Essays on geographic, sectoral and intra-sectoral mobility in periods of structural change: the role of human capital, social capital and openness to trade.

Summary Structural change is a necessary process if we want to improve welfare in our economy. It also generates a variation in relative prices, which implies a reallocation of resources between productive units. But factor mobility can be painful in the short run. This thesis addresses this issue in the context of labor markets and aims at answering a number of questions such as: How does an economy adjust in periods of structural change? What are the costs? Is the associated labor reallocation process worth it? Does the gain from change exceed the cost? The thesis consists of four essays. It has recently been shown that opening up to international trade leads to the destruction of the least productive firms and the expansion of the most important ones. The first chapter aims to determine the net impact on the level of employment of this reallocation. The second chapter analyses the effect on aggregate welfare and its determinants. The third chapter considers another type of structural change: it has often been argued that to reduce unemployment in Europe it is necessary to increase geographic labor mobility. This chapter analyzes the costs of labor mobility in terms of local social capital (e.g. friends, family, neighbors). The latter refers to a type of social capital that depreciates if the individual holding it is reallocated to another geographical point. Finally, the last chapter studies the impact of growth on the quality of jobs in terms of skills that correspond to the education of agents.