Birds of a feather cannot always flock together : essays on the socio-economic impacts of local diversity[Qui se ressemble ne s'assemble pas toujours : essais sur les effets socio-économiques de la diversité locale]

Diversity reflects the extent to which members of a given community share different characteristics, usually pertaining to ethnicity, socio-economic status or even culture. As a result of trade development and economic integration, modern societies have to cope with increasing levels of diversity, both in terms of origins and social statuses. The purpose of this dissertation is to assess the social and economic impacts of local diversity. More precisely, this thesis shows how neighborhood level diversity affects individuals' living conditions and employment prospects. This work contributes to the existing literature in three ways: it examines unexplored issues at a very local level, gives new insights about the underlying mechanisms and provides new methods to address the endogeneity issue. Chapter 1 shows that diversity in terms of origins has a negative effect on the quality of local public goods, due to vandalism, not deterred by social policing, and due to collective action failure to ensure effective property management. However, it has no robust effect on public safety. Chapter 2 reveals that the effect of unemployment on crime has a spatial dimension: for economic crimes the effect of unemployment rate in surrounding neighborhoods is stronger than that of the immediate neighborhood, while the reverse holds for vandalism. Chapter 3 shows that people living in a diverse neighborhood face lower employment prospects, but that this effect is more related to cultural (e.g. language) diversity than to ethnic diversity. Chapter 4 develops a model rationalizing the fact that ethnic minorities turn to the informal economy in response to adverse labor market conditions.