Bastian Heider (p), Peter Stroms, Timo Friedel Mitze, Stefan Siedentop

Nicola Pontarollo

This paper analyses the impact of immigration on the mobility of native citizens in Germany. Immigration to Germany has increased significantly over the last few years, driven in particular by a large and sudden influx of refugees during the so-called European refugee crisis. We make use of the quasi-experimental nature of this sudden influx to investigate its causal effect on internal migration decisions of native citizens, applying an instrumental variable (IV) estimation strategy that isolates the supply-side effects of refugee immigration through historical information on the spatial distribution of ethnic population groups across German NUTS3 regions. These effects are expected to act as a pull factor for new immigration inflows into these regions. We find that higher refugee immigration into a region leads to a significant decrease in the internal net migration rate of native citizens. Regarding the mechanism of this substitution effect, our IV estimates provide evidence that it is mainly driven by native “flight” rather than “avoidance”, with the observed effect varying greatly across age groups.

Chiara Castelli, Marta Castellini, Nicola Comincioli, Nicola Pontarollo (p)

Bastian Heider

Commuting is part of many people’s daily labour life and affects their working decisions both at short as well as at long term. Its “geography” varies across cities, regions and at cross regional level, with different dynamics and implications. By studying data from 194 regions in Europe from 2007 to 2017, the aim of this study is to provide insights on the socio-economic drivers of commuting between regions and contribute to current research with a comprehensive spatial analysis at European level. The results of a Spatial Lags of X model (SLX) used in a panel context, selected via a Bayesian comparison approach, show that: i) highly educated individuals are more keen to commute in search for rewarding job opportunities; ii) knowledge sector is an attractor for outer-region workers and relatively an effective retaining factor of the local labour force; iii) the relative lack of job opportunities in the origin region as well as the quality of the transportation system in both residence and workplace locations have positive effects on regional commuting outflows. These outcomes provide evidence on the socioeconomic drivers affecting mobility before the pandemic, which can support decision makers in the design of recovery measures.