intra metropolitan variation in earnings and labor market discrimination an econometric analysis of the atlanta labor market one of the most enduring debates concerning racial differences in earnings is whether housing segregation within metropolitan areas adversely affects the employment opportunities of urban blacks two possible negative effects can be listed first the decentralization of lower skilled jobs combined with the suburban residential exclusion of low income households may have caused wage rates within the suburban labor market to rise above those paid within the central city if this is the case and if housing market discrimination restricts the relative ability of blacks to offer their labor supply to suburban employers then at least part of the racial difference in earnings can be attributed to housing segregation second housing segregation may cause private sector labor market discrimination to be more severe within the central city in comparison to suburban areas as suggested by becker s taste for discriminating model 3 a relatively large black labor supply within the central city may require a lower black to white earnings ratio in order to induce prejudiced employers to hire large numbers of black workers with the workforce of most central cities becoming increasingly black this may be an important factor in explaining racial differences in earnings surprisingly while variation in discrimination among occupations regions industries and sectors have been examined in some detail spatial differences in discrimination between the central city and suburbs have largely escaped analysis in this paper the earnings of private sector workers broken down by occupation race and sex are compared between worksite areas encompassing the metropolitan area of atlanta georgia while an extensive literature can be found on interregional differences in earnings little evidence exists on the spatial variation in wage rates within metropolitan regions in fact virtually nothing has been done on this issue since the classic study of the chicago labor market by rees and shultz 19

manufacturing demand for business services in a core and peripheral region does flexible production imply vertical disintegration of business services o farrell p n moffat l a r and hitchens d m w n 1993 manufacturing demand for business services in a core and peripheral region does flexible production imply vertical disintegration of business services reg studies 27 385 400 this paper analyses the demand by manufactures in scotland and south east england for key strategic business services during the past three years the source of supply of the services used and the location of external suppliers for scottish and english manufacturers our evidence suggests that expansion of demand is the primary cause of increasing business service output and not restructuring strategies as predicted by the flexible firm model both externalization and internalization of business services are occurring simultaneously the net balance is consistent with a marginal trend towards vertical integration in manufacturing and a stronger one in business services o farrell p n moffat l a r et hitchens d m w n 1993 la demande de l industrie pour l

are ghettos good or bad spatial separation of racial and ethnic groups may theoretically have positive or negative effects on the economic performance of those groups we examine the effects of segregation on outcomes for blacks in schooling employment and single parenthood we find that blacks in more segregated areas have significantly worse outcomes than blacks in less segregated areas we control for the endogeneity of location choice using instruments based on political factors topographical features and residence before adulthood a one standard deviation decrease in segregation would eliminate one third of the black white differences in most of our outcomes

dual labor markets efficiency wages and search this article presents an equilibrium model of a dual labor market firms are assumed to be identical ex ante and dualism arises endogenously the dual labor market outcome is supported by efficiency wage and search considerations firms choose wage effort requirement packages optimally given optimal search and effort choice by workers and vice versa we prove existence and investigate the occurrence and nature of dual labor market equilibria

male sub metropolitan black white wage gaps new evidence for the 1980s this study analyses trends in us male black white earnings gaps by sub metropolitan residence large suburban earnings gaps existed in 1979 however central city gaps exhibited the largest increases during the 1980s the increases are decomposed into changes in measurable characteristics changes in the prices of measurable characteristics changes in discrimination and or unobservable skills and changes in white earnings inequality changes in measured characteristics and their prices and changes in inequality account for little of the increases in central city gaps either labour market discrimination worsened or racial differences in unobservable skills widened a review of the literature suggests that this paper s evidence is more consistent with a worsening in discrimination

the local structure of the welfare state uneven effects of social spending on poverty within countries research has shown that there is a strong negative relationship between social spending and poverty levels among urban inequality researchers it is often assumed that compared with the usa the welfare state has mitigated social differences explaining lower levels of urban inequality in most european countries however research on the role of the welfare state is often conducted on the national level and is thus unable to draw conclusions on the effects of social spending and redistribution on a lower level failing to take the within country variation into account this study connects welfare state research to urban inequality research by investigating the effects of social spending on poverty in urban and non urban areas we have conducted a cross national multilevel logistic regression analysis using eurostat and european social survey data of 2008 our findings suggest that the effects of social spending are unequally distributed within countries

