SÉMINAIRE DE RECHERCHE EN ÉCONOMIE - GATE LYON SAINT-ÉTIENNE : Alex Newnham

Alex Newnham (CERGIC), présentera un séminaire intitulé : Beyond Stickiness: Unravelling the Complexities of Worker Mobility and Occupational Switching.

Résumé / abstract  : I study how displaced workers make joint decisions about where to work and what occupation to pursue. Using French administrative employer-employee panel data from 2002 to 2018, I focus on workers who lost their jobs through mass layoffs to obtain exogenous variation in mobility decisions. I first document that mobility increases earnings compared to staying put; Yet 60 percent of displaced workers remain in their original location and occupation, which suggests that mobility costs must be substantial. Through the lens of a dynamic discrete choice model where decisions are nested, with workers first choosing a location and then selecting an occupation within that location, I estimate both geographical and occupational mobility costs. Geographical mobility costs are estimated to be substantial and larger than occupational mobility costs. Counterfactual simulations show that subsidising both types of mobility produces larger effects on worker reallocation and better returns than subsidising only one type. This suggests that policymakers would benefit from supporting both geographical and occupational transitions rather than focusing on one dimension alone.