Sticky labor in Spanish regions

Migration among Spanish regions has fallen significantly since the 1970s, in spite of large and widening regional unemployment rate differentials. In this paper I argue that this evolution is the result of: a large increase in the national unemployment rate; the reduction in regional dispersion in other economic variables, due in part to important institutional changes since 1975; and the rise of migration from richer to poorer regions, or affluent migration. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.