Essays on economic geography, migration and transport infrastructurg[Trois essais en géographie économique, migration et infrastructure routière]

This thesis studies the determinants of spatial variation and persistence of economic activity. The first chapter assesses the impact of the construction of the Interstate Highway System on the skill composition of metropolitan areas in the USA. Reduced-form estimates indicate that each additional highway caused an increase in the share of college-educated residents of 0.6 percentage points. Using a quantitative spatial model, the chapter also measures the welfare effects associated with a hypothetical removal of the interstate network. The effects are large for all skill groups. Graduates would nonetheless experience bigger losses in terms of welfare as they are more likely to relocate and incur the higher migration costs.The second chapter documents high persistence of regional development in England and Wales over the last 800 years. Using data on the establishment of medieval markets, the study highlights a strong correlation between commercial activity and agricultural productivity in the late Middle Ages. Places with successful medieval markets remain better developed nowadays. The evidence suggests that path dependence is the most likely explanation for the persistence of development over many centuries. The third chapter studies the relationship between asylum policies and international tensions. The main hypothesis is that European Union member states are more likely to admit refugees from states perceived as rivals rather than partners. Data on asylum applications from 1999 to 2017 bear this out. This result can rationalize a negative and robust correlation between asylum recognition rates and EU imports from the rest of the world.