Spillover Effects of Welfare Reforms in State Labor Markets

This paper estimates the effects of welfare reforms on a state's employment and wage rates. Welfare reforms include: pushing welfare recipients into the labor force, financial incentives to recipients for working, wage subsidies to employers of recipients, and community service jobs for recipients. The effects of these policies are analyzed using a newly estimated model of state labor markets. Simulations show that jobs found by welfare reform participants cause sizable displacement effects for nonparticipants. Displacement effects of labor supply policies are highest when a state's unemployment is high, whereas displacement effects of labor demand policies are highest when a state's unemployment is low.     

Land Markets in the Harris-Todaro Model: A New Factor Equilibrating Rural-Urban Migration

Recent research in the Harris-Todaro (HT) tradition has added an important new element to the model by incorporating an urban land market. Brueckner and Zenou (1999) (hereafter BZ) argue that a model where migration equalizes expected wages between city and countryside may overlook another important force that equilibrates the process of rural-urban migration. This force is the migration-induced rise in the urban cost of living, which occurs principally through escalation of urban land rents as the city population expands. Land-rent escalation, which tends to limit rural-urban migration, provides an important additional force that may help determine city sizes in developing countries. The present paper provides a simpler alternative to BZ's analysis by assuming that urban residents smooth their income as they cycle between formal and informal employment. This allows migration decisions to be based on the expected wage, as in the usual HT framework, in a model that includes a land market. The analysis shows that this modified framework generates results slightly different from those of BZ.     

Regional Labor Market Dynamics, Housing, and Migration

Abstract.  This study explores the impact of plant‐level labor market dynamics and housing markets on gross migration flows. The internal and the external reorganizations of regional labor markets are shown to be related. An increase in internal turnover of jobs and workers in regional labor markets is found to increase net‐migration. This effect arises mainly from a reduction in out‐migration. Housing markets constitute constraints for migration. In particular, an increase in regional housing prices and a large share of owner‐occupancy housing discourages net‐migration to a region by reducing in‐migration. In contrast, the out‐migration rate remains largely unaffected by housing markets.     

Undocumented Immigration and Host‐Country Welfare: Competition Across Segmented Labor Markets*

Abstract. In this paper's model, undocumented workers are endogenously sorted into secondary labor markets. When further illegal immigration occurs, some new migrants follow their fellows into already migrant‐dominated jobs, lowering migrant wages and raising real incomes of host‐country labor and capital. Some submarkets switch from employing legal workers to employing migrants, lowering demand for and wages of legal workers. Undocumented immigration is Pareto‐improving when enforcement reserves primary‐sector jobs for legal workers. Pareto‐dominant policies target the number of migrant‐dominated submarkets, not the number of migrants. This appears consistent with U.S. enforcement practices. The effects of deportations, employer sanctions, and amnesties are explored.     

Deriving Empirical Definitions of Spatial Labor Markets: The Roles of Competing Versus Complementary Growth

If economic growth elsewhere raises an individual's earning prospects relative to his present location, then the individual will move. However, if the individual can exploit economic growth elsewhere by commuting, he will not need to move to gain from the expansion. County-level data from eight states in the Midwest over the period 1969–1994 are used to show that local county population responds positively to own-county economic growth, economic growth in the adjacent county, and economic growth two counties away. The magnitude of the effect decreases as distance from the county increases, and turns negative beyond a three county radius.     

Analysis of Interregional Labor Migration in Spain Using Gross Flows

In this paper we study the economic determinants of Spanish interregional labor force flows from an aggregate perspective. The study is based on a matching model of the labor market applied to migration, and uses gross rather than net flows as other studies do. Among the main results, we find that unemployment increases out-migration because unemployed people search more actively, but when the unemployment rate is above a certain level this effect is reduced. We also find that the rate of change of relative wages is a significant determinant of migration in Spain.     

