No. 605 - Job search in thick markets: Evidence from Italy

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by Sabrina Di AddarioDecember 2006

I analyze empirically the effects of both urban and industrial agglomeration on men’s and women’s search behavior and on the efficiency of matching. The analysis is based on on a unique panel data set from the Italian Labor Force Survey microdata, which covers 520 randomly drawn Local Labor Market Areas (66 per cent of the total) over the four quarters of 2002. I compute transition probabilities from non-employment to employment by jointly estimating the probability of searching and the probability of finding a job conditional on having searched, and I test whether these are affected by urbanization and/or industry localization. The main results indicate that both urbanization and industry localization raise job seekers’ chances of finding employment (conditional on having searched), but neither of them affects non-employed individuals’ search behavior.

Published in 2011 in: Journal of Urban Economics, v. 69, 3, pp. 303-318

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