Life-cycle position and migration to urban and rural areas: estimations of a mixed logit model on French data

Migration flows between urban and rural areas in developed countries show a strong difference in migration destinations with regard to age. Our paper analyses, in the French case, who rural areas attract or repel and what their so-called “pull-factors” are. Our goal is to explain the propensity to migrate and the destination choice among four categories of area (urban centres, suburbs, rural areas under urban influence, rural LMAs), for three age groups. Mixed logit models, that do not rely on the IIA assumption and allow for heterogeneity in individual behaviours are estimated on a large French sample. The results show that the educational level of young people and the labour market characteristics of their initial residential area particularly influence their destination choices. The labour market variables have little influence on the migration decisions of the middle-aged, for whom residential motivations appear to be predominant. The migration decisions of 45-64 years old are clearly residentially motivated changes.life-cycle; migration; mixed logit models; urban and rural areas

Housing Prices and Inter-urban Migration

Understanding the causes and consequences of human migration has long been of interest to urban and regional economists. Empirical studies build on the theoretical results of Roback (1982) and Mueser and Graves (1995) by estimating the effects of wages, housing prices, and amenities on inter-area migration. Findings with respect to amenities are clear (e.g., Rappaport 2007), and household-level studies consistently find that relative wages or incomes increase the probability that a household will select a given location (e.g., Berger and Blomquist 1992). In contrast, the results for housing prices are inconclusive. Studies that include area-level measures (e.g., median housing price for a metropolitan area) find a mix of negative, positive, and insignificant effects on inter-area migration decisions (e.g., Hunt and Mueller 2004). Many migration studies exclude housing price measures. This paper investigates the role of housing prices in influencing inter-urban household migration decisions. An important contribution of the study is the development of a new method for representing housing prices in migration analyses. Following the approach commonly used to model wages in studies of household migration, we identify the form of the utility function for which individual-specific housing prices can be predicted for unselected areas as a function of individual characteristics. Our theoretical results guide the development of an empirical measure of housing costs that accounts for the decision to own or rent and the cost of holding housing capital. We test our housing cost measure using the 2000 PUMS to identify point-to-point migration decisions for a large sample of college-educated males residing in 291 U.S. metropolitan areas. We estimate conditional logit models of metropolitan area choice, controlling for wages, a large range of amenities, and expected housing costs. Our key finding is that our proposed housing cost measure yields the expected results (higher housing prices reduce the probability that an area is selected), which is robust to alternative specifications and samples. We re-estimate our model using three alternative metropolitan area measures of housing costs: median house price, average apartment rent, and average urban land rent. We find that these measures consistently yield counterintuitive results.

Does fiscal coopération increase local tax rates in urban areas?

The main purpose of this paper is to assess the effects of fiscal cooperation on local taxation in a decentralized country, using the French experience in urban municipalities. We estimate a model of tax setting for local business tax using spatial and dynamic econometric techniques, for the period 1993-2003 and an unbalanced data set. As predicted by the theory, we find that reducing the number of municipalities is likely to limit tax competition and, as a consequence, increase local business tax rates

Les ruraux en 1999 : qui sont-ils et d'où viennent-ils ?

L'évolution démographique des espaces à dominante rurale n'est plus négative depuis la fin des années 70 et cette évolution favorable s'est amplifiée au cours des 30 dernières années. Elle est le résultat d'un solde migratoire positif, qui vient plus que compenser le déficit naturel de ces espaces. A contrario, c'est un bilan naturel positif qui permet aux pôles urbains de conserver une évolution démographique positive, alors que les départs de ces espaces sont supérieurs aux arrivées. Dans les espaces ruraux, le déficit naturel, conjugué avec des flux migratoires croisés non aléatoires (départ des jeunes qualifiés et arrivée des retraités), conduit à une sur-représentation des personnes âgées et des ouvriers.

Les enjeux de la fiscalité locale : des collectivités rurales prises entre interactions fiscales et forces d’agglomération

Les disparités d’imposition entre collectivités territoriales ont longtemps été expliquées par les seules caractéristiques spécifiques à chacune des collectivités. On doit cependant considérer que les choix fiscaux des collectivités sont également guidés par des relations de concurrence ou de coopération qui se nouent entre elles. En s’appuyant ici sur une analyse de la fiscalité adoptée par les établissements publics de coopération intercommunale à taxe professionnelle unique, on montre qu’il y a bien en France des interactions fiscales entre groupements intercommunaux. Le choix d’un taux de taxe d’une collectivité influence ainsi les choix des collectivités environnantes. Par ailleurs, les espaces urbains bénéficient d’une rente d’agglomération imposable. Les entreprises implantées en ville consentent à y supporter un coût fiscal supérieur, tant que celui-ci est compensé par les avantages à l’agglomération liés à la concentration d’activités privées. Les collectivités urbaines et rurales ne disposent donc pas de la même marge de manoeuvre en termes de fiscalité locale. Les collectivités territoriales rurales ne peuvent se permettre d’augmenter leur taux d’imposition sans voir fuir leur base.

