Examining the Role of Economic Opportunity and Amenities in Explaining Population Redistribution

This paper develops a model of migration integrating equilibrium and disequilibrium components in which individuals and firms form rational expectations about future opportunities. Levels of migration are derived as functions of variations in factors influencing migrant labor demand ("economic opportunity") and migrant labor supply ("residential amenities"). The model is used to estimate the extent to which migration in the United States over the period 1950-1980 is determined by these two classes of exogenous factors.