Timo Mitze (p)

This work quantifies the effect of variations in local labour market conditions on regional net in-migration rates in the EU-27 during the global economic crisis. Reduced-form and IV regressions for NUTS2 and NUTS3 regions in the period 2000-2012 are carried out with emphasis on cross-sectional correlation, dynamic adjustments and endogeneity. The empirical results particularly point at a significant link between variations in regional net in-migration rates and local labour market conditions in the post-crisis period after 2007. In comparison, the local labour market context is of less importance in determining regional migration rates in the early 2000s. This result holds for reduced-form and structural IV regressions. With regard to the economic significance of the identified effects, the results from an Oaxaca-Blinder type decomposition exercise show that variations in labour market conditions only account for roughly 11% of the total migration response of NUTS3 regions in the pre-crisis period, while the explanatory power of included labour market variables increases to 32% in the post-crisis period. At the NUTS2 level, the labour market context of variations in the net in-migration rate even accounts for up to 40-50% in the post-crisis period. Moreover, decomposing the predicted changes in regional net in-migration rates between the pre- and post-crisis periods shows that for several variables the estimated effect is mainly attributable to amplified local labour market disparities (endowment effect). However, for some variables, such as the population density and components of the unemployment rate, also adjustments in the behavioural migration response can be observed.

Sierdjan Koster (p)

Ongoing automatization processes may render a fair share of existing jobs redundant. Frey and Osborne (2017) predict that 47% of all American jobs are vulnerable to automatization, while Arntz et al. (2016) arrive at a more conservative estimate of 9% job loss in OECD-countries. Regardless the exact magnitude, a significant group of employees is affected by automatization.

This begs the question to what extent employees affected invest in their labour market position to possibly improve it. Also, there may be regional regimes in the exposure to automatization and in the opportunities to cope with its challenges. The regional dimension is particularly salient given increased decentralization of welfare policies. Using information from the European Labour Force Survey, this study addresses both issues.

The tentative results show that employees in jobs vulnerable to automatization invest relatively little in human capital. Also, they are likely to have recently changed jobs, often arriving in a sector more vulnerable to automatization than their previous sector of employment. Finally, they are unlikely to migrate which limits labour market opportunities. These effects are all robust to a set of relevant variables that control for group composition. Overall, the results suggest that polarization driven by automatization is not just visible in income but also in underlying mechanisms, i.e. investments in the labour market career. The preliminary results from the regional analysis show a North-West versus South-East divide with affected employees in the North and West of Europe investing more in their labour market careers.

Jaakko Simonen (p), Rauli Svento, Santtu Karhinen, Philip McCann

Labour mobility between firms forms an important potential source of externalities. Yet, although the technological spillovers, possibilities for better matching and adjusting associated with local labour pool are often emphasised as one of the most important reasons for the agglomeration of firms, there actually exist very few empirical studies where labour mobility has been clearly linked to the spatial distribution of activities, especially over the industry life cycle. In this paper we analyse how regional features, e. g. regional amenities, industrial structures as well as individual characteristics of employees affect regional labour mobility along the industry life-cycles of high technology sector. In order to do this we employ panel data on the regional and industrial labour mobility of the Finnish high technology firms and regional economies on a period of 1988-2013. Our findings show that structure of the high technology sector as well as regional economic and amenity variables and individual characteristics of employees have an influence on the migration decisions of the high technology workers, although their roles vary in within-region and across-region mobility as well as at the different stages of the industry life-cycles.

Poema Isis de Souza (p), Andrea de Azevedo Melo

According to the World Health Organization, the increase in sedentary lifestyle is one of the major public health problems in the world. It can be responsible for the increase in the number of people with obesity, coronary diseases, and diabetes. Besides that, and because of that, a sedentary worker may have lower productivity and lower wages, as a consequence. On the other hand, Lechner (2015) highlights some of the benefits that the practice of sports and physical exercises have on increasing human capital, wage gains, and individual well-being. Therefore, this study aims to investigate whether regular exercise and sports practice, improve labor productivity, what result in higher wages in Brazil. To do so, it uses the definition of the World Health Organization (WHO, 2017), which considers sedentary a person who practices less than 150 minutes of physical activity per week. The database used comes from the National Household Sample Survey (PNAD/IBGE) for the year of 2015 and encompasses the entire Brazilian territory. In that year, 44.15% of the Brazilian population performed physical activities regularly. The method used to obtain the causal relationship between exercises/sports practices and individual salaries was the Propensity Score Matching (PSM). The PSM compares the treatment group (people who practice physical activities regularly) and the control group (sedentary people) with the same socioeconomic characteristics. We found that people who practice physical activities regularly earn 9.6% more than the sedentary ones.

Tobias Theys (p), Nick Deschacht, Stef Adriaenssens, Dieter Verhaest

Due to the use of special characters, see document uploaded as extended abstract for the required regular abstract (371 words).