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Abstract:
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Employment flexibility is commonly associated to greater labour mobility and thus
faster cross-regional adjustments. The literature however offers very little hard
evidence on this and quite limited theoretical guidance. This paper examines
empirically the relationship between employment flexibility and cross-regional
adjustment (migration) at the regional and local levels in the UK. Employment
flexibility is associated to higher labour mobility (but only at a rather localised scale)
and at the same time seems to reduce the responsiveness of migration to
unemployment. This suggest that rising flexibility may be linked to higher persistence
in spatial disparities, as intra-regional adjustments are strengthened while extraregional
adjustments weakened.
Keywords: Employment flexibility, regional migration, labour market adjustment
JEL Codes: R11, R23, J08, J61 |