Donald Davis, from Columbia University, will present his research.

Labor Market Polarization and the Great Urban Divergence

Labor Market Polarization and The Great Urban Divergence∗Donald R. Davis Eric Mengus Tomasz MichalskiNovember 3, 2022AbstractLabor market polarization is among the most important features in recent decades ofadvanced country labor markets. Yet key spatial aspects of this phenomenon remain under-explored. We develop four key facts that document the universality of polarization, a city-sizedifference in the shock magnitudes, a skew in the types of middle-paid jobs lost, and the roleof polarization in the great urban divergence. Existing theories cannot account for these facts.Hence we develop a parsimonious theoretical account that does so by integrating elementsfrom the literatures on labor market polarization and systems of cities with heterogeneouslabor in spatial equilibrium.