We examine how interaction choices depend on the interplay of social and physical distance, and show that agents who are more central in the social network, or are located closer to the geographic center of interaction, choose higher levels of interactions in equilibrium. As a result, the level...

We show how small initial wealth differences between low skilled black and white workers can generate large differences in their labor-market outcomes. This even occurs in the absence of a taste for discrimination against blacks or exogenous differences in the distance to jobs. Because of the...

We investigate the racial gap in test scores between black and white students in Britain both in levels and differences across the school years. We find that there is an increasing racial gap in test scores between ages 7 and 11, and a decreasing one between ages 11 and 16. Using the richness of...

This paper studies whether structural properties of friendship networks affect individual outcomes in education. We first develop a model that shows that, at the Nash equilibrium, the outcome of each individual embedded in a network is proportional to her Katz-Bonacich centrality measure. This...

We develop an urban-search model in which firms post wages. When all workers are identical, the Diamond paradox holds, i.e. there is a unique wage in equilibrium even in the presence of search and spatial frictions. This wage is affected by spatial and labor costs. When workers differ according...

In this paper, location choices are driven by households (both blacks and whites) consciously choosing to trade off proximity to neighbors of similar racial backgrounds for proximity to jobs. Because of coordination failures in the location choices, multiple urban equilibria emerge. There is a...

spatial mismatch, endogenous location, natural experiment

Assuming that job search efficiency decreases with distance to jobs, workers’ location in a city depends on spatial elements such as commuting costs and land prices and on labour elements such as wages and the matching technology. In the absence of moving costs, we show that there exists a...

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...

We develop a model where information about jobs is essentially obtained through friends and relatives, i.e. strong and weak ties. Workers commute to a business center to work and to interact with other people. We find that housing prices increase with the level of social interactions in the city...