UNDERCOVER ECONOMIST: ON THE MOVE
In last weeks column, I fretted about the workers ofTreorchy,South Wales, who have lost their jobs as Burberrysshirt-makingplant is closing. Unfortunately, they are not alone.Any smallcommunity with a lot vested in a single industry isvulnerable toany number of shifts in the economic landscape,whether caused bydomestic or foreign competition, managementblunders ortechnological change.
Even big cities can struggle if they overspecialise. LiverpoolandManchester are examples. Birmingham, on the other hand, hasalwaysbeen a city bustling away making everything and nothinginparticular. As the late author Jane Jacobs once pointedout,Birmingham was thought highly inefficient compared withthespecialised mills of Manchester, but when the downturncameManchester was devastated and Birmingham kept onchuggingalong.
Looking to the US, one might ask why people still live inDetroit,which has suffered for so long? Why not move to Chicago orNew York?People originally moved to places such as Treorchybecause there wascoal to be mined. Now that the mines have closed- and the Burberryfactory, too - why do they stay?
One reason is that community ties matter. Many people like tostaynear where they were born. But many others would like to seeknewopportunities - even, dare I say it, new experiences. Myfathermoved the family to four different locations across Englandinpursuit of work. Ive also moved several times to find thecenterjob, and only occasionally regretted it.
But emotional ties are not the only ones that bind us. ThereareByzantine restrictions on cross-border migration. PhilippeLegrain,author of Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them, argues thatfreermigration would promote creative, economically robust cities.He iscenter. Even when we look only at internal migration, thebarriersare formidable. The British are a nation of home owners,apparentlyhappy to pay far more for the privilege of owning theirown housethan they would ever pay to rent one. Other nations,happier torent, see unemployment reduced as a result.
The economist Andrew Oswald has shown that acrossEuropeancountries, and across US states, high levels of homeownership arecorrelated with high levels of unemployment. Moreconventionalfactors such as generous welfare benefits or highlevels of tradeunionisation dont explain unemployment nearly aswell as thetendency to own houses.
Recent research in the Economic Journal by Jakob Munchandcolleagues suggests that people who own their own homes dofindjobs as quickly as those who are free to move, but do so partlybybeing less picky about which job to take, and by commutingfurther.So Professor Oswald is center to argue that we should doeverythingpossible to remove impediments to renting or to selling ahouse andbuying a new one. It would be handy if we were allowed tobuildhouses near London, too.
Even if we did all this, the US economists Ed Glaeser andJoeGyourko argue that one serious barrier remains: houses do notwalk.No matter how bad things get in Detroit or Treorchy, thehouseswill still be there, and if they are cheap enough people willwantto live in them. The likely result is a gloomy sort ofsegregation:those who feel that they can find a good job in the bigcities willmove there and pay the higher rents. Those who are lessconfidentof that would rather have no job in a cheap house than nojob in anexpensive house. Detroit will have residents for a longtime tocome.（接下页）
你愿意为工作而搬家吗？
在上一篇专栏中，我表达了对英国南威尔士特雷奥奇(Treorchy)工厂工人们的担忧。
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如果过于专业化，即使是大城市也会举步维艰。利物浦和曼彻斯特就是例证。而伯明翰则一直是一个忙于生产所有东西，但不精于任何产品的城市。正如已故作家简·雅各布斯(JaneJacobs)曾指出的，在人们的心目中，与曼彻斯特专业化的工厂相比，伯明翰的效率极为低下，但当经济低迷时，曼彻斯特几乎被摧毁，但伯明翰却能够维持。
看看美国的情况，人们可能会问，为何还有人住在底特律这个长期陷于困境的城市？他们为何不迁往芝加哥或纽约？人们最初迁往特雷奥奇等地，是因为那里有煤矿可供开采。既然现在这些煤矿——还有巴宝莉的工厂——已然关闭，那他们为何还要留在这里呢？
其中一个原因在于，社区关系很重要。许多人喜欢住在距离自己出生地比较近的地方。但还有很多人喜欢寻求新的机遇，甚至新的体验。为了追求事业，我父亲在英格兰各地搬了四次家。为了找到合适的工作，我也搬了好几次家，而且只是偶尔对此感到后悔。
然而，情感联系并非约束我们的唯一原因。各国对跨国移民有着严格的限制。《移民：你的国家需要他们》(Immigrants:YourCountry NeedsThem)一书的作者菲利浦·勒格兰(PhilippeLegrain)辩称，更为自由的移民政策，将有利于缔造具有创造力、经济表现强劲的城市。他是正确的。即便只是观察一下内部移民政策，其障碍也是巨大的。英国是一个房屋所有者的国度，英国人显然乐意为拥有自己的房子付出远远超出租房费用的代价。其它国家的人则更愿意租房子，其结果是失业率下降。
经济学家安德鲁·奥斯瓦德(AndrewOswald)提出，在整个欧洲地区和美国，房屋拥有数量高与高失业率是相关的。高额福利或工会程度高等更为传统的因素，无法像拥有房产的趋势那样对失业率做出解释。
雅各布·芒奇(JakobMunch)及其同事最近在《经济学杂志》(EconomicJournal)的研究表明，那些拥有房产的人找工作的速度与自由迁移的人一样快，但他们能够做到这一点，部分原因在于他们对工作不太挑剔，同时通勤路程变长。因此奥斯瓦德教授辩称，我们应尽可能付出一切努力，消除承租、出售或购置新房的种种障碍。如果我们能获准在伦敦附近修建房屋，那就会非常便利了。
美国经济学家艾德·格莱泽(EdGlaeser)和乔·哲尔克(JoeGyourko)辩称，即使我们做了上面所有事情，仍存在一个严重的障碍：房屋不能移动。不管底特律或特雷奥奇遇到多么糟糕的情况，房屋还是会在那里，如果足够便宜，人们会愿意住在里面。因此，可能导致的结果是一种令人沮丧的“隔离”：那些自认为能够在大城市找到一份好工作的人将迁往那里，支付更高的租金。而那些信心不足的人，宁可没工作住廉价的房子，也不愿住昂贵的房子而没有工作。未来很长时间内，底特律仍将有居民。（编辑：赵露）
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