The Spatial Mismatch Hypothesis (SMH) argues that low-skilled minorities residing in U.S. inner cities experience poor labour-market outcomes because they are disconnected from suburban job opportunities. This assumption gave rise to an abundant empirical literature, which confirmed this...

Since the 1950s, there has been a steady decentralization of entry-level jobs towards the suburbs of American cities, while racial minorities — and particularly blacks — have remained in city centres. In this context, the spatial mismatch hypothesis argues that because the residential...

There are large spatial disparities in unemployment durations across the 1,300 municipalities in the Paris region (Ile-de-France). In order to characterize these imbalances, we estimate a proportional hazard model stratified by municipality on an exhaustive dataset of all unemployment spells...

This paper is a statistical evaluation of the 1997 enterprise zone program in France. We investigate whether the program increased the pace at which unemployed workers residing in targeted municipalities and surrounding areas find employment. The work relies on a two-stage analysis of...

In this paper, we investigate how residential segregation and bad physical access to jobs contribute to urban unemployment in the Paris region. We first survey the general mechanisms according to which residential segregation and spatial mismatch can have adverse labour-market outcomes. We then...

We model a South African city during Apartheid (in which both schooling and mobility are restricted on the basis of race) and after Apartheid (in which no restrictions are imposed). We first show that the inequality between blacks and whites decreases when Apartheid laws are removed. Indeed,...

We consider a search-matching model in which black workers are discriminated against and the job arrival rates of all workers depend on social networks as well as distance to jobs. Location choices are mainly driven by the racial preferences of households. There are two possible urban...

Black and white families are heterogenous both in income and ability and simultaneously decide where to locate in the city and which school (private or public) to send their children. We show that, in equilibrium, despite the tuition fees imposed by whites, some black pupils may attend the...

Urban and peri-urban land markets in rapidly expanding West African cities operate within and across different coexisting tenure regimes and involve complex procedures to obtain or make land available for housing. Because a structured framework lacks for the analysis of such systems, this book...

The 2007-2008 upsurge in agricultural commodity prices gave rise to widespread concern about investors causing a"global land rush". Large land deals can provide opportunities for better access to capital, transfer of technology, and advances in productivity and employment generation. But they...