Abstract
A regional owner-occupier housing market model that sees in-migration as demand and out-migration as supply is constructed to examine the interdependency between house price and gross migration. A pooled cross-section time-series analysis of British regions 1986-1998 revealed that in-migration raises regional house price and out-migration lowers house price, while a rise in house price encourages out-migration and discourages in-migration. Therefore in-migration indirectly induces out-migration and vice-versa, via house price changes. The estimates suggest that house price change is responsible for one-fifth of 'migration turnover'. Controlling for house price rise associated with increased regional labour market advantages, a higher wage attracts labour with the elasticity as large as 3.0. Regional disparities in unemployment and job vacancies were found to be insignificant in encouraging labour mobility, but unemployment reduces inflow and vacancies reduce outflow. While the interdependency of house price and migration limits net-migration because house price rises following an increase in labour demand, it also enhances 'migration turnover' by creating incentives to homeowners to move. The paper discusses that the 'migration turnover' would reduce spatial qualitative mismatch between labour demand and supply through selective migration.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 81-124 |
| Number of pages | 44 |
| Journal | Science Reports of the Tohoku University, Series 7: Geography |
| Volume | 51 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| Publication status | Published - 2002 Mar 1 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Great Britain
- House price
- Inter-regional labour migration
- Labour market
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Earth and Planetary Sciences(all)
