marshall s scale economies using panel data this paper estimates plant level production functions for machinery and high tech industries that allow for scale externalities from other plants in the same industry locally and from the scale or diversity of local economic activity outside the own industry the paper finds that the count of other own industry plants representing a count of local information spillover sources has strong productivity effects in high tech but not machinery industries single plant firms both benefit more from and generate greater external benefits than corporate plants given their greater reliance on external environments on dynamic externalities high tech single plant firms benefit also from the scale of past own industry activity i find little evidence of economies from the diversity or scale of local economic activity outside the own industry

measuring urban economic density agglomeration economies are at the heart of urban economics driving the existence and extent of cities and are central to structural transformation and the urbanization process this paper evaluates the use of different measures of economic density in assessing urban agglomeration effects by examining how well they explain household income differences across cities and neighborhoods in six african countries the paper examines simple scale and density measures and more nuanced ones that capture the extent of clustering within cities the evidence suggests that more nuanced measures attempting to capture within city differences in the extent of clustering do no better than a simple density measure in explaining income differences across cities at least for the current degree of accuracy in measuring clustering however simple city scale measures such as total population are inferior to density measures and to some degree misleading the analysis finds large household income premiums from being in bigger and particularly denser cities over rural areas in africa indicating that migration pull forces remain very strong in the structural transformation process moreover the marginal effects of increases in urban density on household income are very large with density elasticities of 0 6 in addition to strong city level density effects the analysis finds strong neighborhood effects for household incomes overall city density and density of the neighborhood matter

networking off madison avenue known for the key role that networking plays in the operation of agencies where interviews suggest that informal networking among close neighbors is critical to many agencies success networking involves the exchange of ideas and while there is no market place for these ideas exchanges may be more deliberate rather than just marshall s 1890 mysteries of the air type of information spillovers this paper examines the effect on productivity of having more near advertising agency neighborhoods and hence better opportunities for meetings and exchange within manhattan we will show that there is extremely rapid spatial decay in the benefits of having more near neighbors even in the close quarters of southern manhattan a finding that is new to the empirical literature and indicates our understanding of scale externalities is still very limited the finding indicates that having a high density of commercial establishments is important in enhancing local productivity an issue in lucas and rossi hansberg 2002 where within business district spatial decay of spillovers plays a key role we will argue also that in manhattan advertising agencies trade off the higher rent costs of being in bigger clusters nearer centers of action against the lower rent costs of operating on the fringes away from high concentrations of other agencies introducing the idea of trade offs immediately suggests heterogeneity is involved we will show that higher quality agencies are the ones willing to pay more rent to locate in greater size clusters specifically because they benefit more from networking while all 1 the research in this paper was conducted while the authors were census bureau research associates at the boston research data center research results and conclusions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily indicate concurrence by the census bureau the paper has been screened to ensure that no confidential data are revealed we acknowledge helpful comments from andrew foster on aspects of the paper and from participants in seminars at brown university lse and the university of toronto

race specific urban wage premia and the black white wage gap abstract we establish a novel empirical fact about the black white wage gap looking both across and within metropolitan areas increasing city size or employment density is associated with a larger black white wage gap the estimated effects represent between 9 and 18 of recent estimates of the black white wage gap using a variety of techniques we demonstrate that our within city relationship is unlikely to be driven by racial differences in unobserved ability finally we present evidence suggestive of a role for race specific networks in explaining these differences in the black white wage gap

compact cities and economic productivity in mexico this paper examines the contingent nature of agglomeration economies existing empirical evidence that compact cities are more productive is mostly from countries and regions with highly productive

