Land Development, Search Frictions and City Structure

This paper analyzes the interactions between labor and housing (and land) markets in a city. We develop a monocentric city model involving land development and frictional unemployment and characterize the city's spatial configurations in equilibrium. To better understand the properties of equilibria, we implement a comparative steady state analysis. Further, we explore the effects of policies such as (a) a tax on land development to subsidize residents' consumption, (b) a subsidy to improve the transportation infrastructure financed by a lump-sum tax, and (c) income transfers from employed to unemployed workers. Finally, we provide an extension wherein the job arrival rate is endogenous and depends on distance to jobs