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 centers. In this context, the spatial mismatch hypothesis argues that because the residential...

This paper presents an impact evaluation of the French enterprise zone program which was initiated in 1997 to help unemployed workers find employment by granting a significant wage-tax exemption (about one third of total labor costs) to firms hiring at least 20% of their labor force locally....

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

In this paper, location choices are driven by households (both blacks and whites) consciously choosing to trade off proximity to neighbors of similar racial backgrounds for proximity to jobs. Because of coordination failures in the location choices, multiple urban equilibria emerge. There is a...

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...

Seventy-five percent of the world's poor live in rural areas and most are involved in agriculture. In the 21st century, agriculture remains fundamental to economic growth, poverty alleviation, and environmental sustainability. The World Bank's Agriculture and rural development publication series...

Interest in farmland is rising. And, given commodity price volatility, growing human and environmental pressures, and worries about food security, this interest will increase, especially in the developing world. One of the highest development priorities in the world must be to improve...

This paper presents a new type of land market analysis relevant to cities with plural tenure systems as in West Africa. The methodology hinges on a systemic analysis of land delivery channels, which helps to show how land is initially made available for circulation, how tenure can be formalized...

The migration of labor from rural to urban areas is an important part of the urbanization process in developing countries. Even though it has been the focus of abundant research over the past five decades, some key policy questions have not found clear answers yet. To what extent is internal...