Essays on urban wage premium, returns to internal migration and migrants' selection in Norway

Abstract

Even though there is plenty of space on this planet (the entire world population would take up approximately as much space as is the area of Norway - with the same population density as in Paris), we choose to live closer and closer together, in cities and metropolitan areas. About 60 thousand people worldwide become urban every day, and although urban areas currently occupy only 3 percent of the planet’s surface, more than half of the world’s population already lives there. Not even the declining travel costs, which basically changed our perception of what long distances mean, has been able to reverse or mitigate this trend in urbanization, and there is no evidence that anything is going to. But why do cities grow?