Competing for opportunity:Transport infrastructures and localized unemployment

Guillaume Chapelle and Morgan Ubeda

No 2025-01, THEMA Working Papers from THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise

Abstract: Unemployment rates vary significantly across neighborhoods and worker types, yet the role of transport infrastructures in explaining these disparities remains unexplored. We propose a quantitative urban model with frictional unemployment and heterogeneous workers where better connections between neighborhoods might exacerbate unemployment disparities due to competition among workers. We document this phenomenon using a difference-indifferences to estimate the impact of the creation of the Paris Regional Express Rail (RER). We find that the project increased the unemployment rate of low-skilled workers, but not of their high-skilled counterparts. In Paris, differences in job market access reduce unemployment inequalities between college graduates and the rest of the population.

Keywords: Urban unemployment; Transport Networks; Spatial Mismatch; Unemployment dispersion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: R21 R31 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo and nep-tre
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Working Paper: Competing for opportunity: Transport infrastructures and localized unemployment (2025)
Working Paper: Competing for opportunity: Transport infrastructures and localized unemployment (2025)
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