Marius Hees is a final-year PhD candidate in Economics at the Department of Applied Economics, Erasmus School of Economics, and the Tinbergen Institute. His research in urban, spatial, environmental, and development economics studies how market access, institutional capacity, and beliefs shape structural transformation, economic growth, and resilience to climate shocks.
Job market paper
Segmented Labor Markets and Structural Transformation
Most urban growth this century will happen in developing economies, but moving to a city does not guarantee a productive job. This paper develops a dynamic spatial general equilibrium model in which migrants first enter an informal queue before they can reach formal employment, and quantifies it for Ethiopia with novel geospatial and micro data. The speed at which cities absorb informal workers into formal jobs turns out to be a key driver of long-run development. Faster formalization raises real GDP by 13.1 percent and the urban formal labour share by 26 percentage points, while the urban population share barely changes. It also shapes how well economic policies work and how resilient the country is to climate shocks and conflict. Cities become engines of structural transformation not when workers arrive, but when labour markets absorb them into productive employment.
Link to paper (pdf)
CV
Download CV (pdf)
References
- Prof. Frank van Oort (advisor)
Erasmus University Rotterdam
vanoort@ese.eur.nl - Dr. Michiel Gerritse (advisor)
Erasmus University Rotterdam
gerritse@ese.eur.nl - Prof. Esteban Rossi-Hansberg
University of Chicago
erossi@uchicago.edu - Prof. Banu Demir Pakel
University of Oxford
banu.demirpakel@economics.ox.ac.uk
Contact
Email: hees@ese.eur.nl
Personal website: Marius Hees