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This paper estimates a lifecycle model of consumption, housing choice, and migration in the presence of aggregate and regional shocks, using the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). The model delivers structural estimates of moving costs by ownership status, age, and family size that complement the previous literature. Using the model, I first show that migration elasticities vary substantially between renters and owners, and I estimate the consumption value of having the option to migrate across regions when there are regional shocks. This value is19%of lifetime consumption on average, and it varies substantially with household type.

We study whether women and men cope with job loss differently. We use 2006-2017 Dutch administrative monthly microdata and a quasi-experimental design involving job displacement because of firm bankruptcy. We find that displaced women are more likely than displaced men to take up a flexible job with limited working hours and short commutes. However, displaced women experience longer unemployment durations and comparable hourly wage losses. Displaced expectant mothers experience relatively high losses in employment and working hours. Our findings suggest that the costs of job flexibility for displaced female workers come through longer unemployment instead of higher losses in wages.

More than a decade ago Oswald has formulated the thesis that homeownership increases unemployment. Empirical research on micro data has confirmed that unemployed homeowners are less inclined to move house in combination with accepting a new job elsewhere. However, in general for European countries, residential mobility associated with unemployment spells appears to be too small to be able to have a substantial impact on labour market outcomes. The present paper aims to make a new contribution to the scientific debate on Oswald’s thesis by addressing two complementary issues: risk attitudes of job seekers and commuting costs. We show that decreasing absolute risk aversion implies that the exit rate from unemployment is increasing in housing cost in the context of a standard job search model. In a spatial setting this is shown to imply that higher housing costs increase average commuting distances as well. We test these predictions on Dutch register data. Our empirical results show that outright homeowners have lower exit rates from unemployment than renters and are more reluctant to accept long commutes, which confirms Oswald’s thesis. However, highly leveraged homeowners have higher exit rates than renters and are more inclined to accept longer commutes, which confirms earlier findings in the literature.

We investigate how emigration flows from a developing region are affected by xenophobic violence at destination. Our empirical analysis is based on a unique survey among more than 1000 households, collected in Mozambique in summer 2008, a few months after a series of xenophobic attacks in South Africa killed dozens and displaced thousands of immigrants from neighbouring countries. We estimate migration intentions of Mozambicans before and after the attacks, controlling for the characteristics of households and previous migration behaviour. Using a placebo period, we show that other things equal, the migration intention of household heads decreases from 37% to 33%. The sensitivity of migration intentions to violence is larger for household heads with many children younger than 15 years, decreasing the migration intention by 11% points. Most importantly, the sensitivity of migration intentions is highest for those household heads with many young children whose families have no access to social networks. For these household heads, the intention falls by 15% points. Social networks provide insurance against the consequences young children suffer in case the household head would be harmed by xenophobic violence and consequently could not provide for the family.

This study examines the extent, duration and timing of employment breaks amongst a large representative sample of Jewish workers in Israel over the 13-year time period, 1983-1995. Work histories are constructed from a new joint database, unique in Israel, which was derived from a linkage of 1995 Population Census data with monthly employment records of the National Insurance Institute. The paper focuses on gender differences in work history patterns and, within each gender, breakdowns are provided by ethnic origin, marital status, age and education level. While most of the results are both expected and compatible with current economic theories of household behavior, some of the findings of the study are less expected, particularly those relating to the considerable amount of intermittent employment found amongst Israeli male workers. Also, women?s labor market attachment is stronger than is generally presumed. Gender differences in employment interruptions are greater for younger than older workers.

A search model of the labor market is augmented to include commuting time to work. The theory posits that wages are positively related to commute distance, by a factor itself depending negatively on the bargaining power of workers. Since not all combinations of distance and wages are accepted, there is non-random selection of accepted job offers. We build on these ingredients to explore in the data the relationship between wages and commute time. We find that neglecting to account for this selection will bias downward the wage impact of commuting, and marginally affect the coefficients on education, age and gender. The correlation between the residuals of the selectivity equation and the distance equation is -0.70, showing the large impact of commute time on job acceptance decisions. We also use the theory to calculate the bargaining power of workers which largely varies depending on demographic groups: it appears to be much larger for men than that for women and that the bargaining power of women with young children is essentially zero.

Interregional differentials in nominal wages in the Russian Federation are huge compared to other countries. Using the NOBUS micro-data and a methodology based on the estimation of the wage equation augmented by aggregate regional characteristics, we show that these differentials have a compensative nature. Russian workers receive wage compensations for living in regions with a higher price level and worse non-pecuniary characteristics, such as a relatively low life expectancy, a high level of air pollution, poor medical services and a colder climate. After adjusting for these regional characteristics, the relative ranking of regions in terms of average wages changes considerably. Moreover, regional nominal wages become positively correlated with interregional migration flows. According to our estimates, half of the interregional wage variation between workers with similar productive characteristics should be considered to be compensative. These results support the view that the best policy reaction to the current high interregional wage differentials should be the removal of migration barriers and a reduction in migration costs. In general, our results show that wage compensations for regional disamenities along with differences in employment composition are able to account for about three fourths of the observed interregional variation in wages.

The existence of compensating differentials in Russian labor and housing markets is examined using data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) augmented by city and regional-specific characteristics from other sources. While Russia is undergoing transition to a market economy, we find ample evidence that compensating differentials for location-specific amenities exist in the labor and housing markets. Our estimated wage and housing value equations suggest that workers are compensated for differences in climate, environmental conditions, ethnic conflicts, crime rates, and health conditions, after controlling for worker characteristics, occupation, industry, and economic conditions, and various housing characteristics. Moreover, we find evidence that these compensating differentials exist even after controlling for the regional pay differences (?regional coefficients?) used by the Russian government to compensate workers for living in regions that are designated as less desirable. We rank 953 Russian cities by quality of life as measured by a group of eleven amenities. Sizable variation in the estimated quality of life across cities exists. The highest ranked cities tend to be in relatively warm areas and areas in the western, European part of the country. In addition, our quality of life index is positively correlated with net migration into a region, suggesting workers are attracted to amenity-rich locations. Overall, we find that sufficient market equilibrium exists and a model of compensating differentials with controls for disequilibrium yields useful information about values of location-specific amenities and quality of life in this large transition economy.

This paper deals with the question of how the pressure of migration resulting from the unification of a rich and a poor country can be mitigated. The example of Germany is presented with a view toward potential lessons for a future Korean unification.