may have played a role in pre 1933 bank failures even though those effects were not large in their aggregate impact

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

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

new estimates of climate demand evidence from location choice abstract we develop and apply to census data a new method for estimating climate demand the method is useful for ranking quality of life based upon a willingness to pay criterion our two major findings are that the willingness to pay quality of life index is correlated with the hedonic approach s ranking but that the migration approach generates much larger estimates of willingness to pay for a more moderate climate this finding is relevant for evaluating the economic impact of global warming

the migration decisions of young men in great britain an analysis of migration in the united kingdom of males aged 16 to 24 is presented using data from the 1979 european commission labour force survey the author constructs a disaggregate choice model that incorporates spatial aspects of migration decision making the results indicate that migration decisions of young men are significantly affected by family circumstances housing tenure educational attainment labor force status and occupation distinct differences are noted between migration patterns of economically active job changers other economically active young men and those out of work

do countries compete over corporate tax rates this paper tests whether oecd countries compete with each other over corporate taxes in order to attract investment we develop two models with firm mobility countries compete only over the statutory tax rate or the effective average tax rate while with capital mobility countries compete only over the effective marginal tax rate we estimate the parameters of reaction functions using data from 21 countries between 1983 99 we find evidence that countries compete over all three measures but particularly over the statutory tax rate and the effective average tax rate this is consistent with a belief amongst governments that location choices by multinational firms are discrete we also find evidence of concave reaction functions consistent with the model outlined in the paper

residential mobility housing equity and the labour market henley a g 1998 residential mobility housing equity and the labour market economic journal 108 447 414 427

who leaves deciphering immigrant self selection from a developing country abstract using a novel data set from a developing country the federated states of micronesia fsm i analyze an emigration flow to the united states that has no legal barriers to entry and contains detailed information on the immigrant at home and in the united states i find that highly educated workers relative to the home country average have the highest likelihood of migrating from the fsm to the united states i also compare the premigration wages for the migrants and an observationally equivalent matched nonmigrant group and find that there is a positive and statistically significant difference between the two groups indicating that immigrants are also positively selected on unobserved characteristics the observed selection is consistent with the relatively large differences in home country and destination skill prices at the highest skill levels information on the immigrants characteristics before migration is central to my analysis of determining the nature of immigrant self selection on

bank asset liquidation and the propagation of the u s great depression we hypothesize that financial disintermediation during and after the great depression arose from the slow liquidation of failed bank deposits empirical results from incorporating the stock of failed national bank deposits for the period 1921 40 in vector autoregression var models suggest that the stock of deposits in closed banks undergoing liquidation is as important as money stock in terms of explaining output changes over forecast horizons from one to three years hence we infer that the dynamic effects of banking sector shocks were cumulative and pervasive during and after the depression

local labor markets job matching and urban location we present a new way of modeling local labor markets by linking the space of workers skills and the physical space of cities the key lesson of our analysis is that firms exploit workers in these two spaces by setting wages that are below the competitive level the degree of monopsony power depends on the elasticity of the firm s labor pool which is inversely related to the costs workers incur in commuting and acquiring skills our analysis thus shows how socioeconomic ghettos emerge as workers with poor skill matches are also those who incur the highest commuting costs

the displacement and multiplier effects of regional selective assistance a computable general equilibrium analysis this paper uses a hybrid approach to simulate the effects of regional selective assistance rsa for scotland this combines industrial survey estimation of the direct impacts and computable general equilibrium cge modelling of the system wide effects the results are compared to those derived using the method currently adopted in official evaluation studies of rsa and other regional regeneration policy instruments the cge approach captures capacity labour market displacement and migration effects ignored in existing studies simulation identifies the conditions under which these effects are likely to be quantitatively important a partir d une facon hybride cet article cherche a simuler pour l ecosse l impact des primes regionales une estimation des effets directs a partir d une enquete aupres de l industrie se voit allier a la modelisation des effets generalises par une analyse d equilibre general sur ordinateur on compare les resultats a ceux qui proviennent des methodes employees actuellement

search costs and corporate income tax competition abstract if a small cost applies for learning the corporate tax rules in different countries this can completely eliminate tax competition this modified version of the diamond paradox and can also explain the empirically observed tax cuts cum base broadening

information gatekeepers on the internet and the competitiveness of homogeneous product markets we examine the equilibrium interaction between a market for price information controlled by a gatekeeper and the homogenous product market it serves the gatekeeper charges fees to firms that advertise prices on its internet site and to consumers who access the list of advertised prices gatekeeper profits are maximized in an equilibrium where a the product market exhibits price dispersion b access fees are sufficiently low that all consumers subscribe c advertising fees exceed socially optimal levels thus inducing partial firm participation and d advertised prices are below unadvertised prices introducing the market for information has ambiguous social welfare effects

posting multiple prices to reduce the effectiveness of consumer price search in a model of competition with imperfect consumer price information and incomplete price search some consumers may end up comparing prices originating from the same supplier either because one firm sets multiple prices or because a group of firms colludes this leads to added monopoly power for these firms and average prices in the mixed strategy equilibrium become higher there is a shift in welfare from consumers to producers both with exogenous and endogenous consumer search behaviour however consumers might search more or less with multiple prices the implications for the price setting equilibrium competition policy and recent judgements are considered

a multi stream analysis of the changing pattern of interregional migration in great britain 1960 1991 gordon i and molho i 1998 a multi stream analysis of the changing pattern of interregional migration in great britain 1960 1991 reg studies 32 309 323 this paper uses a combination of spatial and econometric modelling techniques to investigate longer term patterns and processes of change in british interregional migration starting from a distinction between an employment oriented national movement stream and a housing and environment related regional stream the two major influences on the longer distance flows are found to be relative rates of employment growth and perceived environmental quality but while the former induces marked fluctuations within the observation period the influence of the latter factor shows little variation with no sign of a clean break there is however evidence of a sharply reduced responsiveness of migration to unemployment differentials since the mid 1970s gordon i et molho i 1998 une analyse a flux multiples de l evolution de la distribution de la mi

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