TDPE presents: Ferdinando Monte

Ferdinando Monte on Commuting, Migration and Local Employment Elasticities

Ferdinando Monte, Georgetown University

Many changes in the economic environment are local, including policy changes and infrastructure investments. The effect of these changes depends crucially on the ability of factors to move in response. Therefore, a key object of interest for policy evaluation and design is the elasticity of local employment to these changes in the economic environment. We develop a quantitative general equilibrium model that incorporates spatial linkages between locations in goods markets (trade) and factor markets (commuting and migration). We find substantial heterogeneity across locations in local employment elasticities. We show that this heterogeneity can be well explained with theoretically motivated measures of commuting flows.

Ferdinando Monte is Assistant Professor in Economics at Georgetown University, McDonough School of Business. His research focuses on the interplay between international trade, labor markets, and the microeconomics of the firm. His work has been published in the Journal of Political Economy and the Journal of International Economics. He holds a PhD from the University of Chicago.

Sponsored by Trade Development and Political Economy and the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs