Essays On Local Labor Markets

Download or read book Essays on Local Labor Markets written by Federica Daniele and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thesis is composed of three essays in which I analyze how heterogeneity in productivity, either on the worker or on the firm side, interacts with the size of local labor markets and a set of outcomes of interest. In the first chapter, I analyze how the presence of firm-level uncertainty affects consumers and cities. I provide evidence supporting entrepreneurial risk-seeking in the non-tradable sector and that this has the strongest consequences for competition in large cities. I show how a reduction in uncertainty dampened entry and competition, and reduced the attractiveness of consumer cities. In the second chapter, I analyze the role of large firms for local labor market volatility. I provide empirical and narrative evidence supporting the existence of granularity- driven business cycles. I discuss the im-portance of size-dependent policies with respect to the systemic risk externality imposed by large firms on the economy. In the third chapter, I analyze how indi-vidual specialization shapes the urban wage premium. I investigate to what extent changes in specialization have accounted for the divergence in US workers loca-tion choices. I show that the evolution of specialization can explain the increase in between-cities wage inequality for high-skilled workers, while it counteracted the increase in the average skill premium.