how local are spatial density externalities neighbourhood effects in agglomeration economies andersson m klaesson j and larsson j p how local are spatial density externalities neighbourhood effects in agglomeration economies regional studies the geographic scale at which density externalities operate is analysed in this paper using geocoded high resolution data the analysis is focused on exogenously determined within city squares neighbourhoods of 1 km2 the analysis confirms a city wide employment density wage elasticity and an economically significant density wage elasticity at the neighbourhood level that attenuate sharply with distance panel estimates over 20 years suggest a neighbourhood density wage elasticity of about 3 while the city wide elasticity is about 1 it is argued that the neighbourhood level is more prone to capture learning e g through knowledge and information spillovers this interpretation is supported by 1 significantly larger neighbourhood elasticities for university educated workers and 2 sharper attenuation with distance of the effect for such wo

skills in the city this paper documents the allocation of skills across cities and estimates the impact of agglomeration on the hedonic prices of worker skills we find that large cities are more skilled than are small cities but only to a modest degree we also show that the increase in productivity associated with agglomeration as measured by the urban wage premium is larger for workers with stronger cognitive and people skills in contrast motor skills and physical strength are not rewarded to a greater degree in large cities urbanization thus enhances thinking and social interaction rather than physical abilities these results are robust to a variety of estimation strategies including using nlsy variables that control for worker quality and a worker msa fixed effect specification

geography industrial organization and agglomeration this paper makes two contributions to the empirical literature on agglomeration economies first the paper uses a unique and rich database in conjunction with mapping software to measure the geographic extent of agglomerative externalities previous papers have been forced to assume that agglomeration economies are club goods that operate at a metropolitan scale second the paper tests for the existence of organizational agglomeration economies of the kind studied qualitatively by saxenian 1994 this is a potentially important source of increasing returns that previous empirical work has not considered results indicate that localization economies attenuate rapidly and that industrial organization affects the benefits of agglomeration

intraurban wage gradients evidence by race gender occupational class and sector abstract a general functional form is used to estimate intraurban wage gradients for various groups of workers with 1980 data from the philadelphia detroit and boston metropolitan areas as predicted by the standard monocentric model of urban land use the following results are obtained for most groups of white workers negative and statistically significant wage gradients steeper wage gradients for higher wage earners and an increase in the steepness of wage gradients as the cbd is approached positive wage gradients are not found for black workers despite the fact that suburban employers hire large numbers of these workers who reside within the central city this result is taken as support for the hypothesis that blacks have been disadvantaged by job suburbanization and continued housing market segregation

the economic implications of housing supply in this essay we review the basic economics of housing supply and the functioning of us housing markets to better understand the distribution of home prices household wealth and the spatial distribution of people across markets we employ a cost based approach to gauge whether a housing market is delivering appropriately priced units specifically we investigate whether market prices roughly equal the costs of producing the housing unit if so the market is well functioning in the sense that it efficiently delivers housing units at their production cost the gap between price and production cost can be understood as a regulatory tax the available evidence suggests but does not definitively prove that the implicit tax on development created by housing regulations is higher in many areas than any reasonable negative externalities associated with new construction we discuss two main effects of developments in housing prices on patterns of household wealth and on the incentives for relocation to high wage high productivity areas finally we turn to policy implications

search sorting and urban agglomeration studies have suggested that urban agglomeration enhances productivity by facilitating the firm worker matching process this article develops a model that formalizes this notion and demonstrates that when firm capital and worker skill are complementary in production urban agglomeration will tend to generate more efficient yet segregated matches as a result not only will local market size be positively associated with average productivity it will also generate greater between skill group wage inequality and a higher expected return to skill acquisition recent data from the counties and metropolitan areas of the united states is consistent with each of these implications

fares service levels and demographics what determines commuter rail ridership in the long run abstract using panel data covering a 13 year period this paper examines the roles of transportation policy and demographic changes in determining rail ridership the paper presents a model which allows identification of long run responses of ridership to changes in prices and service independently of exogenous shocks to ridership caused by demographic factors long run price and service elasticities are estimated to be almost twice as large as short run elasticities after controlling for transportation prices and service levels demographic variables contribute little to explaining residual differences in ridership to the extent that demographic changes are driven by transportation variables these effects are captured in the estimated long run elasticities

