Did public wage premiums fuel agglomeration in LDCs?

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: McCormick, B; Wahba, J
• 署名单位: University of Southampton
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/S0304-3878(02)00101-3
• 发表日期: 2003
• 页码: 349-379
• 关键词: public sector; agglomeration; migration; Developing country

摘要

This paper develops the idea that wage premium jobs cause nearby agglomeration. We show that spatial mobility costs enable wage premiums to cause agglomeration, whereas previous studies crucially assume that wage premium jobs are allocated to favor nearby residents (Harris-Todaro (H-T)). This extends the idea to LDCs, such as Egypt, Ethiopia and Kenya, which have had centralized job allocation mechanisms that do not give a search advantage to locating near public jobs. We show that high public jobs' growth in Egypt has altered regional mobility and population shares in a way that is consistent with agglomeration due to wage premiums and mobility frictions. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.