The determinants of East-West German migration

Burda, Michael C.

doi:10.1016/0014-2921(93)90034-8

Cited by 139 publications

(112 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…The latter is also confirmed in Brücker & Trübswetter (2004) focusing on the role of self-selection in East-West migration. In a continuation of Burda (1993), Burda et al (1998) also indicates a significant, however non-linear influence of household income. 4 When interpreting these findings one however has to bear in mind that the above cited studies exclusively use data until the mid/late-1990s, which in fact may bias the results w.r.t.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…2 Difficulties in proving a significant influ-ence of regional wage decreases on the migratory behavior within Germany are also found in earlier empirical studies based on micro-data which directly address the motivation for individual migratory behavior in Germany. Among these are Hatzius (1994) for West Germany, as well as Schwarze & Wagner (1992), Wagner (1992), Burda (1993) and Büchel & Schwarze (1994) for the East German states. 3 Opposed to the earlier evidence, recent macroeconomic studies assign a more prominent role to regional wage rate differentials in predicting German internal migration flows (see e.g.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Interne Migration, regionale Arbeitsmarktdynamik und Implikationen für Ost-West-Disparitäten: Ergebnisse auf Basis einer Panel VAR Analyse

Alecke¹,

Mitze

Untiedt

2010

Jahrb Reg wiss

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. The working papers published in the Series constitute work in progress circulated to stimulate discussion and critical comments. Views expressed represent exclusively the authors' own opinions and do not necessarily reflect those of the editors. We adopt a Panel VAR approach to identify the feedback effects among the variables and analyse the dynamic properties of the system through impulseresponse functions. We also use the model to track the evolution of the particular East-West migration since re-unification aiming to shed more light on the East German "empirical puzzle", characterized by lower migration responses than expected from the regional labour market position relative to the West. We indeed get evidence for such a puzzle throughout the mid-1990s, which is likely to be caused by huge West-East income transfers, a fast exogenously driven wage convergence and the possibility of East-West commuting. However, we also observe an inversion of this relationship for later periods: That is, along with a second wave of East-West movements around 2001 net flows out of East Germany were much higher than expected after controlling for its weak labour market and macroeconomic performance. Since this second wave is also accompanied by a gradual fading out of economic distortions, this supports the view of "repressed" migration flows for that period. Terms of use: Documents inJEL Classification: C33, J61, R23

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interne Migration, regionale Arbeitsmarktdynamik und Implikationen für Ost-West-Disparitäten: Ergebnisse auf Basis einer Panel VAR Analyse

Alecke¹,

Mitze

Untiedt

2010

Jahrb Reg wiss

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“…This …nding extends the role of self-selection problems to a dynamic setup, which so far have been highlighted in static frameworks (see for example Borjas, 1987 Finding more reasonable cost estimates parallels the results of the investment literature, in which much more reasonable estimates of adjustment costs were obtained when …xed adjustment costs to capital were included into dynamic models. For migration, the issue of …xed and sunk costs was emphasized in the real-options approach by Burda (1993) and Burda et al (1998). However, these papers only look at migration as a once and for all decision, so that they preclude return migration.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the dynamics of interstate migration: Migration costs and self-selection

Bayer

Juessen

2012

Review of Economic Dynamics

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This paper develops a tractable dynamic microeconomic model of migration decisions that is aggregated to describe the behavior of interregional migration. Our structural approach allows us to deal with dynamic self-selection problems that arise from the endogeneity of location choice and the persistency of migration incentives. Keeping track of the distribution of migration incentives over time has important consequences, because the dynamics of this distribution in ‡uences the estimation of structural parameters, such as migration costs. For US interstate migration, we obtain a cost estimate of somewhat less than one-half of an average annual household income. This is substantially less than the migration costs estimated by previous studies. We attribute this di¤erence to the treatment of the dynamic self-selection problem.

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“…The motivation for this approach is to test for the significance of the so-called East German empirical puzzle, where a relatively high degree of migratory interregional immobility was found to coexist with large regional labor market disparities. 10 The results in table 6 for the period 1996 to 2006 report a statistically significant positive East German dummy, which indicates higher net in-migration balances for the East German Spatial Planning Regions than their labor market performance would suggest. To get further insights we also estimate a specification which includes Federal state level fixed effects.…”

Section: Aggregate Findingsmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…Subsequent studies succeed in qualifying the theoretically unsatisfactory result of an insignificant wage influence: Schwarze (1996) shows that by using the expected wage variables instead of the actual ones, the wage drop between East German and West German states has a significant influence on the migratory behavior. 5 In a continuation of Burda (1993) (2003) augments the core migration model with regional wage and unemployment differentials as driving forces of interregional migration by various indicators such as regional housing costs, geographical distance and inequality measures. For the sample period 1993 to 1995, the authors find a significant non-linear relationship between disaggregated regional wage rate differences and East-West migration (of a U-shaped form for white-collar workers and of inverted U-form for blue-collar workers), while unemployment differences are tested be insignificant.…”

Section: What Does the Empirical Literature Say?mentioning

confidence: 99%