school board politics school district size and the bargaining power of teachers unions this paper presents a public choice theory of the bargaining power of teachers unions the theory predicts that the power of the unions rises with the size of a district the theory is tested by examining the relationship between district size and various bargaining outcomes for a sample of 771 california school districts in 1999 2000 as hypothesized teachers salaries rise and the ratio of teachers per pupil falls with increasing district size the paper also considers several alternative explanations for these results

industrial specialization and the returns to labor comparative advantage and the division of labor make geographic concentration of production within a nation profitable and cause many cities to be specialized in one or a few main industries specialized cities however suffer greater unemployment risk the theory of compensating wage differentials predicts that individuals living in more specialized cities will be compensated in the form of higher wage rates we study the effects of specialization on wages and unemployment in the united states we find evidence of compensating wage differentials that firms choose to locate in more specialized higher wage cities is indirect evidence of the gains to specialization

competition over high income workers job growth and access to labour in atlanta access to a large labour pool labour pooling leads to local economic concentrations through agglomeration economies however these concentrations may be self limiting by reducing labour availability through competition over high skill workers this paper examines whether labour pooling and labour availability of workers with different incomes account for local job growth in the atlanta metropolitan area between 2000 and 2006 workers income is employed to account for the human capital of workers including education and skills it is found that the availability of high income workers is the only positive significant factor for job growth and the spatial size of the effect is larger than the traffic analysis zone neighbourhood scale in contrast no labour pooling indicators show a positive association with job growth the finding casts doubt on labour pooling effects at the intraregional level and suggests avenues for further research on local area agglomeration economies

productivity gains from geographic concentration of human capital evidence from the cities abstract based on recent theoretical developments the argument is made that the average level of human capital is a local public good cities with higher average levels of human capital should therefore have higher wages and higher land rents after conditioning on the characteristics of individual workers and dwellings this prediction is supported by data for standard metropolitan statistical areas smsas in the united states where the smsa average levels of formal education and work experience are used as proxies for the average level of human capital the alternative explanations of omitted smsa variables and self selection are evaluated an estimate of the effect of an additional year of average education on total factor productivity is computed

agglomeration accessibility and productivity evidence for large metropolitan areas in the us this paper estimates the productivity gains from agglomeration economies for a sample of the largest metropolitan areas in the united states using measures of urban agglomeration based on employment density and employment accessibility the latter is a more accurate measure of economic proximity and allows testing for the spatial decay of agglomeration effects with increasing travel time we find that the productivity gains from urban agglomeration are consistent between measures with elasticity values between 0 07 and 0 10 the large majority of the productivity gains occur within the first 20 minutes and do not appear to exhibit significant nonlinearities

people places and earnings differentials in scotland abstractpeople places and earnings differentials in scotland regional studies this paper investigates the contribution of people and place effects to earnings differentials in scotland using individual and regional data the main sources of differentials are attributed to workers characteristics people effects particularly academic and vocational qualifications followed by occupational and industrial affiliations on the other hand differences in the attributes of local area labour markets place effects explain only a small part of individual earnings differentials the most relevant spatial attribute is local area human capital the findings suggest that people based policies are likely to be more effective at improving workers earnings prospects than place based policies

causes of sprawl a portrait from space we study the extent to which u s urban development is sprawling and what determines differences in sprawl across space using remote sensing data to track the evolution of land use on a grid of 8 7 billion 30 30 meter cells we measure sprawl as the amount of undeveloped land surrounding an average urban dwelling the extent of sprawl remained roughly unchanged between 1976 and 1992 although it varied dramatically across metropolitan areas ground water availability temperate climate rugged terrain decentralized employment early public transport infrastructure uncertainty about metropolitan growth and unincorporated land in the urban fringe all increase sprawl

wage premia in employment clusters how important is worker heterogeneity this article tests whether the correlation between wages and concentration of employment can be explained by unobserved worker productivity residential location is used as a proxy for unobserved productivity and average commute time to workplace is used to test whether location based productivity differences are compensated away by longer commutes analyses using confidential data from the 2000 decennial census find that estimates of agglomeration wage premia within metropolitan areas are robust to comparisons within residential location and that estimates do not persist after controlling for commuting costs suggesting that the productivity differences across locations are due to location not individual unobservables

