Does immigration grease the wheels of the Norwegian labor market?

The main question to be analyzed in this project is whether immigration contribute to reduce regional disequilibrium problems within the Norwegian labor market and there by to a higher economic growth rate. The central empirical point of departure is studies form other countries which indicate that immigrant workers have a higher geographical mobile within the national labour market and that the direction and level of their migration flows are more sensitive to regional variations in wage and employment conditions. The theoretical approach is economic theory about regional growth and worker migration in spatial labor markets. The data is register based and give the individual migration histories of all individuals who work legally in Norway for more than a short period of time. Using econometric method we will estimate the relationships between the regional sorting of immigrants and natives and the variation in wage and employment conditions between geographically defined local labor markets.