Interregional Wage Disparities, Relocation Costs, and Labor Mobility in Canada
研究了加拿大地区间工资差异长期存在的原因，发现年轻、高学历、母语为英语的工人因信息更充分、搬迁成本更低，其地区间工资差异最小，表明工资差异变化部分源于人口结构变化。
This paper evaluates possible reasons why interregional wage differences might persist over long periods of time, such as a century or more. A general equilibrium model of interacting regions is developed which can consider explanations including interregional differences in production costs, changes in relocation (migration) costs, and differences in interregional transfer payments. Implications from the model are tested using panel microdata from the Canadian Labour Market Activity Surveys of 1989 and 1990. Key findings are that younger, better educated, native English‐speaking workers, who presumably have better information and lower mobility costs, appear to have the smallest interregional wage differences. Thus, because the extent of spatial wage dispersion varies across workers with different characteristics, changes in the pattern of spatial wage disparities over time may be in part a demographic phenomenon.