agglomeration spillovers and wage and housing cost gradients across the urban hierarchy abstract the tyranny of distance in terms of its effect on median earnings and housing costs is examined for rural and urban u s counties first we develop a series of distance metrics for an area s remoteness from multiple tiers of the urban hierarchy second we consider geographical access of buyers and sellers through market potential measures typical of those used in empirical studies of the new economic geography we estimate penalties of about 5 to 9 for median earnings and 12 to 17 for housing costs for area remoteness from the combined tiers of the urban hierarchy differences in market potential also influence factor prices but these effects generally are smaller than those produced by urban hierarchy distances thus it appears that empirical tests of new economic geography models need to consider sources of agglomeration spillovers beyond aggregate market potential

urban wages and labor market agglomeration abstract using the 5 public use micro sample of the 1990 u s census we find that observationally equivalent workers in the manufacturing sector earn higher wages when they are in urban labor markets that have a larger share of national or metropolitan employment in their same occupation and industry groups quantitatively the effect is large with an elasticity measured at the means of between 1 2 and 3 6 for these effects we interpret the willingness of firms to pay more for equivalent workers in dense markets as evidence of an agglomeration economy in urban labor

agglomeration and clusters tools and insights from coagglomeration patterns geographic clusters have received first order policy attention despite our limited academic knowledge about them i explain how coagglomeration patterns of industries can inform the analysis of clusters by allowing us to better delineate them to explore the causal mechanisms underlying them and to more finely assess their impact on various economic outcomes

separating urban agglomeration economies in consumption and production abstract in this paper we estimate the net agglomeration economies on the consumption side as well as the production side using japanese city based data from 1992 when interregional net migration nearly ceased we show that doubling city size increases the nominal wage by approximately 10 but decreases the real wage by approximately 7 12 the 10 increase of the nominal wage is attributed to the productivity increase in production activities while the 7 12 decrease of the real wage is a compensation for the net agglomeration economies which are the benefits from product variety minus the costs of congestion in other words city bigness not only enhances the productivity of firms but also brings net agglomeration economies to households in this way we separate the net agglomeration economies on the production side from those on the consumption side

an architectural framework for global talent management a unique characteristic of the multinational corporation is that it comprises a geographically dispersed and culturally differentiated workforce that embodies both firm specific and location specific human capital this article takes an architectural approach to describe how different types of human capital develop from the individual level to the unit level and then to the firm level in order to build a talent portfolio for the multinational corporation depending on the company s strategy multidomestic meganational transnational different configurations of the talent portfolio tend to be emphasized and integrated to achieve competitive advantage implications for theory and practice are discussed and a research agenda is introduced

the economics of density evidence from the berlin wall this paper develops a quantitative model of internal city structure that features agglomeration and dispersion forces and an arbitrary number of heterogeneous city blocks the model remains tractable and amenable to empirical analysis because of stochastic shocks to commuting decisions which yield a gravity equation for commuting flows to structurally estimate agglomeration and dispersion forces we use data on thousands of city blocks in berlin for 1936 1986 and 2006 and exogenous variation from the city s division and reunification we estimate substantial and highly localized production and residential externalities we show that the model with the estimated agglomeration parameters can account both qualitatively and quantitatively for the observed changes in city structure we show how our quantitative framework can be used to undertake counterfactuals for changes in the organization of economic activity within cities in response for example to changes in the transport network

does competition among public schools benefit students and taxpayers tiebout choice among districts is the most powerful market force in american public education naive estimates of its effects are biased by endogenous district formation i derive instruments from the natural boundaries in a metropolitan area my results suggest that metropolitan areas with greater tiebout choice have more productive public schools and less private schooling little of the effect of tiebout choice works through its effect on household sorting this finding may be explained by another finding students are equally segregated by school in metropolitan areas with greater and lesser degrees of tiebout choice among districts

