Suchergebnisse

In this dissertation, I examine the causes and consequences of spatial inequality. Furthermore, I present the most current knowledge on how quantitative spatial models can serve as a tool to analyze the distribution of economic activity across space. In a collection of research papers, I investigate in particular (i) how market integration and fiscal policy shape the spatial allocation of economic activity, and (ii) how urbanization affects wage inequality. The first and second essays are joint works with Tobias Seidel and Jens Suedekum. In the first essay, we use a quantitative model to study the implications of European integration for welfare and migration flows. The model suggests that the dismantling of trade barriers in Europe has led to moderate welfare gains and a more homogeneous spatial distribution of economic activity. We also look ahead in time and evaluate different scenarios for the Brexit. We find moderate welfare losses for the UK and continental Europe. In the most unfavorable scenario, about 500,000 people would leave the UK in the long run. The second essay evaluates the importance of governmental activity for the spatial distribution of economic activity. We use a general equilibrium model with fiscal equalization to show that regional transfers are quantitatively important for understanding the spatial allocation of economic activity. Using data from Germany, we show that the abolition of fiscal equalization would lead to a welfare gain implying sizeable migration responses of individuals. In the third essay, I identify the role of urbanization for wage inequality. A decomposition of the change in wage inequality suggests that urbanization has contributed about one-third to the growth of wage inequality in (West) Germany between 1985 and 2009.

We assess the role of local public goods provision for gender gaps in the labour market. We find that higher fiscal revenues of local governments are associated with decreasing gender employment gaps in German labour market areas because it decreases labour supply for male workers at a higher rate than for female workers. The results are robust when we include instrumental variables that address the endogeneity of local public goods provision. To assess the impact of fiscal transfers across regions on gender gaps we quantify a spatial general equilibrium model with multiple types of workers, who are differently affected by local public goods provision in their labour supply decision. We find that transfers reduce disparities across regions. This goes along with smaller gender gaps in employment in treated regions because female workers are disproportionately pulled into market work and regions with low productivity.

Post-disaster aid aims to relieve affected communities, but excessive bailouts may Encourage economic activity to remain in exposed areas. We provide new empirical and theoretical evidence on the spatial consequences of post-disaster policies related to political motives. Using the exogenous variation in the timing of natural disasters, we show that hurricanes close to Election Day lead to increased post-disaster efforts at the local level and result in increased population sorting into the impacted areas. To quantify and comprehend the implications of this new sorting pattern for the aggregate economy, we introduce the relationship between electoral cycles and post-disaster policies as a new feature in a dynamic spatial general equilibrium model. We show that households respond to current post-disaster policies by sorting in hazard-prone coastal areas. Under the assumption of no climate change, current post-disaster policies improve aggregate welfare at the expense of overall GDP and productivity losses.