5 september: Introduction to the course
Theoretical definition of migration:
- More involving major change in daily activity space (area in which someone performs
daily activities, most important = work or education, differs by individual)
Development:
- Individual level
- Local and regional economic development
- National and global development
Ways of studying migration:
- Macro level: how flows affect size and composition of population
- Micro level: explaining occurrence of migration events in individual life courses,
identifying consequences
- Meso-level: explaining migration in context of households
7 september: Human capital; Equilibrium and disequilibrium
theories of migration. Convergence and Divergence
Do people follow jobs or do jobs follow people?
Storper and Scott argue that migration is driven by economic factors, and industrial
production geography
Partridge tested the theories of equilibrium and disequilibrium of migration by storper and
scott, and tested these in the USA, and tested whether people migrate for jobs or natural
amenities, like weather.
The same was done for china.
Disequilibrium model (neoclassical, but also Krugman, NEG): people move in reaction to the
availability of jobs
Spatial equilibrium (Glaeser and others): people move in reaction to the
availability of amenities, they go to nice places. → Suggest that places need to
have policies to attract high levels of human capital, they need to be nice places.
- Knowledgeable people are not evenly distributed in geographic space
- In a multi-region open economy with high levels of population mobility, the map of
human capital is constantly being reshaped by labor migration.
Main messages:
, - Human capital is increasingly important for the economic development of people,
cities, regions and countries. Attracting or having the right people is thus increasingly
important.
- This development leads to polarization on the labor market and geographical
clustering of economic activities.
- Divergence and convergence
New economic geography (NEG):
- Extension of neoclassical models (christaller, von thünen etc.)
- Appeal: agglomeration is part of the model
- Agglomeration economies: are positive externalities, which accrue to a localized
group. As such the location-specific economies of scale. Agglomeration economies
can more than compensate for increases in local factor prices.
The duelling models (partrige):
People maximize their utility: wages, rents, amenities and social contacts
Migration happens if Ud - Cod > Uo
Ud = expected place utility in the new place
Cod = cost of migration
Uo = expected place utility in the current place
Do Natural Amenities Become More Important? An Empirical Study on China’s Population
Growth:
, 12 september: Economic geography perspectives: equilibrium
and disequilibrium theories of migration; a geography of
happiness approach
Migration happens if: Expected place utility in the new place - cost of migration > expected
place utility in the current place
Building objective indicators for cities and regions:
- Natural amenities, climate and proximity to coasts for example
- Urban amenities, restaurants, parks and shopping choice for example
- Human-created amenities, cultural and lifestyle tolerance, crime levels, education for
example
- Compensating differentials frameworks
Carruthers and Mulligan said: three variables reflect the plane of living map: household
income, proportion of homes having radios and proportion of homes having telephone.
There is always an equilibrium, because happy people living in a great place will also have
to pay a high price, which reduces their happiness.
Difference between countries in happiness depends on the culture, humbleness, standards
(in society) and what they are used to, compared to others.
The metric of happiness may distort the extent of deprivation in a specific and biased way,
because it depends on what someone is used to, if you grew up in a life of misfortune and
very little opportunities, will more easily reconcile to deprivation that others who had more
fortune and affluent circumstances.
Factors and variables linked to subjective happiness:
› Age
› Education
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