work location residence location and the intraurban wage gradient abstract the monocentric city model implies that work and residence locations are likely to be positively correlated and that wages decline with distance from the city center the first implication has not been explicitly tested before we provide strong support for it in census data for cleveland columbus dayton detroit indianapolis philadelphia and pittsburgh previous wage gradient estimates were hindered by lack of individual data on employment location and worker characteristics we solve this problem by estimating probit models that predict optimal work location and using the results to explain wages we find evidence of significant wage gradients

relocation of public sector workers evaluating a place based policy this paper investigates the local labor market impact of a uk relocation initiative the 2004 lyons review the review resulted in the dispersal of about 25 000 civil service jobs out of london and the south east towards other uk destinations this study aims to detect whether the inflow of public sector jobs crowded out private sector activity or stimulated the local provision of jobs in the private sector focusing on short term effects i find that the relocation initiative raised private sector employment in receiving areas and changed the sectoral distribution of local employment towards services i also find evidence of displacement i e a tendency for private businesses to locate closer to a relocation site moving out of areas at 1 2km and 2 3km distances into areas at 0 1km distance these agglomeration effects appear highly localized the largest policy impact is found in areas that received the relocated jobs with spillover effects reducing sharply over distance

optimal policies in cities with congestion and agglomeration externalities congestion tolls labor subsidies and place based strategies abstract this paper develops a spatial general equilibrium model that accommodates both congestion and agglomeration externalities while firms and households land use decisions are endogenous across continuous space focusing on the interaction between externalities and land use patterns we examine the efficiencies of first best policies and second best pricing and place based strategies using numerical simulations a first best policy must combine both pigouvian congestion tolling pct and pigouvian labor subsidies pls instruments or design an optimal toll or subsidy internalizing agglomeration externalities or congestion externalities we also examine second best pricing policies if only one instrument is adopted congestion pricing policies alone e g a partial pct or a flat rate toll can improve social welfare only in heavy congestion cities and their welfare gains may be insignificant e g below 10 of the welfare improvement achieved by first best policies in contrast second best labor subsidy policies alone are a more effective alternative to first best policies as to place based policies the firm cluster zoning fcz regulation is more efficient than the urban growth boundary ugb policy ugbs only have small effects on the agglomeration economy but could worsen land market distortions via residential rent escalation effects these findings suggest that it is important to internalize business land use decisions and relax monocentricity assumptions in order to appreciate the interplay of both urban externalities since spatial adaptations to policy interventions can distort system efficiencies

concentration of human capital externalities and the wage gap in us metro areas the effects of the concentration of human capital on wages and productivity have been widely studied but despite their heterogeneity little attention has been paid to its effects on the wage gap

compensating wage differentials and the duration of wage loss a formal model of occupational choice is developed that shows the extent to which the compensation for increased duration exceeds that for increased risk using the panel study of income dynamics linked to industry data on injuries and unemployment we find nearly all the compensating wage differential for losses due to workplace injuries is for increases in the duration of loss and similarly for losses due to cyclical unemployment the compensating differentials for risk of injury are larger for union than for nonunion workers while those for cyclical unemployment are smaller for union workers

local labor force education new business characteristics and firm performance it is often asserted that a highly educated workforce is vital to improving the competitive position of american businesses especially by boosting entrepreneurship to examine this contention we use population census data and a new panel data of startup firms to examine how the education and skill level of the local labor force are related to the creation and success of new businesses this paper studies relationship between education entrepreneurship and businesses outcomes and considers simultaneously both the education of the entrepreneur and of the workforce where the entrepreneurs operate their businesses consistent with this simultaneous focus our initial results indicate that more educated entrepreneurs tend to be located in metropolitan areas with more educated workforces moreover highly educated areas have above average entrepreneurship rates finally the level of education of entrepreneurs is strongly related to positive business outcomes especially for college graduates compared to those with less than a four year degree

