Inter-regional migration in Romania

This paper examines the role of wage relativities and unemployment levels as major potential economic causes of internal migration between the separate regions of Romania in the period 1995 - 2005. The different inter-regional migration routes are treated as cross-section units in a panel data structure, with unobserved characteristics for each route modelled as fixed effects. SURE estimation indicates that inter-regional wage relativities have indeed had a significant influence on internal migration flows but relative unemployment levels have apparently played no part.