【Trade Seminar】The Geography of Structural Transformation and Consequences for Social Mobility
2025/02/18
研討會日期 : 2025-02-18
時間 : 14:30
主講人 : Professor Kohei Takeda
地點 : Conference Room B110
主持人 : Professor Wen-Tai Hsu
演講者簡介 : Professor Kohei Takeda received his Ph.D. in Economics from the London School of Economics in 2022. He is currently an Assistant Professor at the National University of Singapore. His research interests are International Trade, Urban Economics and Economic Geography, and Inequality and Labor Market.
演講摘要 : Economies transform unevenly: San Jose's meteoric rise coexists with Detroit's slow decline. How can the structure of the economy across space and time influence patterns of economic mobility in different locations? To answer this question, I develop a dynamic overlapping generations model of economic geography where non-homothetic preferences and differential productivity growth lead to different rates of structural transformation across localities. Within localities, historical exposure to different industries creates persistence in the occupational choices of workers over generations, which can limit their upward mobility as workers may miss opportunities to move to productive locations. I calibrate the model using the metropolitan area data for the U.S. economy from 1980 to 2010. I quantitatively assess upward mobility in each location and explain its relation to local inequality (the Gatsby Curve). The counterfactual analysis reveals that structural transformation has substantial effects on a slowdown and explains heterogeneity in upward mobility across locations.