wages rents and the quality of life this study focuses on the role of wages and rents in allocating workers to locations with various quantities of amenities the theory demonstrates that if the amenity is also productive then the sign of the wage gradient is unclear while the rent gradient is positive the theory is extended to include the housing market and nontraded goods these extensions require little modification of the conclusion the empirical work on wages shows that the regional wage differences can be explained largely by these local attributes with the use of site price data implicit prices are estimated and quality of life rankings for the cities are computed

economic growth size of the agricultural sector and urbanization in africa this paper uses variations in international commodity prices and rainfall to construct instrumental variables estimates of the within country effect that changes in the size of the agricultural sector and gdp per capita growth have on the urbanization rate for a panel of 41 african countries during the period 1960 2007 the paper s three main findings are that i decreases in the share of agricultural value added lead to a significant increase in the urbanization rate ii conditional on changes in the share of agricultural value added gdp per capita growth does not significantly affect the urbanization rate iii increases in the urbanization rate had a significant negative average effect on gdp per capita growth

spatial wage disparities sorting matters spatial wage disparities can result from spatial differences in the skill composition of the workforce in non human endowments and in local interactions to distinguish between these explanations we estimate a model of wage determination across local labour markets using a very large panel of french workers we control for worker characteristics worker fixed effects industry fixed effects and the characteristics of the local labour market our findings suggest that individual skills account for a large fraction of existing spatial wage disparities with strong evidence of spatial sorting by skills interaction effects are mostly driven by the local density of employment not controlling for worker heterogeneity leads to very biased estimates of interaction effects endowments only appear to play a small role

distance based agglomeration externalities and neighbouring firms characteristics abstractthis paper tests the hypothesis that firms with different characteristics can differ in their capability to produce local externalities by investigating the relationship between firm specific distance based weighted agglomeration measures and firms short run productivity growth in the italian manufacturing industry the results suggest that positive localization economies increase with distance when neighbouring firms characteristics are accounted for diversification type forces have negative effects on productivity growth at short distances while there are positive effects at longer distances regardless of the weighting scheme considered moreover the negative effect of inter industry externalities seems to persist over distance when neighbouring firms characteristics are accounted for

job search in thick markets abstract i analyze empirically the effects of urban and industrial agglomeration on both search behavior and the efficiency of matching the analysis is based on a unique panel data set from the italian labor force survey micro data covering 520 randomly drawn local labor market areas 66 of the total over the four quarters of 2002 i compute transition probabilities from non employment to employment by jointly estimating the probability of searching and the probability of finding a job conditional on having searched i then test whether these are affected by market size industrial variety and or industry specialization the main results indicate that market size and industry specialization raise job seekers chances of finding employment conditional on having searched while industrial variety is not significantly different from zero finally the effect of agglomeration on non employed individuals search behavior cannot be significantly distinguished from zero

the external returns to education evidence from chinese cities abstract following rauch s seminal study there has been a growing interest among economists in estimating human capital externalities at the individual level j rauch productivity gains from geographic concentration of human capital evidence from the cities journal of urban economics 34 1993 380 400 in this paper we provide a first set of estimates of the external returns to education in chinese cities we find that the external returns are at least as high as the private returns to education ols estimates of the external returns range from a low of 4 9 to a high of 6 7 two stage least squares estimates indicate that a one year increase in city average education could increase individual earnings by between 11 and 13 we also examine the impact of economic reforms on the external returns to education and find suggestive evidence that economic reforms have raised the external returns to education in chinese cities

cities and the growth of wages among young workers evidence from the nlsy abstract human capital based theories of cities suggest that large economically diverse urban agglomerations increase worker productivity by increasing the rate at which individuals acquire skills one largely unexplored implication of this theory is that workers in big cities should see faster growth in their earnings over time than comparable workers in smaller markets this paper examines this implication using data on a sample of young male workers drawn from the national longitudinal survey of youth 1979 cohort the results suggest that earnings growth does tend to be faster in large economically diverse local labor markets defined as counties and metropolitan areas than in smaller more specialized markets yet when examined in greater detail i also find that this association tends to be the product of faster wage growth due to job changes rather than faster wage growth experienced while on a particular job this result is consistent with the idea that cities enhance worker productivity through a job search and matching process and thus that an important aspect of learning in cities may involve individuals learning about what they do well

law enforcement and political participation italy 1861 65 abstract does tougher law enforcement positively affect political participation this paper addresses this question which hinges upon the causal impact of formal institutions on informal ones by using a historical event from 19th century italy this event was the pica law which was introduced in 1863 to fight a surge of criminal violence in southern italy and to ensure a safer environment for wealthy people the only ones allowed to vote at that time our main finding obtained using a spatial regression discontinuity technique in a diff in diffs framework is that voter turnout greatly increased in those areas where the pica law was applied compared with bordering and otherwise similar areas this result is confirmed by a number of robustness checks and placebo exercises and turns out to be persistent over time

the attenuation of human capital spillovers abstract this paper uses 2000 census data to estimate the relationship of agglomeration and proximity to human capital to wages the paper takes a geographic approach and focuses on the attenuation of agglomeration and human capital effects differencing and instrumental variable methods are employed to address endogeneity in the wage agglomeration relationship and also to deal with measurement error in our agglomeration and human capital variables three key results are obtained first the spatial concentration of employment within five miles is positively related to wage second the benefits of spatial concentration are driven by proximity to college educated workers an instance of human capital spillovers third these effects attenuate sharply with distance

thick market effects and churning in the labor market evidence from u s cities using u s census microdata we show that on average workers change occupation and industry less in more densely populated areas the result is robust to standard demographic controls as well as to including aggregate measures of human capital and sectoral mix analysis of the displaced worker surveys shows that this effect is present in cases of involuntary separation as well on the other hand we actually find the opposite result higher rates of occupational and industrial switching for the subsample of younger workers these results provide evidence in favor of increasing returns to scale matching in labor markets results from a back of the envelope calibration suggest that this mechanism has an important role in raising both wages and returns to experience in denser areas

can cultural norms reduce conflicts confucianism and peasant rebellions in qing china abstract can culture mitigate conflicts triggered by economic shocks in light of the extraordinary emphasis that confucianism places on subordination and pacifism we examine its role in possibly attenuating peasant rebellion within the historical context of china circa 1651 1910 our analysis finds that while crop failure triggers peasant rebellion its effect is significantly smaller in counties characterized by stronger confucian norms as proxied by confucian temples and chaste women this result remains robust after controlling for a long list of covariates and instrumenting confucian norms using ancient confucian sages 500 b c a d 550 to address concerns of measurement error and reverse causality

the migration of technical workers using panel data on the danish population we estimated the revealed preferences of scientists and engineers for the places in which they choose to work our results indicate that these technical workers exhibit substantial sensitivity to differences in wages but that they have even stronger preferences for living close to family and friends the magnitude of these preferences moreover suggests that the greater geographic mobility of scientists and engineers relative to the population as a whole stems from more pronounced variation across regions in the wages that they can expect these results remain robust to estimation on a sample of individuals who must select new places of work for reasons unrelated to their preferences those who had been employed at establishments that discontinued operations

two tales on human capital and knowledge spillovers the case of the us and brazil this article uses a quasi mincerian approach to verify whether the concentration of college educated individuals employed in the business support services sector and in the own sector contributes to increased productivity in other sectors of the economy we estimate the returns to education using data from the 2008 us current population survey march supplement and from the 2008 brazilian household survey this article finds evidence of a positive and significant human capital sectorial spillover effect which is consistent with acemoglu s 1996 conjecture the sectorial concentration of highly educated workers contributes to increase wages for all workers this study also finds evidence of increasing returns to education in brazil and diminishing returns to education in the united states this finding may be explained by differences in supply of skilled workers in both economies in addition the short supply of highly skilled workers in brazil likely explains the importance of the spillover effect fro

