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The Todaro Paradox Revisited

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Author Info
Zenou, Yves () (The Research Institute of Industrial Economics)

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Abstract

The Todaro Paradox states that policies aimed at reducing urban unemployment are bound to backfire: they will raise rather than reduce urban unemployment. The aim of this paper is to reexamine this paradox in the context of efficiency wage and search-matching models. For that, we study a policy that consists in decreasing the urban unemployment benefit. In an efficiency wage model, we find that there is no Todaro paradox while this is not always true in a search-matching model since a decrease in the urban unemployment benefit can increase both urban employment and unemployment.

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Publisher Info
Paper provided by Research Institute of Industrial Economics in its series Working Paper Series with number 652.

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Length: 25 pages
Date of creation: 09 Nov 2005
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:0652

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Postal: Research Institute of Industrial Economics, Box 55665, SE-102 15 Stockholm, Sweden
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Related research
Keywords: Efficiency Wages; Search-Matching; Rural-Urban Migration; Policy;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:
D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search, Learning, and Information
J41 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Labor Contracts
J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, and Vacancies - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search
O15 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration

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References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Coulson, N Edward & Laing, Derek & Wang, Ping, 2001. "Spatial Mismatch in Search Equilibrium," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 19(4), pages 949-72, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Stark, Oded & Ranjan Gupta, Manash & Levhari, David, 1991. "Equilibrium urban unemployment in developing countries : Is migration the culprit?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 37(4), pages 477-482, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. Shapiro, Carl & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1984. "Equilibrium Unemployment as a Worker Discipline Device," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(3), pages 433-44, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. William T. Dickens & Lawrence F. Katz, 1987. "Interindustry Wage Differences and Industry Characteristics," NBER Working Papers 2014, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1976. "The Efficiency Wage Hypothesis, Surplus Labour, and the Distribution of Income in L.D.C.s," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 28(2), pages 185-207, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Banerjee, Biswajit, 1984. "Information flow, expectations and job search : Rural-to-urban migration process in India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(1-3), pages 239-257. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  7. Mohtadi, Hamid, 1989. "Migration and job search in a dualistic economy : A Todaro-Stigler synthesis," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 373-378. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  8. Yasuhiro Sato, 2004. "Migration, Frictional Unemployment, and Welfare-Improving Labor Policies," Journal of Regional Science, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 44(4), pages 773-793. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  9. Krueger, Alan B & Summers, Lawrence H, 1988. "Efficiency Wages and the Inter-industry Wage Structure," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(2), pages 259-93, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  10. Brueckner, Jan K. & Zenou, Yves, 1999. "Harris-Todaro models with a land market," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 317-339, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  11. Zarembka, Paul, 1970. "Labor Migration and Urban Unemployment: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 60(1), pages 184-86, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  12. Fields, Gary S., 1989. "On-the-job search in a labor market model : Ex ante choices and ex post outcomes," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 159-178, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  13. Neal, Derek, 1993. "Supervision and Wages across Industries," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 75(3), pages 409-17, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  14. Zenou, Yves & Smith, Tony E., 1995. "Efficiency wages, involuntary unemployment and urban spatial structure," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(4), pages 547-573, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  15. Mortensen, Dale T. & Pissarides, Christopher A., 1999. "New developments in models of search in the labor market," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 39, pages 2567-2627 Elsevier. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  16. Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1974. "Alternative Theories of Wage Determination and Unemployment in LDC'S: The Labor Turnover Model," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 88(2), pages 194-227, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  17. Moene, Karl Ove, 1988. "A reformulation of the Harris-Todaro mechanism with endogenous wages," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 387-390. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  18. Arellano, Jose-Paulo, 1981. "Do more jobs in the modern sector increase urban unemployment?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 241-247, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  19. Raimondos, Pascalis, 1993. "On the Todaro paradox," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 42(2-3), pages 261-267. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  20. Blomqvist, A. G., 1978. "Urban job creation and unemployment in LDCs : Todaro vs. Harris and Todaro," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 3-18, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  21. Barbara Petrongolo & Christopher A. Pissarides, 2001. "Looking into the Black Box: A Survey of the Matching Function," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 39(2), pages 390-431, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  22. Brueckner, Jan K, 1990. "Analyzing Third World Urbanization: A Model with Empirical Evidence," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 38(3), pages 587-610, April.
  23. Fields, Gary S., 1975. "Rural-urban migration, urban unemployment and underemployment, and job-search activity in LDCs," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 2(2), pages 165-187, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  24. Ortega, Javier, 2000. "Pareto-Improving Immigration in an Economy with Equilibrium Unemployment," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 110(460), pages 92-112, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
Full references

Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Mathan Satchi & Jonathan Temple, 2006. "Growth and labour markets in developing countries," CEDI Discussion Paper Series 06-12, Centre for Economic Development and Institutions(CEDI), Brunel University. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  2. Mathan Satchi & Jonathan Temple, 2009. "Labor Markets and Productivity in Developing Countries," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 12(1), pages 183-204, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  3. Wayne Edwards & Lee Huskey, 2008. "Job search with an external opportunity: an experimental exploration of the Todaro Paradox," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer, vol. 42(4), pages 807-819, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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