周庄古镇旅游劳工移民的存在主义分析

本文以海德格尔存在主义哲学为基础,探讨旅游劳工移民在周庄的存在原因、存在方式、存在意义及其转化.研究发现,地理空间邻近性、就业机遇和宏观经济背景是重要的存在前提,文化传统、亲人关系、乡缘关系是又一个存在原因.除了老板在场雇佣关系和老板缺场的雇佣关系之外,师徒雇佣关系、亲情雇佣关系、乡缘雇佣或合作关系、组织关系共同建构了旅游劳工移民在周庄的存在方式.商业价值是旅游劳工移民存在的最初意义,随着居住时间的渐长,部分旅游劳工移民已与周庄其他存在者建立了密切的朋友关系,更有一批人开始了深层次亲情制造和家的建构实践,形成强烈的地方认同和归属感,成为新的周庄人,存在意义由此从理性转向感性.     

Migration and Occupational Choice among Young Labor Force Entrants: A Human Capital Model

Interregional variations in the conditions for entering the labor force are investigated by analyzing interdependencies between migration behavior and occupational choice for young labor force entrants. The human capital framework indicates that occupational choice depends on the costs and returns associated with entering various occupations, and that interregional variation in these costs and returns is a major reason for migration. Occupational choice and migration behavior will be interdependent if the costs and returns for particular occupations vary over local labor markets, relative to other occupations, and patterns of interdependence between the two decisions are analyzed, using a model of the joint choice of occupation and location. An empirical analysis of occupational choices and migration behavior for young people who entered the U.S. labor force in the 1975–80 period indicates that the odds for entering professional or managerial occupations varied with origin and migration behavior in systematic ways.     

The $15 Wage Movement Moves South: Politics of Region in Labor Union Campaigns

The North American labor movement continues to wrestle with the challenges of organizing workers in the US South. This article explores the contradictory position of the South in the contemporary labor movement, using the circulation of the $15 minimum wage to ground the analysis. By problematizing the place of the South in US labor, this article contributes to efforts to complicate the geographic imaginaries of the South and to our understanding of the contemporary labor movement's expansionary projects. Drawing on qualitative interviews and participant observation in Greensboro and Durham, North Carolina, and Richmond, Virginia, I trace the abstract circulation of organizational resources, strategies, and tactics of the $15 wage movement into, throughout, and back out of the South.     

英国农村剩余劳动力转移问题的历史考察

英国农村剩余劳动力转移的方式历史悠久,英国政府在解决农业剩余劳动力转移的过程中,自觉或不自觉地采取了国家干预的做法,摸索出从惩罚、济民、移民,到“济身”、创造就业机会和福利国家的一套做法,成功地解决了英国农村剩余劳动力转移问题。在第二次世界大战后,为了进一步提高农业生产力,以适应经济全球化的发展,英国又主动积极地创造剩余劳动力,使他们向工业和其他非农业部门转移。尽管在实践中遇到不少困难,并且付出了极高的代价,但是英国较好地解决了农村劳动力向城市转移的问题,为经济的发展铺平了道路。     

Securing the Return: How Enhanced US Border Enforcement Fuels Cycles of Debt Migration

Expanded border enforcement has made unauthorised migration to the US more risky, costly, and prone to failure. Research on the material consequences of border enforcement for migrant‐sending households in Central America reveals that the economic hardships enforcement exacts on migrants at times diminishes enforcement's desired deterrent power. Heightened risks have driven up the cost of migration and pushed many to fund their trips through loans. Consequently, migrant detention, deportation, or death can result in poverty and privation for indebted households and the seizure of loan collateral, typically homes and land, in turn prompting crises in household reproduction. With a US wage the most viable means to ameliorate economic hardships, enforcement outcomes push some to return migration. Our findings suggest that US border enforcement efforts at times perpetuate the very unauthorised migration they seek to impede, while also helping to reproduce the border itself by deepening the marginalisation that drives migration decisions.