CEP | People | Michael Amior

Biography

Michael Amior is a Reader in Economics at King's Business School and a Research Associate at the Centre for Economic Performance. He is on leave from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Current areas of research include:

Regional labour market disparities
Labour market effects of immigration
Firms? wage-setting and hiring behaviour

Publications

CEP discussion papers

Internal pay equity and the quantity-quality trade-off in hiring

Firms face significant constraints in their ability to differentiate pay by worker productivity. We show how these internal equity constraints generate a quantity-quality trade-off in hiring: firms which offer higher wag... Read more...

Michael Amior and Shmuel San

16 March 2026

Journal article

Monopsony and the wage effects of migration

If labour markets are competitive, migration can only affect native wages via marginal products. But under imperfect competition, migration may also increase wage mark-downs ? if firms have greater monopsony power over m... Read more...

Michael Amior and Alan Manning

08 July 2025

Journal article

Education and geographical mobility: the role of the job surplus

Better educated workers accept many more long-distance job offers, and relocate quicker following local shocks. I attribute this to a fundamental feature of their labor market experience, unrelated to geography: large re... Read more...

Michael Amior

01 November 2024

Journal article

The contribution of immigration to local labor market adjustment

The US faces persistent spatial disparities in joblessness, which should theoretically be eliminated by population reallocation. Can immigration accelerate this adjustment process? I estimate that new immigrants account ... Read more...

Michael Amior

21 February 2024

CEP discussion papers

Immigration, monopsony and the distribution of firm pay

We argue that the arrival of immigrants with low reservation wages can strengthen the monopsony power of firms. Firms can exploit "cheap" migrant labor by offering lower wages, though at the cost of forgoing potential na... Read more...

Michael Amior and Jan Stuhler

04 January 2024

CEP discussion papers

Monopsony and the wage effects of migration

In a generalization of the well-known ?immigration surplus? result, we show immigration must always increase the average native worker?s marginal product, in any long-run constant returns economy. But in a monopsonistic ... Read more...

Michael Amior and Alan Manning

07 May 2020

CEP discussion papers

The contribution of immigration to local labor market adjustment

The US suffers from persistent local disparities in employment rates, which should in principle be eliminated by population mobility. Can immigration accelerate this process? Remarkably, on average since 1960, new immigr... Read more...

Michael Amior

20 February 2020

CEP discussion papers

Immigration, local crowd-out and undercoverage bias

Using decadal census data since 1960, I cannot reject the hypothesis that new immigrants crowd out existing residents from US commuting zones and states one-for-one. My estimate accounts explicitly for dynamic local adju... Read more...

Michael Amior

13 January 2020

CEP discussion papers

Commuting, migration and local joblessness

Britain suffers from persistent spatial disparities in employment rates. This paper develops an integrated framework for analyzing two forces expected to equalize economic opportunity across areas: commuting and migratio... Read more...

Michael Amior and Alan Manning

04 June 2019

CEP discussion papers

Education and geographical mobility: the role of the job surplus

Better-educated workers form many more long-distance job matches, and they move more quickly following local employment shocks. I argue this is a consequence of larger dispersion in wage offers, independent of geography.... Read more...

Michael Amior

01 May 2019

CEP discussion papers

The contribution of foreign migration to local labor market adjustment

The US suffers from large regional disparities in employment rates which have persisted for many decades. It has been argued that foreign migration offers a remedy: it ?greases the wheels? of the labor market by accelera... Read more...

Michael Amior

05 November 2018

Journal article

The persistence of local joblessness

Differences in employment-population ratios across US commuting zones have persisted for many decades. We claim these disparities represent real gaps in economic opportunity for individuals of fixed characteristics. Thes... Read more...

Michael Amior and Alan Manning

01 July 2018

CEP discussion papers

The persistence of local joblessness

Local differences in US employment-population ratios and unemployment rates have persisted over many decades. Using decennial census data from 1950-2010, we investigate the reasons for this. The persistence cannot be exp... Read more...

Michael Amior and Alan Manning

08 June 2015

CEP discussion papers

Why are higher skilled workers more mobile geographically? The role of the job surplus

The skill gap in geographical mobility is entirely driven by workers who report moving for a new job. A natural explanation lies in the large expected surplus accruing to skilled job matches. Just as large surpluses ease... Read more...

Michael Amior

06 March 2015

Journal article

Do households use home-ownership to insure themselves? Evidence across US cities

Are households more likely to be homeowners when ?housing risk? is higher? We show that home-ownership rates and loan-to-value (LTV) ratios at the city level are strongly negatively correlated with local house price vola... Read more...

Michael Amior and Jonathan Halket

02 December 2014