Abstract

Over 6 million households experienced foreclosure during the financial crisis. Where did they move, how did they fare and why? First, we create a new longitudinal dataset between 2006 and 2011 from households’ date of foreclosure to their relocation. Despite significant heterogeneity in mobility outcomes, we find that individuals move to, on average, higher quality locations. However, these locations are sometimes worse than what a household would have chosen at random, on average, within the same state. Second, to investigate the source behind these plausibly suboptimal moves, we quantify the contributions of three different hypotheses—(i) local labor market conditions, (ii) local composition effects and (iii) state foreclosure institutions—toward mobility outcomes. Third, we find that individuals who move counties relocate to areas with 2.3% higher income, relative to those moving across census tracts in the same county. In sum, while our results suggest that the average foreclosed household ‘moved toward opportunity’, labor market frictions can play an important role in mediating the reallocation of labor over a business cycle.

中文翻译：

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转向机会？止赎危机的地理和位置的重要性

摘要

在金融危机期间，超过 600 万户家庭经历了止赎。他们搬到了哪里，他们的表现如何，为什么？首先，我们在 2006 年至 2011 年之间创建了一个新的纵向数据集，从家庭止赎日期到他们的搬迁。尽管流动性结果存在显着异质性，但我们发现个人平均迁移到质量更高的位置。然而，这些位置有时比一个家庭在同一州内平均随机选择的位置更差。其次，为了调查这些看似次优的举措背后的根源，我们量化了三种不同假设——（i）当地劳动力市场条件，（ii）当地构成效应和（iii）国家止赎机构——对流动性结果的贡献。第三，我们发现迁移县的个人搬迁到具有 2 的地区。与在同一县跨人口普查区移动的人相比，收入高 3%。总而言之，虽然我们的结果表明普通家庭“转向机会”，但劳动力市场摩擦可以在调节劳动力在商业周期中的重新分配方面发挥重要作用。