November 2008

IZA DP No. 3845: Education and Mobility

published in: Journal of the European Economic Association, 2011, 10 (2), 417-50.

We show that the length of compulsory education has a causal impact on regional labour mobility. The analysis is based on a quasi-exogenous staged Norwegian school reform, and register data on the whole population. Based on the results, we conclude that part of the US-Europe difference, as well as the European North-South difference in labour mobility, is likely to be due to differences in levels of education in the respective regions.