black residential centralization and the spatial mismatch hypothesis abstract black residential centralization is found to be an important determinant of black employment status when estimated across metropolitan areas mas to avoid neighborhood selection the effects are greatest in large mas for the young and elderly and for individuals with less than a college education instrumental variable iv estimates support ordinary least squares ols results black residential centralization can account for 48 62 of the black white employment differential among 18 30 year olds living in large mas when estimated together black residential centralization job centralization and segregation all have large effects but the effects of black centralization and job centralization are considerably larger

dual labor markets urban unemployment and multicentric cities a two sector model of urban employment is developed which focuses on the formation of a secondary sector in response to a primary sector demand shock the optimal location of this single firm sector is shown to give rise to a multicentric urban spatial structure conditions are then established under which the new labor market equilibrium involves both a decrease in unemployment and an increase in net income for those unemployed these results are extended to a case where all unemployment benefits are financed by local taxation of firms here it is shown that profit incentives may exist for the primary sector to subsidize entry of the secondary sector c 1997 academic press

ethnic unemployment rates and frictional markets the unemployment rate in france is roughly 6 percentage points higher for african immigrants than for natives in the us the unemployment rate is approximately 9 percentage points higher for blacks than for whites commute time data indicates that minorities face longer commute times to work potentially reflecting more difficult access to jobs in this paper we investigate the impact of spatial mismatch on the unemployment rate of ethnic groups using the matching model proposed by rupert and wasmer 2012 we find that spatial factors explain 1 1 5 percentage points of the unemployment rate gap in both france and the us amounting to 17 25 of the relative gap in france and about 10 17 5 in the us among these factors differences in commuting distance play the most important role in france though longer commuting distances may be mitigated by higher mobility in the housing market for african workers overall we still conclude that labor market factors remain the main explanation for the higher unemployment rate of africans

evidence on discrimination in mortgage lending much of the controversy about whether mortgage lenders discriminate against minorities can be explained in terms of the confusion about how to define discrimination based on the legal definition careful studies of loan denial rates such as that done by the federal reserve bank of boston represent an appropriate method for testing for discrimination by lenders based on that study it is quite clear that lenders discriminate the fact that minorities have higher default rates on average than whites is irrelevant to the interpretation of the race coefficient in such models nonetheless more research on and discussion about the relationship between the race of the applicant and delinquencies defaults and losses would be desirable

alternative approaches to valuing intangible health losses the evidence for multiple sclerosis abstract this study uses both risk risk and risk dollar approaches to assess intangible health losses associated with multiple sclerosis ms using an estimation approach that adjusts for potential perceptional biases that may affect the expressed risk tradeoffs we estimated parameters of the utility function of persons with and without ms as well as the degree of subjects overestimation of the probability of obtaining ms the sample included subjects from the general population and persons with ms we found that marginal utility of income is lower in the state with ms than without it however the difference in marginal utility in the two states was greater for persons without ms than for those with the disease persons with ms overestimated the probability of acquiring ms to a greater extent than did persons within ms correcting for overestimation of this probability the value of intangible loss of a statistical case of ms derived from responses of the general population was us 350 000 to us 500 000 persons with ms were willing to pay somewhat more than this d80 i18 j17

intraurban wage gradients evidence by race gender occupational class and sector abstract a general functional form is used to estimate intraurban wage gradients for various groups of workers with 1980 data from the philadelphia detroit and boston metropolitan areas as predicted by the standard monocentric model of urban land use the following results are obtained for most groups of white workers negative and statistically significant wage gradients steeper wage gradients for higher wage earners and an increase in the steepness of wage gradients as the cbd is approached positive wage gradients are not found for black workers despite the fact that suburban employers hire large numbers of these workers who reside within the central city this result is taken as support for the hypothesis that blacks have been disadvantaged by job suburbanization and continued housing market segregation

