Regional migration versus regional commuting : the identification of housing and employment flows

Abstract

This paper examines whether the impact of house prices and of labour market variables on migration differs as between contiguous and non-contiguous regions. We find that house price elasticites are increasingly in the length of common regional boundaries. We argue that this effect may be due to a residual movers between adjacent regions I.e. individuals who change house but not job. We also find that the response of migration to an improvement in relative employment opportunities across neighbouring regions is less than the response to comparable differences between non-contiguous regions. We argue that this effect is consistent with successful job-seekers commuting across regional boundaries (rather than moving home) and thus without being recorded as migrants