The Effect of Employment Mobility and Spatial Proximity on the Residential Attractiveness of Moroccan Small’s Cities: Evidence from Quantile Regression Analysis

The aim of this paper is to investigate the impact of both the mobility of the working population and the spatial proximity to agglomerations on the residential attractiveness of small cities in Morocco. First, we estimated the net migration rate, which is according to the literature, one of the most reliable indicators commonly used to estimate the attractiveness of a territory. Then, using it as a target variable, we studied for small’s cities, the impact of both workers mobility and territorial proximity to agglomerations on their ability to be attractive to the population. Estimation of the net migration rate showed that it has a rather dispersed distribution, which is one of the main reasons why we opted for quantile regression modeling. As a result, we have shown that the geographical location of the small cities influences its attractiveness, in the sense that, the closer the city is to the area of an agglomeration, the more its residential attractiveness increases. We’ve also been able to demonstrate that the high mobility of the workforce and the high migratory attraction are two twin phenomena in small Moroccan cities. Those findings call into question the fact that the residential attractiveness of small cities in Morocco is not only determined by their socio-economic character but is also strongly influenced by their spatial location and the mobility of the workforce.