Migration Responses to Regional Labor Market Conditions in Slovakia
Migration Responses to Regional Labor Market Conditions in Slovakia

Summary/Abstract: Migration is expected to play an important role in establishing labor market equilibrium as implied by the neoclassical regional growth model. The economy in Slovakia has experienced a series of major interventions, potentially accompanied by regional adjustment processes: the post-socialist transition from a planned to an emerging market economy, partial separation from the Czech economy, and integration into the global economy on the basis of European Union membership and resultant investments. The core-periphery structure of the national labor market is expected to affect relocation decisions of households, and vice versa, migrants are expected to modify regional labor markets based on the origin and destination of their moves. This paper examines the migration response based on varying regional economic conditions. The spatial panel modeling framework is used to verify the existence of effects from unemployment rates and the level of employees' wages. These levels and lagged first differences between one and ten years suggest a complex chronological response in the size and significance of the effects, differentiating between early and late responses within and between regions.

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