Why Do Firms Relocate? Lessons from a Regional Analysis

In recent years, the qualitative evolution of relocations (from low-cost offshoring to more technologically intensive relocations) has become a new concern in political debate. Focusing on these new trends, the aim of this paper is to better understand relocations from the firms’ point of view. The concept of relocation is reformulated by adopting a broad definition considering it as a specific dimension of firms’ mobility options. We consider three analytical dimensions: relocation as a productive problem (“relational space” for coordination), relocation in a territorial dimension (“geographical space”) and relocation as a complex decision-making process (“political space”). On this basis, we combine two strands of literature (economics of proximity and institutional approaches of the firm) for a better understanding of the decision-making process and the resulting diversity of situations. The framework is finally applied to the specific case of the Aquitaine region of southwest France in order to identify the conditions of anchoring and mobility of firms in spatial terms. Our aim is to show that the decision-making process of relocations cannot be reduced to a simple cost calculation, leaving room for local public policies.     

Residence and Workplace Relocation: A Bivariate Duration Model Approach

Different economic theories suggest that residential and labor market relocations are mutually related. This has been verified in various empirical studies. We analyze this relationship based on a bivariate duration model of residential and labor market mobility. This specification is motivated by a search model that allows for simultaneous search on the labor and housing market, taking commuting costs into account. We investigate this relationship by using information on job and residence durations. In order to be able to analyze properly empirical duration data, we derive the statistical distributions of interest. Our empirical results based on a Dutch sample of full-time employed workers show that residential and labor market mobility depend positively on one another, which is in line with the theoretical search model presented. Moreover, we present easy-to-interpret measures for this dependency.     

HOUSING CONSTRUCTION, VACANCY CHAINS, AND RESIDENTIAL MOBILITY IN WINDSOR

R esidential m obility is one of the most important forces underlying changes in the social composition and physical characteristics of urban areas (Rossi 1955, p. 2). Consequently, numerous studies on residential migration have been carried out in order to comprehend this process better and thereby aid in the assessment of migration theories and in the development of appropriate models. Mobility studies have examined the characteristics of outmigration areas and households, motivations to move, satisfaction achieved through relocation, and the impact of residential changes. However, as Maher (1974) points out, previous analyses are incomplete in that they tend to focus on the demand characteristics of residential relocation and to omit the supply side of the process, the available housing stock. This study attempts to rectify this omission by considering the provision of newly constructed single-family detached housing in Windsor and the resultant migration patterns and processes through vacancy chain analysis. The demand and supply concepts of residential mobility are examined with regard to the housing multiplier generated by different locations and values of new homes, the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of households at various positions in the turnover process, the reasons for moving, and the spatial patterns of residential moves originating from new housing. In addition, by focusing on a specific form of housing the study avoids problems which may arise from aggregate level analyses of households adjusting to new housing opportunities.     

Trends in the residential mobility of seniors in Canada, 1961–2006

This article examines residential mobility for seniors 65 years of age and older in Canada using census data from 1961–2006. We addressed three questions. First, have seniors been increasingly likely to change their residential location within Canada or alternatively become increasingly likely to age‐in‐place? Second, has the in‐migration of seniors to Canada from other countries become more pronounced over the years? Third, does the residential mobility of seniors vary by age and sex? We used census data to calculate the percentages of seniors who changed their residence in the five‐year periods prior to each of the 1961–2006 censuses and the percentages of seniors who moved in the previous year for the 1991–2006 censuses. We calculated the percentages of seniors making local moves, longer distance moves within the same province, moves from one province to another, and moves to Canada from another country. We found that rates of residential mobility for seniors tended to increase in the 1961–1981 period but have been lower and relatively consistent from 1986–2006. We found no evidence to suggest a pattern of sustained increase in residential mobility of seniors. We conclude that Canadian seniors tend to age‐in‐place and that when seniors do change residence, the likelihood of residential mobility decreases with the distance of the move and decreases with age. Nevertheless, the likelihood of changing residence may increase for seniors 75+ years of age who need assistance and are at risk of institutionalization. We found that senior women were more likely to change residence locally than senior men. Finally, we found that from 1961 to 2006 between 0.8 percent and 1.4 percent of seniors had migrated to Canada in the five years prior to each census from other countries and that this pattern has fluctuated over the past half century with no clear trend.     

