Author(s): Tyler Ransom
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This paper documents a new stylized fact about the United States labor market: internal migration rates are dramatically different across college majors. For some college majors, migration rates are even lower than those without a college degree. I relate major migration rates with majors' spatial concentration and find that a major's spatial concentration explains about one fourth of the cross-major variation in migration rates. With this descriptive evidence as a guide, I estimate a structural model of locational choice where college graduates have heterogeneous preferences---at the detailed major level---for living close to home, and for working in a location with a high concentration of their fellow majors. Using estimates of the structural model, I decompose the cross-major migration rates into supply and demand factors and find that supply factors (i.e. moving costs) explain the vast majority of differences in migration rates across majors. My findings underscore the difficulty in attracting college majors to a particular location using demand-side investments. My results also highlight the importance of place in determining the labor market outcomes of college majors.
Published: 2022-12-30 18:42:09 PT
Stage: Work-in-progress
Fields: Labor Economics, Education Economics, Urban Economics
Research Group(s): Playground, U of Oklahoma-Economics
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Versions: v1 (12/30/2022)