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Migration and the role of ‘farmers’ in a two‐region model
Author(s) -
Ikazaki Daisuke
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
regional science policy and practice
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.342
H-Index - 8
ISSN - 1757-7802
DOI - 10.1111/rsp3.12119
Subject(s) - redistribution (election) , population , government (linguistics) , economics , distribution (mathematics) , voting , labour economics , income distribution , politics , transfer payment , rural area , development economics , market economy , political science , welfare , sociology , mathematical analysis , linguistics , philosophy , demography , mathematics , law , inequality
As described herein, we integrate problems related to political problems (especially, lobbying activities) into the model of regional economics with migration. The model has two regions (countries) and labour of two types (skilled and unskilled) in the economy. We assume that unskilled workers make an interest group in an attempt to affect local government policies. From the perspective of the (local) government, unskilled labour tends to become a powerful voting block because skilled labour might migrate to other regions. Unskilled workers have no choice but ‘silence’ in many previous studies related to new economic geography. However, we assume that they have another choice of “voice.” We specifically examine a case with two asymmetric cities. Lobbying activities that alter the income distribution within a region are more active in the rural area. This activity induces the migration of skilled workers in a rural area because the local government area usurps some of their income in the name of income redistribution policies: lobbying activities cause a population drain and regional population gap will widen. Results also show that such a population drain might reduce the utility of unskilled workers, although they form an interest group to increase their benefit.