This paper assesses the impact of public good provision on the spatial distribution of employment as predicted by a local labor market model that allows for commuting. Using local grammar school closures in East Germany after 2000 in a difference-in-differences estimation framework coupled with an entropy balancing strategy, we find that the school closures triggered a decline in the number of (employed) residents by 11%. The number of local employees, in contrast, decreases by just 5% as in-commuters do not respond to the school closures. Moreover, we find – as predicted – that the school closures reduce house prices and that the share of land used for housing declines, albeit only to a small extent.

本文评估了允许通勤的当地劳动力市场模型所预测的公共物品供给对就业空间分布的影响。使用2000年后东德的当地语法学校关闭情况，在差异估计框架中加上熵平衡策略，我们发现学校关闭导致（就业）居民人数下降了11％。相比之下，由于通勤者对学校停课没有反应，当地雇员人数仅减少了5％。而且，我们发现-如预期的那样-学校关闭降低了房价，并且用于住房的土地份额下降了，尽管幅度很小。