We characterize an equilibrium development process driven by the interaction of the distribution of wealth with credit constraints and the distribution of entrepreneurial skills. When efficient entrepreneurs are relatively abundant, a “traditional” development process emerges in which the evolution of macroeconomic variables accord with empirical regularities and income inequality traces out a Kuznets curve. If, instead, efficient entrepreneurs are relatively scarce, the model generates long-run “distributional cycles” driven by the endogenous interaction between credit constraints, entrepreneurial efficiency and equilibrium wages.

We study the interactions among geographical mobility, unemployment, and home-ownership in an economy with heterogeneous locations, endogenous construction, and search frictions in the markets for both labour and housing. The decision of home-owners to accept job offers from other cities depends on how quickly they can sell their houses ( i.e. the houses' liquidity ), which in turn depends on local labour market conditions. Consequently, home-owners accept job offers from other cities at a lower rate than do renters, generating a link between home-ownership and unemployment both at the city level and in the aggregate. When calibrated to match aggregate U.S. statistics on mobility, housing, and labour flows, the model predicts that the effect of home-ownership on aggregate unemployment is small. When unemployment is high, however, changes in the rate of home-ownership can have economically significant effects.