The effect of location on finding a job in the Paris region

Journal article: Do spatial differences in unemployment duration reflect residential sorting or a true local effect? Focusing on the 1300 municipalities of the Paris region, we apply a methodology that disentangles individual and unspecified municipality effects. Estimating a proportional hazard model stratified by municipality and recovering a survival function for each municipality purged of individual observed heterogeneity, we show that local and individual characteristics add up in their contribution to unemployment duration. While only 30% of the spatial disparities in unemployment duration are explained by individual characteristics, 70% of the remaining disparities are captured by local indicators, mainly correlated with residential segregation.

Author(s)

Laurent Gobillon, Thierry Magnac, Harris Selod

Journal
  • Journal of Applied Econometrics
Date of publication
  • 2011
Keywords
  • Unemployment
Pages
  • 1079-1112
Version
  • 1
Volume
  • 26