Municipal Cooperation and Local Direct Taxation

The main determinant of all forms of local taxation in France between 1993 and 2006 was the cooperation between municipalities (communes) known as intercommunality. First, a municipalitys membership in a Public Intermunicipal Cooperation Body (Établissement Public de Coopération Intercommunale: EPCI) tends to increase the rates of the four local direct taxes relative to a municipality that does not belong to such a group. Second, the rates are structurally higher in EPCIs that have adopted a single business tax and a supplementary local tax on households (fiscalité mixte). Third local taxation rates tend to rise structurally with municipality size, then decline in the largest cities. We obtained these results with a structural-residual analysis of taxation levels for the four local direct taxes in municipalities according to their membership in various categories of intermunicipal groupings, their population size, their degree of rurality, and their type of living area (bassin de vie).Fiscal Policies, Local Taxation, Municipal Cooperation

Life-cycle position and migration to urban and rural areas: estimations of a mixed logit model on French data

Working Paper du GATE 2004-03Migration flows between urban and rural areas in developed countries show a strong difference in migration destinations with regard to age. Our paper analyses, in the French case, who rural areas attract or repel and what their so-called “pull-factors” are. Our goal is to explain the propensity to migrate and the destination choice among four categories of area (urban centres, suburbs, rural areas under urban influence, rural LMAs), for three age groups. Mixed logit models, that do not rely on the IIA assumption and allow for heterogeneity in individual behaviours are estimated on a large French sample. The results show that the educational level of young people and the labour market characteristics of their initial residential area particularly influence their destination choices. The labour market variables have little influence on the migration decisions of the middle-aged, for whom residential motivations appear to be predominant. The migration decisions of 45-64 years old are clearly residentially motivated changes

Neural correlates of generation and inhibition of verbal association patterns in mood disorders

Objectives: Thought disorders such as rumination or flight of ideas are frequent in patients with mood disorders, and not systematically linked to mood state. These symptoms point to anomalies in cognitive processes mediating the generation and control of thoughts; for example, associative thinking and inhibition. However, their neural substrates are not known. Method: To obtain an ecological measure of neural processes underlying the generation and suppression of spontaneous thoughts, we designed a free word association task during fMRI allowing us to explore verbal associative patterns in patients with mood disorders and matched controls. Participants were presented with emotionally negative, positive or neutral words, and asked to produce two words either related or unrelated to these stimuli. Results: Relative to controls, patients produced a reverse pattern of answer typicality for the related vs unrelated conditions. Controls activated larger semantic and executive control networks, as well as basal ganglia, precuneus and middle frontal gyrus. Unlike controls, patients activated fusiform gyrus, parahippocampal gyrus and medial prefrontal cortex for emotional stimuli. Conclusions: Mood disorder patients are impaired in automated associative processes, but prone to produce more unique/personal associations through activation of memory and self-related area

Différenciation spatiale des dépenses communales en matière d’équipements publics

Cet article propose d’apporter des éclairages sur les raisons pour lesquelles les dépenses d’équipements publics par ha­bitant sont plus élevées dans les communes rurales alors que les différences spatiales sur les montants des recettes par habitant sont relativement plus faibles. Nous mettons en évidence, grâce à une analyse structurelle-géographique, que l’explication de ces différences ne réside pas dans la coopération intercommunale et que l’existence d’éco­nomies d’échelle est insuffisante mais résulte plutôt des différences spatiales dans les modes de gestion des finances communales.This paper studies why spending in public capital at mu­nicipality level is higher in rural areas than in urban areas while spatial difference in municipalities revenue is low. A shift and share analysis shows that the reasons are less related to scale economies in production of public goods or inter jurisdictional cooperation than to specific rural public finance management

Housing Prices and Inter-urban Migration

Economic theory predicts that individual migration decisions for working-age adults will depend on area differences in wages, housing costs, and amenities. While the importance of wages and amenities is well-established from previous empirical studies, evidence regarding housing costs is far less conclusive. We develop and test a new method for representing housing prices in migration analyses. We first provide conditions under which utility-maximizing housing costs can be specified as a function of individual characteristics, similar to a Mincerian wage equation. Using large samples of individuals from the 2000 PUMS, we estimate the relationship between housing costs and individual attributes for each of 291 metropolitan areas in the U.S. Our approach accounts for rental and ownership decisions, the costs of rental and owned properties, and the costs of holding housing capital. We test our housing cost measure using observations of point-to-point migration decisions for a large sample of college-educated males. Our migration model includes additional controls for the wage each individual expects to earn in each area as well as a large set of area amenities. Our key finding is that our proposed housing cost measure yields the expected results (higher housing prices reduce the probability that an area is selected). We re-estimate the model using three alternative metropolitan area measures of housing costs: median house price, average apartment rent, and average urban land rent. These measures consistently produce counterintuitive positive effects of housing costs on area choice.This is an author's peer-reviewed final manuscript, as accepted by the publisher. The published article is copyrighted by Elsevier and can be found at: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/regional-science-and-urban-economics/.Keywords: Housing Supply and Markets, Regional Labor Markets, Regional Migration, Neighborhood Characteristics, Populatio