Congratutlations to Dr Joan Monras, winner of the Young Labour Economist Prize 2015, awarded by the European Association of Labour Economists (EALE) for his paper on Economic Shocks and Internal Migration.

This paper looks at the question how local negative demand shocks can be ameliorated by internal migrations. This question has been first addressed by Blanchard and Katz (1992). What makes this paper different from previous work is the finding that it is inflows rather than outflows that respond to regional demand shocks.

The paper illustrates that net in-migration rates decreased in areas more affected by the Great Recession and comes to the important conclusion that internal migration might help to alleviate up to one third of the effects of the crisis on wages in the most affected locations. What is really interesting is that this effect is due to a decrease in in-migration into locations affected by negative shocks rather than an increase in out-migration.

The paper not only provides a carefully explained identification strategy, but also structures the empirical analysis along a model of internal migration.

It addresses a very important issue and does so in a highly original and convincing way