Mobility of human capital: location of activities and convergence of European spaces.

Summary The theories of the new geographic economy predict a strengthening of spatial agglomerations with the intensification of economic integration. The issue at stake is therefore crucial for the European Union, which simultaneously displays the objectives of integration, global development and regional cohesion. Our work aims to deepen the theoretical framework and to evaluate empirically the risks of spatial divergence induced by the unification of European markets. This theoretical and empirical work is therefore based on three fields of analysis: spatial economics, international trade and growth. Our theoretical contributions lead us both to broaden the conclusions of geographical economy models and to put them into perspective. By introducing the dynamics of comparative advantage into a static model, we show that too little integration can also lead to economic polarization. Moreover, by coupling a spatial economy model to a growth dynamic based on human capital accumulation, we show the existence of a trade-off between the objectives of cohesion and maximum growth. Chapter 6 shows the empirical relevance of the cohesion/growth trade-off at a sufficiently fine level of spatial aggregation. This confirms the conclusions of chapters 2 and 3, which aim to calibrate all the parameters of the static model on European regional data. This original empirical work confirms the relevance of geographical economy models. However, by estimating the points at which equilibria break down, we show that the polarization of activities can only appear on a relatively small scale, notably because of the low mobility of European workers.