Interregional Labor Migration and Information Flows

Abstract

Interregional labor migration occurs in response to the stress existing between a worker's existing condition and the expected condition perceived to exist in an alternative region. These perceptions are formed from information received through various channels. Three channels are examined: interpersonal communication, general source information, and specific source information targeted at unemployed workers. In this process, trajectories of welfare levels (composed of wage plus nonwage benefits), information flows, vacancy and unemployment levels are generated for different worker and job types, regional aggregates, and the system as a whole. The behavior of the model is examined by means of numerical simulations and sensitivity analyses.

Migration Regions and Interstate Labor Flows by Occupation in the United States

“…The analysis uncovered distinctions in the size and delineation of these labor markets between industrial sectors and within occupational groups which require further investigation. A fruitful avenue of future investigation would be to focus on the effect of job information flows (Amrhein 1985) and the distribution of job opportunities on the regional structure and size of labor markets.…”

Theories of Migration: A Review

“…The spatial structure of information networks is potentially quite complex, and various mechanisms for the dissemination of information may be identified. These range from the famous ‘friends and relatives effects’ advanced by Greenwood (), to many forms of impersonal communication such as advertising in national and local press, labelled by Amrhein () as ‘source information’. Different motives for moving often involves specialised information sources, e.g.…”

Rational versus Heuristic Decision Making during Residential Search

“…The more common strategy in modeling to cope with this potential "irrational-ity" of decision making has been to identify the constraining individual, social, and/or structural factors, and then to incorporate them as constraints of a utility maximization decision-making process (e.g., Amrhein 1985Amrhein , 1986; Clark and Whiteman 1983;Huff 1986;Miron 1978; Phipps, Carter, and Andreas 1985; Smith et al 1979; Smith and Mertz 1980). These constraints notwithstanding, the premise of simple rationality is retained: the decision maker has well-defined objectives to be optimized and stable preferences and beliefs that are not transformed or biased by hidher interaction with the decision environment.…”