Browsing by Author "Schmutz, B"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Frictional Labor Mobility
    (Economic Research Initiatives at Duke (ERID), 2016-05-03) Schmutz, B; Sidibe, M
    We build a dynamic model of migration where, in addition to classical mobility costs, workers face informational frictions that decrease their ability to compete for distant job opportunities. We structurally estimate the model on a matched employer-employee panel dataset describing labor market transitions within and between the 100 largest French cities. Our identification strategy is based on the premise that frictions affect the frequency of job transitions, while mobility costs impact the distribution of accepted wages. We find that after controlling for frictions, mobility costs are one order of magnitude lower than previously reported in the literature and their effect on labor mobility and unemployment is significantly lower than the effect of informational frictions.
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    Frictional Spatial Equilibrium
    (Economic Research Initiatives at Duke (ERID), 2016-09-27) Schmutz, B; Sidibe, M
    We study the properties of spatial equilibrium in an economy where locations have heterogeneous endowments and the labour market is subject to matching frictions. Both workers and firms make endogenous location decisions, which, in turn, determine the spatial distribution of unemployment, wage and firm density, as well as city population. We explain why diverse urban configurations may coexist in a country without any impediment to labour mobility, and in particular, why homogeneous workers, free to move at will, may be subject to spatial stickiness while welfare is not equalized across space. We also introduce a typology of cities based on the productivity of their local amenities, which describes the co-movement of local economic outcomes and we show that the introduction of commercial real estate induces an asymmetry between urban decline and urban growth. Positive (negative) productivity shocks are more (less) likely to increase (decrease) population than rent, rent than wages, and wages than employment.
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    Job Search and Migration in a System of Cities
    (Economic Research Initiatives at Duke (ERID), 2016-12-07) Schmutz, B; Sidibe, M
    We build an equilibrium job search model, where workers engage in both off- and on-the-job search over a set of cities, to quantify the impact of spatial matching frictions and mobility costs on the job search process. Migration decisions, based on a dynamic utility trade-off between locations, can rationalize diverse wage dynamics as part of forward-looking spatial strategies. Our estimation results allow us to characterize each of the largest 200 French cities by a set of city-specific matching and amenity parameters and to measure the impact of distance on spatial constraints. We find that after controlling for frictions, mobility cost parameters are significantly lower than previously reported in the literature. Additional results include a robust positive correlation between on-the-job arrival rates and local wage dispersion, which provides new empirical support to the wage-posting framework and suggests an alternative explanation for the city size wage gap.