residential segregation and the economic status of black workers new evidence for an old debate abstract scholars have long debated whether ghetto residence lowers the earnings of blacks most empirical studies on this question have been flawed because they have not considered the simultaneous effects of choices of work and residence locations and the effects of intrametropolitan variation in rents and wages this paper estimates a revealed preference model of intraurban location with data from the 1980 public use microdata sample for cleveland detroit and philadelphia to test whether black male household heads who are employed full time year round are less likely than whites to live and work at their best locations we measure the wages rents and commuting costs associated with each possible job residence location combination in these cities for each person given their job qualifications and their housing needs a revealed preference approach is used to evaluate the economic welfare of individuals at each possible location and then compare the actual distribution of work and residence locations by race with the welfare maximizing distribution the divergence in these distributions by race measures the economic effects for employed black male household heads of residential segregation in ghettos we find that the economic status of blacks can be improved significantly by changing their intrametropolitan job locations surprisingly this conclusion holds regardless of whether or not blacks keep their current residential locations while changes in residential locations can improve the economic status of blacks relative to whites by decreasing commuting and or the cost of housing such residential changes do not significantly alter the physical accessibility of better paying jobs

on the endogeneous formation of secondary employment centers in a city a new approach is proposed to explain the formation of secondary employment centers in a monocentric city specifically a large firm considers locating a new plant in a city where none of the existing businesses has a significative share of the labor force so that its location can be viewed as a secondary employment center the choice of this location results from the interplay between the process of competition on both the labor and land markets and the technological externalities generated by the proximity of the city center where other firms are located

the predictive validity of prospect theory versus expected utility in health utility measurement most health care evaluations today still assume expected utility even though the descriptive deficiencies of expected utility are well known prospect theory is the dominant descriptive alternative for expected utility this paper tests whether prospect theory leads to better health evaluations than expected utility the approach is purely descriptive we explore how simple measurements together with prospect theory and expected utility predict choices and rankings between more complex stimuli for decisions involving risk prospect theory is significantly more consistent with rankings and choices than expected utility this conclusion no longer holds when we use prospect theory utilities and expected utilities to predict intertemporal decisions the latter finding cautions against the common assumption in health economics that health state utilities are transferable across decision contexts our results suggest that the standard gamble and algorithms based on should not be used to value health

corporate reorganization and the geography of services evidence from the motor vehicle aftermarket in the west midlands region of the uk marshall j n 1989 corporate reorganization and the geography of services evidence from the motor vehicle aftermarket in the west midlands region of the uk reg studies 23 139 150 research suggests that a corporate complex of administrative managerial and technical staff in the hinterland of capital cities underpins the spatial centralization of service activities in the economy there have been important changes in corporate structures during the last decade firms have reduced their in house provision of some services resorting to external contractors instead divisional and middle management activities have been rationalized and more autonomy delegated to lower levels in the corporate hierarchy using new technology firms have also expanded the range and quality of services provided in house this paper explores the geographical implications of these and other changes in business organization a case study of the motor vehicle aftermarket in the west midlands region of the uk suggests that sim

bid rents under unemployment risk delayed versus timeless uncertainty in this paper we analyze the impact of uncertainty on the level and properties of the bid rent function we show that these properties strongly depend upon the vr ay in which uncertainty is introduced into the model delayed versus timeless uncertainty we also investigate the implication of income uncertainty for the city equilibrium we show that under timeless uncertainty a more generous unemployment benefits program may be in the long run welfare reducing in an urban setting c 1997 academic press

comorbidities and the willingness to pay for health improvements we show that the willingness to pay for health improvements increases with the severity and probability of occurrence of comorbidities this result which is obtained under mild restrictions on the shape of the utility function has important implications for cost benefit studies applied to health care in particular it implies that the discrimination of the elderly believed to be implicit in cost benefit analysis is less of a problem than commonly thought

us high technology multinationals and silicon glen haug p 1986 us high technology multinationals and silicon glen reg studies 20 103 116 future growth and investment by high technology industries have generated increasing interest in the agglomeration tendencies of high technology firms governments throughout the world are seeking to develop high technology firm concentrations similar to silicon valley in california an area that represents one of the largest high technology industry clusters outside the united states is scotland s silicon glen this article is based on interviews conducted at fourteen us owned manufacturing plants in silicon glen and sets out to 1 define the terms high technology industry and silicon glen 2 summarize research on the origins of silicon valley boston s route 128 silicon fen or the cambridge phenomenon and the m4 corridor near london and 3 present evidence on the location and investment activities of us multinational enterprises in silicon glen the results indicate that the attributes attracting high te