REAL ESTATE SALESMEN AND RESIDENTIAL RELOCATION DECISIONS

A decade ago Simmons (1968) reviewed studies in "an important, but relatively neglected, aspect of migration, namely changes in residence that take place within a city." Since the appearance of Simmons' review intra-urban residential mobility has generated a burgeoning literature underpinned by the assumption that it is a significant mechanism contributing to the structuring of urban space. The literature focuses principally on residential relocation and its identification as a process rather than as a set of events to be explained. Central to the process orientation is the assumption that changes of residence are the expression of a set of decisions made by households. The major deficiency of the literature to date is its failure to specify an appropriate context within which to analyse such decisions.     

Methodological Considerations in the Analysis of Residential Mobility: A Test of Duration,State Dependence,and Associated Events

This paper provides evidence that a longitudinal research methodology is particularly well suited to disentangle life-course explanations of residential mobility while controlling for the duration-of-residence effect. Much of the literature on residential mobility has yielded conflicting evidence regarding the effects of cumulative inertia, cumulative stress, and duration dependence due in large part to different methodologies and different operational conceptions of the life cycle. I argue that the lack of analytical attention directed toward the concept of the risk period, as well as the persistent use of the household, rather than the individual, as the unit of analysis, further serve to confound our understanding of residential mobility. The empirical analysis uses the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and discrete-time logistic regression models to include duration dependence, state dependence, associated events and nonstationarity in models of residential mobility for both renters and owners. Using an event-oriented data structure that links household careers and housing careers, the study is conducted in three stages: (1) important tenure differences are established using comparative survival rates, (2) discrete-time logit models of the hazard of moving, that include duration dependence and state dependence, are fitted by tenure group, and (3) the models are extended to include a change in household type as an associated event that increases (or decreases) the likelihood of moving. The findings indicate the potential of event-history analysis to advance the field of residential mobility by providing a means to assess issues that once seemed intractable.     

广州城市内部居住迁移空间特征及其影响因素研究

居住迁移是家庭居住消费的空间调整过程,也是城市重构的基础动力,是西方地理学、规划学和社会学研究的主要内容。利用2001年和2005年在广州市进行的家庭住房问卷调查结果,文章分析了居住迁移空间特征、方向特征以及居住迁移方向的影响因素。分析结果显示,广州市居住迁移空间以就近迁移为主,在同一行政区范围内和邻近行政区间的迁移比重非常高,但从阶段演化来看,就近迁移有弱化趋势。迁移方向以老城区内和外围区内的迁移为主,其次为以老城区向外围区迁移。住房产权、家庭生命周期、家庭收入和迁移时间对居住迁移方向的影响显著,居住郊区化与住房自置率提高有关;单位房和房管局房建设是郊区化的主要动力之一。     

Mobility-driven cultural transmission along the forager-collector continuum

Hunter-gatherers mobility regimes are often treated as discrete adaptive strategies. Here we present a model of forager mobility which treats collectors and foragers as two ends of a continuous spectrum. We show that a mobility regime can be situated along this spectrum by specifying the number of foraging moves a group makes before returning to its home base. The model allows us to explore the behavioural space between forager (i.e. residential mobility) and collector (logistical mobility) adaptations. We discuss the heuristic value of the model by showing how it can be used to make testable predictions about the impact of mobility strategies on archaeological measures such as occupation intensity and raw-material transportation distance. We then use the model to investigate the impact of mobility on rates of cultural transmission. We show that mobility-driven cultural transmission may be equivalent to a Poisson process and that the time it takes for a cultural behaviour to be transmitted between two mobile groups is optimized when the mobility regime is somewhere between pure forager and pure collectors adaptations. In addition, we find that rates of cultural transmission decline in a very regular way, as the inverse of the square root of the number of moves made before returning to home base. This suggests that there is a mechanistic connection between the mean-squared displacement of hunter-gatherers in space and the transmission of cultural traits.     

