Mobility and unemployment.

Summary European employment summits emphasize that reducing unemployment requires reform of national employment policy. More than a third of the European Union's budget is devoted to its regional policy. European housing policies tend to favour access to home ownership. At first glance, these observations seem disconnected. Are they really? The aim of the thesis is to draw the attention of policy makers to both the importance of the geographical dimension of unemployment and the interaction between European labor and housing markets. Drawing on recent theoretical developments in labor economics, we answer the following two main questions: What determines regional unemployment differentials? What is the impact of residential status on workers' decisions and on labor market performance? The first part of the thesis is devoted to exploring the regional dimension of the labor market. We show that the restriction of interregional labor mobility as well as the "regional" heterogeneity of workers do explain the unemployment differential between two almost similar regions. A permanent regional productivity shock (simulated) leads to a reduction in unemployment in the prosperous region and a worsening of unemployment in the economically depressed region. In the second part of the thesis, we focus on the importance of residential status in workers' acceptance strategies. We find that homeowners favor job offers located near their homes and because of the very high transaction costs. Second, we consider an economy where homeowners have longer employment durations and shorter unemployment durations than renters. We find through an appropriate numerical simulation that an increase in home ownership improves labor market performance.