Africa's urban population is on the rise, and it is often feared that migrants are a direct source of urban underdevelopment under the premise that they are poorly integrated into urban labor markets. This study examines the validity of this premise using data from six African countries. It...

We document that large cities were instrumental in shaping women's work and family outcomes in the early 20th century. We focus on migrants to Stockholm, Sweden's largest city, using representative, linked census data. Female migrants to Stockholm saw persistent changes in work and family...

Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) is increasingly recognized as an effective urban planning strategy, aiming for the harmonious development of urban spatial structures and rail transit systems, thus fostering sustainability. This study addresses the limitations of existing research in...

This study examines the determinants of female labour force participation (FLFP) and female wage employment (FWE) of urban women in four SSA countries: Benin, Senegal, Uganda and Zambia. Using extensive micro-level data and a unified empirical framework, we investigate the multitude of...

We examine sorting behavior across metropolitan areas by skill over individuals' life cycles. We show that high-skill workers disproportionately sort into high-amenity areas, but do so relatively early in life. Workers of all skill levels tend to move towards lower-amenity areas during their...

This study investigates the relationship between the urban wage premium and employer concentration using Swedish full population employer-employee data. Departing from an AKM modeling framework to distinguish worker from firm specific heterogeneity - a measure of rent-sharing - we then measure...

This paper investigates how human capital concentration in cities is associated with working hours across different worker groups, an important but understudied dimension of urban agglomeration effects. Using microdata from the American Community Survey covering 240 metropolitan statistical...

We examine sorting behavior across metropolitan areas by skill over individuals' life cycles. We show that high-skill workers disproportionately sort into high-amenity areas, but do so relatively early in life. Workers of all skill levels tend to move towards lower-amenity areas during their...

This paper studies how demographics affect aggregate labor market power, the urban wage premium and the spatial concentration of population, I develop a quantitative spatial model in which labor market competitiveness depends on the demographic composition of the local workforce, Using highly...

India's GDP per capita grew threefold between 1987 and 2019, coinciding with rapid urbanization. During this period, female labor force participation (FLFP) declined significantly. Consistent with this observation, we document a pronounced urban-rural participation gap, where FLFP is higher in...

In the context of technological progress and economic transition, the urban spatial structure has consistently undergone dynamic evolution. However, the trajectories of polycentric patterns display significant national and regional variations. It is crucial to examine the dynamic evolution of...

India's GDP per capita grew threefold between 1987 and 2019, coinciding with rapid urbanization. During this period, female labor force participation (FLFP) declined significantly. Consistent with this observation, we document a pronounced urban-rural participation gap, where FLFP is higher in...

Low-income individuals in developing countries are often inadequately prepared for employment because they lack key labor market skills. We explore how employability and wage outcomes are related to English language skills in a novel, large-scale randomized field experiment conducted in Delhi,...

This study estimates union wage premiums and analyzes the influence of trade unions on the wage gap between rural migrants and local urban workers in China by employing the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition method based on national longitudinal survey data from the China Family Panel Studies...

This paper describes the state of informal sector work in urban Sub-Saharan Africa, using household surveys from 26 countries representing 61 percent of the population of Sub-Saharan Africa and firm surveys from three countries. Five main conclusions emerge. First, the urban informal sector is...

Statistical evidence from 58 countries shows that although people in rural areas are more likely to be in employment than those in urban ones, they also tend to have jobs that can put them at risk of experiencing inadequate labour protection as well as low pay. In particular, rural workers are...

This paper examines how the shift towards working from home during and after the Covid-19 pandemic shapes the way how labor market and locality choices interact. For our analysis, we combine large administrative data on employment biographies in Germany and a new working from home potential...

We examine the residential segregation of workers and the unemployed in the 80 largest cities in Germany. Drawing on a large set of geo-referenced data for the period from 2000 until 2015, we are able to study the within-city distribution of unemployment in unprecedented detail. We document a...

China's Industrial Transfer Policy (ITP) is a novel place-based development policy of unprecedented scale. The policy targets a set of inland cities aiming to i) grow them in size and ii) restructure them into manufacturing hubs. These cities would eventually relieve pressure in China's coastal...

The development of urban digital platforms has changed its entrepreneurial environment and affected regional innovation vitality. We calculated the development index of digital platforms of 294 prefecture-level cities in China between 2013 and 2020 using the principal component analysis method....

This paper examines how the shift towards working from home during and after the Covid-19 pandemic shapes the way how labor market and locality choices interact. For our analysis, we combine large administrative data on employment biographies in Germany and a new working from home potential...

This paper provides estimates that lead to better U.S. labor market definitions. Current U.S. labor market definitions-for example, metropolitan areas and commuting zones-are unsatisfactory because they are ad hoc and usually do not correspond to commonly used local planning areas. This paper...

In this study, we investigate the extent and mechanisms of gender-based discrimination in urban Ecuador's hiring practices, a critical issue for understanding persistent gender disparities and informing policy. Using an artifactual field experiment with 392 recruiters evaluating observationally...

We delineate metropolitan areas (MAs) in the Philippines using cellphone user flow data to proxy for daily commutes. The exercise identifies a number of large MAs that are not officially recognized, and different spatial extents for the three officially designated MAs. The urban system aligns...

While India's low female labor force participation in urban areas is often attributed to its demographic and labor market characteristics, education, and cultural aspects, attention is not paid to the labor market opportunity structure limiting women's labor market participation. We examine the...

We examine the economic geography of gender wage gaps to understand the role that location plays in gender earning differences. Using panelised administrative data for the universe of French workers, our findings indicate that women benefit relatively more from density than men, with an urban...

We investigate the employment effects of living in affordable housing. We develop a unique administrative data set of labor market biographies linked to affordable housing projects in five German cities. This allows us to follow individuals in affordable housing over almost 20 years. The funding...

Low-income individuals in developing countries are often inadequately prepared for employment because they lack key labor market skills. We explore how employability and wage outcomes are related to English language skills in a novel, large-scale randomized field experiment conducted in Delhi,...

This study examines the relationship between urbanization and structural transformation in Lagos. Specifically, the study focuses on spatial distribution of economic activities, and the patterns and drivers of, as well as constraints to, structural transformation in the city of Lagos from a...

"Much of the literature on migration to cities examines migration in a nonspatial fashion or focuses on rural-urban migration to the largest, most visible cities. This volume fills a gap by focusing on migration to secondary cities, coming up with a compelling set of facts. Overall, the volume...

In this paper, we study consumer search in a housing market subject to objective frictions induced by intermediaries and psychological frictions intrinsic to in tenants themselves. Using rental data from a leading real estate brokerage company during 2016 and 2018, we find a unimodal...

We use panel data from 30 provinces of China over the period 2002-2019 to examine the effect of rising urban real estate prices on employment. Empirical results, using instrumental variable estimation, show that rising urban real estate prices have a negative and statistically significant impact...

Evidence from countries around the world suggests that rural-urban wage gaps are not solely explained by skill differences. Using data for Australia, the current study reaches the same conclusion; there is positive relationship between local economy size and local wages. Workers in Australian...

This paper examines spatial allocation and urban wage premiums of skills in China by leveraging a comprehensive dataset that includes several waves of population censuses and nationally representative surveys. Our finding indicates an increasing concentration of occupations requiring high levels...