城市内部居住迁移对居民自评健康的影响研究——以北京市为例

居住迁移对居民健康有重要影响.然而,一方面,目前对居住迁移的健康效应的研究仍然以国外研究为主,且偏重负面影响;另一方面,目前国内对居住迁移健康效应的研究大多基于截面数据,研究结论不够稳健.为此,本文基于北京市的一项追踪调查,分析居住迁移前后不同居民自评健康状况的变化,并利用定序逻辑斯特回归模型分析居住环境变化对居民自评...     

Oxygen Isotopes and Human Residential Mobility in Central Western Argentina

Stable oxygen isotopes (δ¹⁸O) from human bone apatite from central western Argentina (30º–37ºS latitude) were analysed to understand changes in human residential mobility during the Late Holocene. This region contains evidence for the use of domesticated plants over the last 2000 years (Zea mays, Cucurbita sp. and Phaseolus sp., among others), and previous models of prehistoric occupation have suggested a distinct change in mobility and population movement associated with their incorporation. The importance of these domesticates also seems to have varied geographically, being greater in the northern part of the region and declining as one moves south toward the limit with Patagonia. Expectations about patterns of residential mobility have varied accordingly. To better evaluate these models, we analysed carbonate δ¹⁸O from the bone apatite of 71 individuals with radiocarbon dates spanning the last 6000 years. Given the existing evidence, we expected to see temporal and geographic differences in their oxygen isotope values associated with changes in residential mobility and the incorporation of different sources of drinking water available within the region. These expectations were not met. Significant variations were seen across all samples compared, both temporal and geographic, with no discernible differences among them. The data suggest that populations throughout the area were all highly mobile, and that this did not change with the incorporation of domesticates. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mobility and Regional Economic Downturns

In this paper I show how higher unemployment in a region may reduce thepopulation's residential mobility within that region. A period of higher unemployment creates more uncertainty among individuals about future income and place of employment so those with significant moving costs are more likely to consider delaying a move. Periods of relatively higher unemployment may also be characterized by fewer new hirings and fewer job quits, both of which tend to dampen mobility. A multinomial logit analysis using Panel Study of Income Dynamics data is used to examine the effect of state unemployment rates on the decision to move.     

SPATIAL MOBILITY AND COMMUTING: THE CASE OF TWO‐EARNER HOUSEHOLDS*

ABSTRACT We examine the effects of the spatial configuration of workers' residence and workplace location on intraregional residential and job moving decisions of workers belonging to two‐earner households. We hypothesize that two‐earner households' residential mobility depends positively on the commuting distance of both spouses, but negatively on the distance between workplaces. Further, we hypothesize that workers' job mobility depends positively on the worker's commuting distance, negatively on the spouse's commuting distance, and positively on the distance between workplaces. Using data for Denmark, it appears that these hypotheses hold, and that the effects of the spatial configuration are rather large.     

Determinants of postdisplacement reemployment outcomes and occupation changes

We investigate the roles played by agglomeration (proxied by population density) and occupational distribution on postdisplacement employment outcomes for US workers, focusing on the probability of being employed, the likelihood of changing occupations, and the occupational distance between the old and new occupations (where occupational distance is defined as the difference in job tasks between two occupations). Overall, we find that the local occupational distribution has a greater impact on our outcome variables compared with our agglomeration measure. Our findings suggest policy makers should look closely at occupational distribution when designing job training programs and proposals for relocation vouchers.     

Spatial Moving Behavior of Two-Earner Households

Economic theory suggests that job choice, residential choice and commuting behavior are simultaneously determined. The case of two-earner households deserves special attention because the two wage earners share a dwelling but have different workplaces. We base our analysis of spatial moving behavior on search theory. We demonstrate that job mobility depends positively on the distance between the workplaces of the two wage earners. Residential mobility seems to be negatively influenced by the distance between the workplaces of the two wage earners. The search model also indicates that two-earner households will, on average, move less often than single wage earners.     

