The RFBerlin Applied Economics Seminar series brings leading researchers to Berlin to share their latest work and engage with our community. We are pleased to welcome Anaïs Fabre for this session, where she will share her work.
Anaïs Fabre is Assistant Professor of Economics at the Department of Economics and the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University and a Research Affiliate at the RFBerlin Network. She was previously an Assistant Professor of Economics at LMU Munich and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Fiscal Studies. She holds a PhD in Economics from the Toulouse School of Economics. Her research focuses on labour economics and econometrics, with a particular interest in inequalities in access to higher education.
Event Topic:
The Geography of Higher Education and Spatial Inequalities
This paper studies how the geography of the higher education market shapes spatial inequalities. Using data on the universe of college applicants and programs in France, I document that higher education options are unevenly distributed across space while students’ demand is highly sensitive to geographic proximity. To quantify how these features shape regional gaps in educational attainment and spatial skill sorting, I build a dynamic model linking equilibrium sorting on the higher education market and location choices of entry-level workers. I show that students’ and programs’ preferences can be identified and estimated from data on choices and equilibrium outcomes. Thirteen percent of the regional variance in educational attainment is explained by the interaction of the uneven distribution of colleges and mobility frictions. The latter, however, insulate low-opportunity areas from an outflow of workers in the long-run, mitigating regional inequality. I show that low-opportunity areas could invest in the education of their local labor force while limiting out-migration by combining mobility scholarships with incentives to return.
Event Details:
Date: 3 December 2026
Time: 14:00–15:15
Participation: the seminar is open to the public and targeted to an academic audience.
If you have any questions or need further information, feel free to contact us using the form or email us at [email protected]
