On Migration Gravity with Status Quo Bias and Job Search Frictions

Arnab Basu, Nancy Chau and Gary Lin

No 26104, RFBerlin Discussion Paper Series from ROCKWOOL Foundation Berlin (RFBerlin)

Abstract: Why has internal migration remained low, even as advances in communication technologies have reduced information frictions in relocation decisions? This paper develops and estimates a spatial model of mobility that incorporates status quo bias in locational preferences, multilateral search frictions, and comoving regional unemployment. Using historical proxies for search frictions, we identify and recover county-level estimates of status quo bias across the United States. Status quo bias is spatially heterogeneous and highest in states containing large urban job centers. Translating these estimates into expected-utility, geographic-distance, and state-border equivalents indicates that variation in status quo bias generates migration frictions comparable to large geographic and institutional barriers. Status quo bias also exhibits strong persistence over time, a robust relationship to migration dynamics, and associations with a range of non-wage individual- and community-level correlates of locational preferences (e.g., housing, climate, and religious and political orientations). These patterns suggest that status quo bias partly reflects place-based preferences shaped by individuals' residential histories.

Keywords: Migration gravity; status quo bias; and job search networks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J61 J64 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ict and nep-mig
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:crm:wpaper:26104

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