Local Labour Markets, Job Matching and Urban Location

Jacques Thisse, Yves Zenou and Jan Brueckner

No 2612, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: We present a new way of modelling local labour markets by linking the space of workers' skills and the physical space of cities. The key lesson of our analysis is that firms exploit workers in these two spaces by setting wages that are below the competitive level. The degree of monopsony power depends on the elasticity of the firm's labour pool, which is inversely related to the costs workers incur in commuting and acquiring skills. Our analysis thus shows how socioeconomic ghettos emerge as workers with poor skill matches are also those who incur the highest commuting costs.

Keywords: System of cities; Imperfect labour markets; Spatial mismatch (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J42 J61 R14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2000-11
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP2612 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Journal Article: Local Labor Markets, Job Matching, and Urban Location (2002)
Working Paper: Local labor markets, job matching, and urban location (2002)
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:cpr:ceprdp:2612

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP2612

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().