Balázs Lengyel’s chapter discusses the role of co-worker networks in regional labour markets:
16: Co-worker networks in regional labor markets: an economic geography approach
Social and professional connections developed at work help individuals in their career, and provide benefits for firms, too. Extensive work in labor economics has therefore investigated the formation of social ties at workplaces and their impact on job moves. More recently, methodological developments in economic geography have enabled us to look at the role of co-worker ties in more aggregate outcomes, such as productivity growth of regions and of firms. This chapter provides an overview of the conceptual and methodological framework of co-worker network analysis in economic geography. The toolset includes survey data collection, network generation from administrative data sets on the individual-, firm-, and network levels, as well as econometric analysis, in which inter-firm co-worker network effects are disentangled from labor flows. By summarizing these methodological tools, the major results, and future research directions, the chapter highlights the importance of network research in economic geography.
Zoltán Elekes’s chapter, co-authored with Emelie Hane-Weijman, contributes to the discussion in evolutionary economic geography on skill- relatedness and labour mobility:
13: Enriching the micro perspective in evolutionary economic geography: skill relatedness and the mobility of heterogeneous workers
Labour mobility plays a central role in shaping local economies. Substantial contributions have been made in the Evolutionary Economic Geography (EEG) literature to understand the dynamics and geographies of local economies. A key contribution of EEG research has been the emphasis on both the supply of work and the demand for workers, raising questions about skill matching. Building on this tradition, the aim of this chapter is twofold. First, we aim to summarize the contributions to labour mobility and skill-relatedness made by EEG. Second, we argue that the micro perspective in EEG could be enriched by focusing more on the heterogeneity of workers with respect to, for instance, gender, age or ethnicity. We then outline a future research agenda within EEG that is more attentive to the diversity of workers by exploring (1) the assortativity of skill-relatedness networks, (2) the bounded mobilities of workers, and (3) dimensions of proximity beyond the cognitive.
The new Handbook of Labour Mobility, edited by Rikard Eriksson and Høgni Kalsø Hansen, evaluates how labour mobility in different forms can help us understand processes of uneven regional development. It examines the motivations and restrictions of labour mobility, including how its patterns can influence firm performance, innovative capacity, and long-term regional development.