空心村村民居住生活空间特征及其优化重构——对河南邓州市8个村庄的调查

在空心村整治过程中,地方政府普遍重视通过土地整理和迁村并点实现用地集约,而忽视对村庄内部村民居住生活空间的优化。本文以邓州市桑庄镇8个村作为调研区域,对当地村民进行问卷调查和深度访谈,归纳出空心村背景下乡村居住生活空间的形态变化和利用模式,分析其反映出的乡村生活中的矛盾与问题,并在此基础上提出对乡村居住生活空间的重构思路,为空心村整治过程中乡村社区的重建与优化提供参考。     

The spatial dimension of internal labor markets

We integrate into a unified framework the spatial and the employment dimensions of worker mobility, tracing workers across firms, across establishments, and across regions. Drawing upon the spatial dimension of internal labor markets in firms with multiple establishments in multiple locations, our results indicate that the contemporaneous wage premium to migration is around 3 percentage points. For the case of job switchers, we find that the return to regional migration is due to access to better jobs at the destination. We also document the existence of an urban premium for same‐employer migrants but for employer changes this premium is driven by selection.     

Climate change and Zhou relocations in early Chinese history

In Chinese history, the development of the Zhou tribes and the dynasties that succeeded them between 3550 and 2200 BP in the middle reaches of the Yellow River is known as the period of ‘Five Relocations’. Most of these relocations appear to have been forced by the pressure of nomadic invasions and occupations from the northern steppe. Historians simply attributed these relocations to political and military causes. However, palaeoclimatic studies show that the Zhou tribes and their successor dynasties developed at the demise of the Holocene Climatic Optimum when regional climate became highly variable and unstable. An integrated analysis of environmental change over the Loess Plateau and the Mongolian steppe facilitates a credible understanding of the linkage between climatic events and these relocations. It indicates that the relocations caused an expansion or contraction of the settled regions over the drought-prone semi-arid lands. During climatic amelioration, dry farming societies pushed upward to the Loess Plateau where increased precipitation and soil moisture allowed cereals to be cultivated. When hit by droughts and the associated disasters, both the dry farming societies and the nomadic tribes had to move southward to find an environment suitable for their food production. Migration and relocation were, therefore, basic strategies to secure the resources necessary to sustain an agricultural economy. The settled frontier was pulled back as dry farming societies from the upland plateau retreated to the lowland riverbanks of the Guanzhong Basin. Even though there were political and military intentions, climatic events played an essential role in the relocations of the Zhou tribes and the successive dynasties.     

GEOGRAPHICAL MOBILITY OF DANISH DUAL‐EARNER COUPLES—THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CHANGE OF JOB AND CHANGE OF RESIDENCE*

ABSTRACT We analyze the relationship between geographical residence and job mobility for Danish dual‐earner couples. We estimate the probability of moving residence and changing job, taking the interdependence between the events into account. The results point to the importance of addressing the interrelationship between residence and jobs. Furthermore, the change of residence matter more than change of job and women respond relatively more to changes in their husbands’ job region. The findings imply that mobility promoting initiatives must focus on families rather than individuals and recognize that for most families the choice of residence location dominates the choice of job location.     

Migration in a segmented labour market

"Current research in migration is moving on from neo-classical and behavioural perspectives to a more structural approach relating to wider processes, issues of power and the particular role of employers. Within this programme a key issue for investigation is the interaction between spatial mobility and the structuring of labour markets. This paper focuses on the significance of labour market segmentation--in terms both of job stability and gender--for migration, both theoretically and through an empirical analysis of data from the UK Labour Force Survey on sponsored and unsponsored moves."     

Spatial Analysis of Employment and Population Density: The Case of the Agglomeration of Dijon 1999

The aim of this paper is to analyze the intraurban spatial distributions of population and employment in the agglomeration of Dijon (regional capital of Burgundy, France). We study whether this agglomeration has followed the general tendency of job decentralization observed in most urban areas or whether it is still characterized by a monocentric pattern. To that purpose, we use a sample of 136 observations at the communal and at the IRIS (infraurban statistical area) levels with 1999 census data and the employment database SIRENE (INSEE). First, we study the spatial pattern of total employment and employment density using exploratory spatial data analysis. Apart from the CBD, few IRIS are found to be statistically significant, a result contrasting with those found using standard methods of subcenter identification with employment cut‐offs. Next, in order to examine the spatial distribution of residential population density, we estimate and compare different specifications: exponential negative, spline‐exponential, and multicentric density functions. Moreover, spatial autocorrelation, spatial heterogeneity, and outliers are controlled for by using the appropriate maximum likelihood, generalized method of moments, and Bayesian spatial econometric techniques. Our results highlight again the monocentric character of the agglomeration of Dijon.