Migration as an adjustment mechanism in the crisis? A comparison of Europe and the United States 2006–2016

We estimate whether migration can be an equilibrating force in the labour market by comparing pre-and post-crisis migration movements at the regional level in both Europe and the United States, and their association with asymmetric labour market shocks. Based on fixed-effects regressions using regio...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of population economics Vol. 32; no. 1; pp. 1 - 22
Main Authors Jauer, Julia, Liebig, Thomas, Martin, John P., Puhani, Patrick A.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Science + Business Media 01.01.2019
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Accession
Comparative studies
Crises
Demography
Economics
Economics and Finance
Employment
Labor Economics
Labor market
Markets
Migration
ORIGINAL PAPER
Panel data
Population changes
Population Economics
Social Policy
Unemployment
Upper bounds
United States > US
Europe
J61
Free mobility
United States
Migration
Europe
F22
Labour market adjustment
F15
Eurozone
Economic crisis
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Summary:We estimate whether migration can be an equilibrating force in the labour market by comparing pre-and post-crisis migration movements at the regional level in both Europe and the United States, and their association with asymmetric labour market shocks. Based on fixed-effects regressions using regional panel data, we find that Europe’s migratory response to unemployment shocks was almost identical to that recorded in the United States after the crisis. Our estimates suggest that, if all measured population changes in Europe were due to migration for employment purposes—i.e. an upper-bound estimate—up to about a quarter of the asymmetric labour market shock would be absorbed by migration within a year. However, in Europe and especially in the Eurozone, the reaction to a very large extent stems from migration of recent EU accession country citizens as well as of third-country nationals.
ISSN:0933-1433
1432-1475
DOI:10.1007/s00148-018-0716-x