Economic Theory and the Spatial Mismatch Hypothesis

Richard Arnott

Urban Studies, 1998, vol. 35, issue 7, 1171-1185

Abstract: The spatial mismatch hypothesis is that "Serious limitations on black residential choice, combined with the steady dispersal of jobs from central cities, are responsible for the low rates of employment and low earnings of Afro-American workers" (Kain, 1994, p. 371). Despite a wealth of related empirical studies, there has been little work formalising the hypothesis. This paper presents a trade-theoretic model, with three regions (downtown, suburbia and the rest of the world), four goods (a tradable home good, untraded services, a tradable foreign good and land), and two factors (skilled and unskilled workers). Blacks are constrained to live downtown but by incurring commuting costs can work in suburbia. Several exogenous changes are considered (for example a fall in transport costs between suburbia and the rest of the world) which may lead simultaneously to a fall in the downtown unskilled wage and to job suburbanisation, and which therefore provide a theoretical basis for the hypothesis.

Date: 1998
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (32)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1080/0042098984547 (text/html)

Related works:
Working Paper: Economic Theory and the Spatial Mismatch Hypothesis (1997)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:35:y:1998:i:7:p:1171-1185

DOI: 10.1080/0042098984547

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Urban Studies from Urban Studies Journal Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().