bidding for firms recently toyota sought a plant location in the united states the 800 million plant will employ 3000 workers and numerous states offered toyota generous investment incentives hoping this would induce toyota to select their state the commonwealth of kentucky won this competition but the price was high the present value of the payments exceeds 125 million the payment of investment incentives for the toyota plant is not unique in 1976 pennsylvania paid 75 million to attract a volkswagen plan nissan honda and mazda received generous investment incentives when locating plants in the united states and this bidding is not limited to states to attract the headquarters of the presbyterian church usa with its 1300 jobs and 38 million annual payroll civic leaders in louisville kentucky offered the church a warehouse and 6 2 million for renovation of the structure bidding the church away from kansas city missouri in this paper we contend that this competition may result from the average cost pricing of publicly provided goods and services 2 when the marginal cost of providing a firm and its workers with public services is less than the tax revenue they generate a government may offer the firm subsidies that reduce the distortions the average cost pricing of the public service creates thus this competition for industry is not a zero sum game where the subsidies are only transfers from the government to the firm rather these subsidies may facilitate the efficient location of industry

prospect theory in the health domain a quantitative assessment it is well known that expected utility eu has empirical deficiencies cumulative prospect theory cpt has developed as an alternative with more descriptive validity however cpt s full function had not yet been quantified in the health domain this paper is therefore the first to simultaneously measure utility of life duration probability weighting and loss aversion in this domain we observe loss aversion and risk aversion for gains and losses which for gains can be explained by probabilistic pessimism utility for gains is almost linear for losses we find less weighting of probability 1 2 and concave utility this contrasts with the common finding of convex utility for monetary losses however cpt was proposed to explain choices among lotteries involving monetary outcomes life years are arguably very different from monetary outcomes and need not generate convex utility for losses moreover utility of life duration reflects discounting causing concave utility

regulation in happyville how does risk perception affect risk regulation happyville is a society in which citizens wrongly believe that the drinking water supply is contaminated we discuss conditions under which a benevolent director of environment protection would invest in a water cleanup technology this holds if the director is populist namely if he maximises social welfare based on citizens pessimistic beliefs more surprisingly investment in the water cleanup technology may occur if the director is paternalistic in the sense that he maximises social welfare based on his own beliefs the reason is that he must take into account citizens responses to regulation

firm racial segregation and affirmative action in the highway construction industry in this paper i document that highway construction firms in california particularly those owned by blacks and asians exhibit considerable racial segregation in that they are disproportionately located in zip codes with the greatest concentration of own race residents i find that segregated firms serve a larger market than minority owned firms that are not segregated and that this effect is concentrated in black owned firms i next exploit the segregation of firms to examine the effect of affirmative action on the success of minority owned firms following the significant curtailment of affirmative action in california due to a direct statewide ballot initiative the number of highway construction establishments located in zip codes with the highest concentrations of black and asian residents fell relative to the rest of the state even conditional on the number of non construction establishments this suggests that affirmative action policies may play a role in the net survival rates of minority owned firms

outsourcing r d and the pattern of intra metropolitan location the electronics industries of madrid the relationship between intra metropolitan location research and development r d and the outsourcing of production is analysed to determine differences in and the supportive character of intra metropolitan areas for high technology production madrid s electronics industries have shown a remarkable resilience in the face of extensive economic restructuring and the change in trade regimes that has accompanied continental integration much of the strength of the electronics sector may have been due to the metropolitan area s support for outsourcing and the creative specialisation that it facilitated the distribution of manufacturing establishments their local sourcing characteristics industrial district or agglomeration effects and the role of r d are evaluated to determine the intra metropolitan context of production extensive statistical analyses of the relationship between r d and productive performance with various indicators of capital costs revenues and scale are undertaken with estab

informal job search and black youth unemployment in this paper i analyze how young black and white unemployed jobseekers use various methods of search and the employment outcomes which result from their use the focus is on distinguishing informal search methods i e friends and relatives or direct application without referral from more formal ones in analyzing racial differences the results show that the two informal methods of search account for about 90 of the difference in employment probabilities between white and black youth this also accounts for 57 71 of the difference in unemployment rates between the two furthermore most of these results reflect differences in the ability of these methods to generate job offers as opposed to differences in search effort or job acceptance rates however our ability to explain these differences through personal family and household characteristics was generally quite limited this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

job accessibility and female employment probability the cases of barcelona and madrid the objective of this paper is to estimate the impact of residential job accessibility on female employment probability in the metropolitan areas of barcelona and madrid following a spatial mismatch framework a female employment probability equation is estimated which includes variables controlling for personal characteristics residential segregation and employment potential by public transport network data used come from the micro census 2001 of ine the national institute of statistics the research focuses on the treatment of endogeneity problems and the measurement of accessibility variables the results show that low job accessibility in public transport negatively affects employment probability the intensity of this effect tends to decrease with individual s educational attainment a higher degree of residential segregation also reduces job probability in a significant way

the changing corporate head office and its spatial implications aksoy a and marshall n 1992 the changing corporate head office and its spatial implications reg studies 26 149 162 a substantial body of literature suggests that during the 1980s large firms reorganized in response to volatility in product markets and in a search for new competitive advantage using evidence from a survey of twenty large firm head offices in great britain this paper examines the extent of large firm reorganization and its impact on regional economies it shows that associated with corporate restructuring employment in large firm head offices has declined substantially headquarters functions have been delegated to operating companies and contracting out has increased in a review of the geographical consequences of these changes which goes beyond the discussion of high tech complexes and industrial districts the paper suggests that reorganization is modifying rather than transforming patterns of spatial development in britain corporate restructuring is encouraging the dec

job access employment and earnings outcomes for welfare leavers in a us urban labour market this article examines the effect of job access on employment outcomes for welfare recipients in cleveland ohio leaving assistance during 1998 2000 a rich longitudinal dataset is employed combining administrative and survey data with multiple measures of access to and competition for jobs the focus is on both a population and a range of measures of employment outcomes not previously studied in this context empirical ambiguity in the existing literature has resulted from the difficulty of modelling causality when employment and residential location are jointly determined in this study labour market outcomes are related to the residential locations of welfare leavers prior to employment thus overcoming much potential endogeneity virtually no evidence is found that job access influences labour market outcomes for this population

an empirical investigation of intraurban wage gradients abstract intraurban wage gradients have received little attention in the urban literature but have been shown theoretically to be important indicators of the spatial characteristics of urban economic activity this study examines the spatial distribution of wages of five groups of municipal public employees in the chicago smsa negative wage gradients significant at the 0 05 level are found for four of the five labor groups results show that monthly wages decrease on average as much as 24 per additional mile from the city center

there is no free house abstract this paper estimates the effect of a housing relocation program on the labor supply and living conditions of low income households across major cities in south africa using panel microdata collected between 2008 and 2014 it exploits the arbitrary eligibility rules of the policy with a fuzzy regression discontinuity design to obtain reduced form estimates there are three main findings first in the short term of 2 to 4 years following relocation the labor supply of recipient households decreases driven mostly by a reduction of female hours second the large increase in distance km to economic opportunities seems to be an important factor behind the decline directly or indirectly through family shifts in earning strategies finally evidence is limited regarding improvements in housing and neighborhood quality overall there is no clear indication that the net welfare effect of relocation is positive

a theory of dual labor markets with application to industrial policy discrimination and keynesian unemployment this paper develops a model of dual labor markets based on employers need to motivate workers in order to elicit effort from their workers employers may find it optimal to pay more than the going wage this changes fundamentally the character of labor markets the model is applied to a wide range of labor market phenomena it provides a coherent framework for understanding the claims of industrial policy advocates it also can provide the basis for a theory of occupational segregation and discrimination that will not be eroded by market forces finally the model provides the basis for a theory of involuntary unemployment

car ownership and the labor market of ethnic minorities we show how initial wealth differences between low skilled minorities and white workers can generate differences in their labor market outcomes this even occurs in the absence of a taste for discrimination against ethnic minorities or exogenous differences in distance to jobs because of the initial wealth difference minorities cannot afford to buy a car while whites can car ownership allows whites to reach more jobs per unit of time which gives them a better bargaining position in the labor market as a result in equilibrium ethnic minorities end up with both higher unemployment rates and lower wages than whites furthermore we also show that it takes more time for minorities to reach their jobs even though they travel less miles when employed those predictions are consistent with the data better access to capital markets or better public transportation will reduce the differences in labor market outcomes

spatial mismatch search effort and urban spatial structure abstract 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 reside far away from jobs they choose voluntary not to relocate close to jobs because the short run gains low land rent and large housing consumption are big enough compared to the long run gains of residing near jobs higher probability of finding a job

developments in non expected utility theory the hunt for a descriptive theory of choice under risk this article reviews recent developments in the economic theory of individual decision making under risk since the 1950s it has been known that individual choices violate the standard model of expected utility in predictable ways considerable research effort has now been devoted to the project of developing a superior descriptive model following an overview of non expected utility theories which distinguishes between conventional and non conventional approaches the paper seeks to assess these alternative models in terms of empirical success using laboratory and field data and theoretical usefulness the closing sections reflect on some new directions emerging in this literature

spatial mismatch in search equilibrium we construct a search equilibrium model for a city with central and suburban labor markets that is consistent with the set of empirical regularities commonly associated with the spatial mismatch hypothesis a higher rate of unemployment for central city residents than suburban residents a higher job vacancy rate for suburban firms and reverse commuting and higher suburban wages the effectiveness and welfare implications of public policy programs that might be used to remedy the underlying mismatch are examined

the spatial mismatch hypothesis what has the evidence shown this paper reviews 20 years worth of empirical evidence on the spatial mismatch hypothesis after briefly surveying the relevant models from urban and labour economics and recent trends in employment and population suburbanisation the empirical evidence on spatial effects is examined this literature includes evidence on the effects of residential segregation residential suburbanisation and employment suburbanisation and direct measures of access such as travel times the most recent evidence suggests that spatial mismatch is relevant for explaining black white employment differences though the magnitudes of these effects remain unclear

intra metropolitan shifts in labor demand and the adjustment of local markets abstract i offer new evidence on the adjustment of local labor markets to geographic shifts in labor demand within us metropolitan areas using a unique data set in which metropolitan subregions are geographically matched across the 1970 1980 and 1980 1990 decades the evidence uncovered paints the following picture workers especially those with less education make incomplete adjustments within metropolitan areas in response to intra metropolitan demand shifts although blacks may not make especially limited adjustments they have disproportionately suffered deleterious effects from job movements because the demand shifts have tended to be away from their places of residence

the benefits of avoiding cancer or dying from cancer evidence from a four country study abstract we use stated preference methods to estimate the cancer value per statistical life vsl and value per statistical case vscc from a representative sample of 45 60 year olds in four countries in europe we ask respondents to report information about their willingness to pay for health risk reductions that are different from those used in earlier valuation work because they are comprised of two probabilities that of getting cancer and that of dying from it conditional on getting it in the first place the product of these two probabilities is the unconditional cancer mortality risk our hypothetical risk reductions also include two severity related attributes quality of life impacts and pain the results show that respondents did appear to have an intuitive grasp of compound probabilities and took into account each component of the unconditional cancer mortality risk when answering the valuation questions we estimate the cancer vsl to be between approximately 2 and 5 950 million depending on whether the unconditional mortality risk was reduced by lowering the chance of getting cancer increasing the chance of surviving cancer or both the vscc is estimated to be up to 0 578 million euro and its magnitude depends on the initial conditional cancer mortality and on the improvement in survival the survey responses show that our measures of cancer severity impacts on daily activities and pain have little or no effect on the wtp to reduce the adverse health risks

producer services trade and the social division of labour goe w r 1990 producer services trade and the social division of labour reg studies 24 327 342 several hypotheses have been advanced to explain the growth in employment and output of producer services industries in us metropolitan and regional economies one hypothesis contends that this growth is attributable to the increasing externalization of service activities by corporate managerial offices to independent producer services firms this has contributed to the growth of corporate complex agglomerations in urban regions manufacturing industries have traditionally been viewed as being the motivating force underlying this growth a second hypothesis contends that the growth of producer services industries is attributable to their evolution into basic industries and the growth of export trade this paper examines the validity of these hypotheses using data collected from a survey of business establishments in producer services industries located in the four metropolitan areas of the northeast regi

the mechanisms of spatial mismatch the spatial mismatch hypothesis smh argues that low skilled minorities residing in us 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 is rather supportive of the smh surprisingly it is only recently that theoretical models have emerged which probably explains why the mechanisms of spatial mismatch have long remained unclear and not properly tested this article presents relevant facts reviews the theoretical models of spatial mismatch confronts their predictions with available empirical results and indicates which mechanisms deserve further empirical tests

an alternative approach to the analysis of wage differentials a key question in many studies of male female or black white wage differentials is how much of the differential can be explained by economic factors and how much remains unexplained the unexplained portion is then ascribed to discrimination since oaxaca 17 first formalized this decomposition the residual difference methodology has been the dominant methodology utilized in empirical studies of wage differentials 4 7 8 10 15 18 but recently the validity of the assumptions underlying the residual difference methodology have been called into question by butler 5 6 in this paper the theoretical underpinnings of the residual difference methodology are reexamined and an alternative theoretical framework for this methodology is suggested the new framework overcomes the shortcomings inherent in oaxaca s specification of the model and therefore provides a sound theoretical foundation for the residual difference decomposition

spatial versus social mismatch the aim of this paper is to provide a new mechanism based on social interactions explaining why distance to jobs can have a negative impact on workers labor market outcomes especially ethnic minorities building on granovetter s idea that weak ties are superior to strong ties for providing support in getting a job we develop a model in which workers who live far away from jobs choose to have less connections to weak ties because of the lack of good public transportation in the us it is costly both in terms of time and money to commute to business centers to meet other types of people who can provide other source of information about jobs if distant minority workers mainly rely on their strong ties who are more likely to be unemployed there is then little chance for them of escaping unemployment it is therefore the separation in both the social and physical space that prevents ethnic minorities from finding a job

space and unemployment the labor market effects of spatial mismatch the aim of this article is to analyze the effects of housing discrimination on the wages and unemployment rates of black workers the unemployment effect is first analyzed using a simple minimum wage model an efficiency wage model is then adopted in order to endogenize both unemployment and wages under both models suburban housing discrimination leads to a higher unemployment rate for blacks in the central city than in the suburbs under the efficiency wage model black wages are also lower in the center the analysis thus generates a link between unemployment and a seemingly unrelated phenomenon racial discrimination in the housing market

cash in your face the cost of racial and ethnic discrimination in housing abstract according to recent evidence racial and ethnic discrimination in housing continues to be widespread this paper estimates the cost this discrimination imposes on black and hispanic households building on the work of 4 the paper develops a housing search model and measures the cost of discrimination by its impact on the gain a household can achieve through housing search the cost of discrimination is then calculated for a representative sample of households the punchline black and hispanic households pay a discrimination tax of almost 4 000 on average every time they search for a house to buy

search in cities the aim of this paper is to expose the recent developments of urban search models which incorporate a land market into a search matching framework using these models we will be able to explain why unemployment rates vary within a city how city structure affects workers labor market outcomes how unemployment benefits and the job destruction rate affect the growth of cities and why workers living far away from job centers search less intensively and experience higher unemployment rates than those residing closer to jobs we are also able to explain why as compared to whites black workers spend more time commuting to work but travel less miles and search for jobs over a smaller area

the value of disease prevention vs treatment we present an integrated valuation model for diseases that are life threatening the model extends the standard one period value per statistical life model to three health prospects healthy ill and dead we derive willingness to pay values for prevention efforts that reduce a disease s incidence rate as well as for treatments that lower the corresponding health deterioration and mortality rates we find that the demand value of prevention always exceeds that of treatment people often overweight small risks and underweight large ones we use the rank dependent utility framework to explore how the demand for prevention and treatment alters when people evaluate probabilities in a non linear manner for incidence and mortality rates associated with common types of cancers the inverse s shaped probability weighting found in experimental studies leads to a significant increase in the demand values of both treatment and prevention

business service specialization and regional economic change perry m 1990 business service specialization and regional economic change reg studies 24 195 209 business services are experiencing rapid employment growth but there is uncertainty over the interpretation of this trend three surveys assess changes in the demand and supply of business services in the auckland region new zealand 1983 8 the data indicate that employment growth is real in that it is not caused by a transfer of activities that were formerly retained within other industries most manufacturing firms have adopted a pragmatic purchasing policy externalizing and internalizing services on an individual basis with increased internalization dominant for data processing and accountancy services a survey of business service suppliers indicates the greater importance of service exports demand from other services and product innovation as the basis for growth perry m 1990 la specialisation des services aux entrepri ses et l evolution regionale economique reg studies 24 195 209 les

minimum wage legislation in a dual labor market the paper studies the equilibrium effects of minimum wage legislation in an economy with coexisting primary and secondary labor markets owing to difficulties in monitoring relative wages and the threat of job loss play a functional role in eliciting effort from primary sector workers minimum wage laws hence affect the primary wage and employment level even if the law only binds in the secondary labor market furthermore interaction between the two sectors can also alter the secondary outcome relative to the standard analysis and has implications for participation decisions and for the level of unemployment

an economic evaluation of the war on cancer for decades the us public and private sectors have committed substantial resources towards cancer research but the societal payoff has not been well understood we quantify the value of recent gains in cancer survival and analyze the distribution of value among various stakeholders between 1988 and 2000 life expectancy for cancer patients increased by roughly four years and the average willingness to pay for these survival gains was roughly 322 000 improvements in cancer survival during this period created 23 million additional life years and roughly 1 9 trillion of additional social value implying that the average life year was worth approximately 82 000 to its recipient health care providers and pharmaceutical companies appropriated 5 19 of this total with the rest accruing to patients the share of value flowing to patients has been rising over time in terms of economic rates of return r d investments against cancer have been a success particularly from the patient s point of view

urban diversity and economic growth at the risk of some simplification it is possible to identify four periods of intense study of cities by economists each of these has led to an increased understanding of the economics of urban areas and the unique role played by cities in the modem economy the first of these periods occurred in the decade after world war i only about ten years after the truck revolutionized the transport of goods within urban areas this period included the first systematic empirical analysis of the forces affecting the location of firms and households within cities robert murray haig 1926 and a number of other microeconomists at columbia analyzed the spatial pattems of manufacturing activity in lower manhattan and in the rest of new york city haig jmd his colleagues devoted considerable attention to where things belong in an urban area p 402 providing the first systematic economic analysis of urban spatial structure for example they analyzed the garment industry concluding that it was destined by nature to disperse north of 14th street and predicting that it would follow the estabhshed spatial pattem of the cooperage barrelmaking industry standardization in size and quality of barrels had meant that identical barrels could be made throughout the new york metropolitan area even in new jersey and the introduction of the truck meant that they could be transported cheaply throughout the region and exported the second of these periods though not in chronological order began in the mid 1960s it formalized many of the insights about location incentives within urban areas which had been uncovered a half century before mixed them with the logic of heinrich von thunen s 1826 ancient theories about agricultural crops and land values and applied them to the hotisehold sector the works of william alonso 1964

who benefits from local oil and gas employment labor market composition in the oil and gas industry in texas and the rest of the united states abstract this paper examines local labor market outcomes from an oil and gas boom we examine two main outcomes the probability of employment and the log wages of workers employed outside the oil and gas industry for texas and the rest of the united states across gender race and ethnicity we find that men and women gain employment in the oil and gas industry during booms but such gains are much larger for men and are largest for black and hispanic men we also find positive income spillovers for workers in other industries that are similar in magnitude across demographic groups

workforce location and equilibrium unemployment in a duocentric economy with matching frictions this article examines unemployment disparities and efficiency in a duocentric city where workers are non uniformly distributed between the two job centers we introduce commuting costs and search matching frictions to deal with the spatial mismatch between workers and firms in a decentralized economy job seekers do not internalize a composition externality they impose on all the unemployed with symmetric job centers a change in the distribution of the workforce can lead to asymmetric equilibrium outcomes we calibrate the model for los angeles and chicago metropolitan statistical areas simulations suggest that changes in the workforce distribution have non negligible effects on unemployment rates wages and net output but cannot be the unique explanation of a substantial mismatch problem

the role of spatial and skill mismatches explaining long term unemployment in paris in the paris region one can observe simultaneously the coexistence of a large and dynamic job pool with long lasting periods of unemployment this paradox reveals the importance of skill and spati

measuring racial discrimination with fair housing audits caught in the act a survey technique called a fair housing audit provides a direct measure of racial discrimination in housing this paper examines the econometric issues raised by audit data measures the discrimination uncovered by a 1981 boston study and tests hypotheses about the causes of discrimination the estimated level of discrimination is high black housing seekers are told about 30 percent fewer available housing units than are whites the hypothesis tests indicate that the primary cause of this discrimination is that housing agents illegally promote their economic interests by catering to the racial prejudice of their current or potential white customers