Composition effect of migration and regional growth in Japan

I study roles of internal migration in regional income convergence in Japan. According to theory, migration from poor regions to rich ones should have been an important source of convergence, but previous empirical studies do not find such an effect. Some have argued this may be because migrants carry higher human capital than nonmovers. I investigate this hypothesis critically by studying how migration has affected educational attainment and demographic structure of the regions. It is shown that, although this effect did slow down convergence, its magnitude was too small to account for the discrepancy between theory and empirics. (C) 2001 by Academic Press.