identifying human capital externalities theory with applications the identification of aggregate human capital externalities is still not fully understood the existing mincerian approach confounds positive externalities with wage changes due to a downward sloping demand curve for human capital as a result the mincerian approach yields positive externalities even when wages equal marginal social products we propose an approach that identifies human capital externalities whether or not aggregate demand for human capital slopes downward another advantage of our approach is that it does not require estimates of the individual return to human capital applications to u s cities and states between 1970 and 1990 yield no evidence of significant average schooling externalities copyright 2006 wiley blackwell

smart cafe cities testing human capital externalities in the boston metropolitan area abstract existing studies have explored only one or in some cases two mechanisms by which human capital externalities percolate at the macrogeographic levels this study however uses the 1990 massachusetts census data to test four mechanisms at the microgeographic levels in the boston metropolitan area labor market we propose that individual workers can learn from their occupational and industrial peers in the same local labor market through four channels depth of human capital stock marshallian labor market externalities jacobs labor market externalities and thickness of the local labor market we find that all types of human capital externalities are significant across census blocks different types of externalities attenuate at different speeds over distances for example the effect of human capital depth decays rapidly beyond three miles away from block centroids we conclude that knowledge spillovers are very localized within a microgeographic scope in cities that we call smart cafe cities

exclusionary policies in urban development under servicing migrant households in brazilian cities localities in developed countries often enact regulations to deter low income households from moving in in developing countries such restrictions lead to the emergence of informal housing sectors to deter low income migrants localities in developing countries withhold public services to the informal housing sector using a large sample of brazilian localities we examine migration and exclusion focusing on the public provision of water to small houses where low income migrants are likely to live withholding water connections reduces the locality growth rate particularly of low education households in terms of service provision during dictatorship in brazil we find evidence of strategic exclusion where localities appear to withhold services to deter in migration we also find evidence of strategic interactions among localities within metro areas in their setting of service levels if one locality provides more services to migrant households other localities respond by withholding service

the impact of economic conditions on participation in disability programs evidence from the coal boom and bust abstract we examine the impact of the coal boom of the 1970 s and the coal bust of the 1980 s on disability program participation these shocks provide clear evidence that as the value of labor market participation increases disability program participation falls for the disability insurance program the elasticity of payments with respect to local earnings is between 0 3 and 0 4 and for supplemental security income the elasticity is between 0 4 and 0 7 consistent with a model where qualifying for disability programs is costly the relationship between economic conditions and program participation is much stronger for permanent than for transitory economic shocks

increasing social returns to human capital evidence from hungarian regions abstractincreasing social returns to human capital evidence from hungarian regions regional studies using individual level data from 2002 to 2008 this paper estimates augmented mincerian wage equations to analyze social returns to human capital in hungary the results show that geographically localized human capital externalities have a strong productivity effect on the wages of local workers but the strength of this effect falls short of the private returns a one year increase in the average schooling of the local labour force has a 3 average external effect on the wages of local workers

regulation in the market for education and optimal choice of curriculum we analyze educational institutions incentives to set up demanding or lax curricula in duopolistic markets for education with endogenous enrolment of students we assume that there is a positive externality of student achievement on the local economy comparing the case of regulated tuition fees with an unregulated market we identify the following ine ciencies under regulated tuition fees schools will set up ine ciently lax curricula in an attempt to please low quality students even if schools internalize some of the externality on the other hand unregulated schools set up excessively di erentiated curricula in order to relax competition in tuition fees deregulation gets more attractive if a larger fraction of the externality is internalized

commuting and taxes theory empirics and welfare implications we examine the effect of interstate differences in income taxes on commuting times our theoretical model introduces a border into a model of an urban area and shows that differences in average tax rates distort commuting patterns but the sign of the effect depends on whether taxes are residence based or employment based empirically tax differentials have a large effect on commuting times for affluent households and mobile households we show that commuting times are a sufficient statistic to measure the spatial welfare effects of tax policy the model and empirical design can be used by economists to study other policy differences this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved