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...

Tax competition for a mobile factor is different in 'new economic geography settings' compared to standard tax competition models. The agglomeration rent which accrues to the mobile factor in the core region can be taxed. Moreover, a tax differential between the core and the periphery can be...

We develop a model in which non-white individuals are defined with respect to their social environment (family, friends, neighbors) and their attachments to their culture of origin (religion, language), and in which jobs are mainly found through social networks. We found that, depending on how...

This paper studies the social desirability of agglomeration and the efficiency arguments for policy intervention in a simple, analytically solvable ?new economic geography? model with two trade integrating regions. The location pattern emerging as market equilibrium is ?bubbleshaped?, i.e. it...

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 locations of...

The aim of this paper is to provide a new mechanism for the spatial mismatch hypothesis. Spatial mismatch can here be the result of optimizing behavior on the part of the labor market participants. In particular, the unemployed can choose low amounts of search and long-term unemployment if they...

We investigate the role of spatial frictions in search equilibrium unemployment. For that, we develop a model of the labor market in which workers? location in an agglomeration depends on commuting costs, the endogenous price of land and the value of job search and employment. We first show that...

The deterioration of the income and employment position of unskilled workers in the OECD area since the 1980s is a well-documented fact. The debate about the causes of this development is dominated by two competing hypotheses, "North-South Trade" or "globalisation" and technological progress....

We consider a continuum of workers ranked according to their abilities to acquire education and two firms with different technologies that imperfectly compete in wages to attract these workers. Once employed, each worker bears an education cost proportional to his/her initial ability, this cost...

This paper presents a simple, analytically solvable Chamberlinian agglomeration model. As in the canonical core-periphery (CP) model, two agglomerative forces are at work. However, the present model exhibits a 'pitchfork bifurcation' rather than the 'tomahawk bifurcation' of the CP model.