Commuting, Migration and Local Employment Elasticities

NBER Working Paper No. 21706

Issued in November 2015, Revised in November 2016

NBER Program(s):International Trade and Investment, Labor Studies



To understand the elasticity of employment to local labor demand shocks, we develop a quantitative general equilibrium model that incorporates spatial linkages in goods markets (trade) and factor markets (commuting and migration). We show that local employment elasticities differ substantially across U.S. counties and commuting zones in ways that are not well explained by standard empirical controls but are captured by commuting measures. We provide independent evidence for these predictions from million dollar plants and find that empirically-observed reductions in commuting costs generate welfare gains of around 3.3 percent and employment reallocations from -20 to 30 percent.

Acknowledgments

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Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w21706

Published: Ferdinando Monte & Stephen J. Redding & Esteban Rossi-Hansberg, 2018. "Commuting, Migration, and Local Employment Elasticities," American Economic Review, vol 108(12), pages 3855-3890. citation courtesy of

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