total factor productivity intangible assets and spatial dependence in the european regions dettori b marrocu e and paci r total factor productivity intangible assets and spatial dependence in the european regions regional studies the aim of this paper is to analyse the determinants of the efficiency levels across the european regions firstly a regression based measure of regional total factor productivity is derived by estimating a spatial cobb douglas production function secondly the role played by intangible factors human capital social capital and technological capital on total factor productivity levels is investigated by applying the spatial two stage least squares 2sls method and the spatial heteroskedasticy and correlation consistent shac estimator to account for both heteroskedasticity and spatial autocorrelation it turns out that a large part of total factor productivity differences across the european regions is explained by disparities in the endowments of these intangible assets dettori b marrocu e and paci r

learning about a new technology pineapple in ghana this paper investigates the role of social learning in the diffusion of a new agri cultural technology in ghana we use unique data on farmers communication patterns to define each individual s information neighborhood conditional on many potentially confounding variables we find evidence that farmers adjust their inputs to align with those of their information neighbors who were surpris ingly successful in previous periods the relationship of these input adjustments to experience further indicates the presence of social learning in addition applying the same method to input choices for another crop of known technol ogy correctly indicates an absence of social learning effects jel d83 013 033 q16

the gains from self ownership and the expansion of women s rights throughout history wives have been the property of their husbands only in the past two centuries has this institution broken down in the world s most developed regions in america and england the doctrine of coverture restricted women s choices in virtually every aspect of their lives until the beginning of the 20th century a married woman a feme covert could not make contracts buy and sell property sue or be sued or draft wills joel p bishop 1875 john c wells 1878 john f kelly 1882 her husband owned any wages she earned and he controlled any property she brought to the marriage a husband also could control his wife s economic activities outside the home such as limiting a particular shopkeeper from selling to his wife marylynn salmon 1986 even in the rare case of divorce the children of the marriage fell under the father s custody today the doctrine of coverture is extinct in most developed countries women now control rights to themselves and the products of their labor no formal restrictions remain on a woman s ability to own or convey title to land or other forms of real property women are able to contract freely and enforce their contractual rights no formal restrictions remain on a woman s capacity to sue or be sued in tort rape is no longer a crime against a husband s property interest in his wife but a crime in which the woman is the sole victim no formal restrictions limit a woman s ability to alienate her labor and own the wages she earns whether married or single women today have practically all the rights of their male counterparts we use a property rights analysis to explain the demise of coverture in the united states we characterize the modern property rights structure to human beings as a system in which all adults are self owners men and women have essentially equal rights and are able to contract fully inside and outside of marriage so marriage is a share contract douglas w allen 1992 coverture in contrast to self ownership is characterized as a principal agent system in which the man husband legally owned his wife and her flow of value under coverture a wife was an agent severely constrained by the system of property rights which denied her the right to freely choose human capital investments and consumption as well as to capture the full returns from her actions the husband s economic ownership was imperfect however allowing the woman to deviate from the man s directives human ownership regimes are important because they affect incentives to acquire and develop human capital t w schultz 1968 stanley engerman 1973 in particular we argue that economic growth with attendant increases in wealth and specialized markets leads geddes department of policy analysis and management cornell university 107 mvr hall ithaca ny 14853 and hoover institution e mail rrg24 cornell edu lueck montana state university and university of virginia school of law e mail lueck virginia edu geddes was supported by the earhart foundation lueck was supported as john m olin faculty fellow at the yale law school cynthia powell hui ping chao and mary godfrey provided research assistance we have also benefited from comments from doug allen lee alston ian ayres david barker parantap basu gary becker mary beth combs lee craig joe ferrie andy hanssen gillian hamilton shawn kantor dean lillard robin lumsdaine steve margolis joel mokyr bart moore lee redding glen whitman paul zak two anonymous referees and participants in numerous seminars and conferences 1 while married women s property belonged to their husbands most single women were dependents of their male relatives although a single woman legally had the same property rights as a man powerful norms and private restrictions severely limited the rights of divorcees spinsters and widows mary beth norton 1980 2 we recognize a potential divergence between economic and purely legal rights because enforcement costs limit the application of legal doctrine yoram barzel 1977 here however we treat economic and legal rights as virtually synonymous since coverture codified customs and norms and because coverture s restrictions extended beyond the family into markets and society

collective bargaining and regional wage differences in spain an empirical analysis this article analyses the importance of labour market institutions and in particular collective wage bargaining in shaping regional wage differences in the spanish labour market using microdata from the spanish structure of earnings survey our results reveal that there are significant inter regional wage differences for similarly skilled workers these differences are present throughout the whole wage structure and can be explained by both competitive and non competitive factors such as insufficient competition in product markets in this context industry level collective bargaining plays a major role in accounting for regional wage differences a role that in the spanish case is enhanced due to its unusual regional dimension

the effects of public capital on the productivity of the italian regions this article investigates the role played by public capital in increasing the productivity levels in italy for construction of the regional series for the public capital stock over the period 1996 to 2003 the study benefits from the use of the rich dataset on public expenditure recently published by the italian ministry of economy we have estimated panel production functions with the inclusion of traditional factors and also intangible inputs like research and development r d expenditure human capital hk and social capital sk the results point out that public capital has a positive and significant effect on production moreover the effects of all production factors vary considerably between the two macro areas of the country namely centre north and mezzogiorno more specifically while private capital is more effective in the south labour exhibits an elasticity much higher in the centre north with respect to the mezzogiorno the disaggregation of the public capital stock into functional cat

why do the young and educated in ldcs concentrate in large cities evidence from migration data do the young and educated in ldcs have a greater preference to locate in big cities if so this may help to explain how cities spatially concentrate the educated and young and why the rising share of these workers in many ldcs may contribute to city growth this paper explores migration flows into and out of egypt s three largest cities we study whether the higher shares of such workers in cities arise because these workers perceive relatively greater benefits from living in cities given relative urban rural wage rates or because the relative demand for these workers rises with city size

earnings functions when wages and prices vary by location economists generally assume implicitly that the return to schooling is invariant across local labor markets we demonstrate that this outcome pertains if and only if preferences are homothetic a special case that seems unlikely our theory predicts that returns to education will instead be relatively low in expensive high amenity locations our analysis of u s data provides support for this contention returns to college are especially low in such cities as san francisco and seattle our findings call into question standard empirical exercises in labor economics that treat the returns to education as a single parameter

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

what are cities worth land rents local productivity and the total value of amenities abstract this paper models how to use widely available data on wages and housing costs to infer land rents local productivity and the total value of local amenities in the presence of federal taxes and locally produced nontraded goods i apply the model to u s metropolitan areas with the aid of visually intuitive graphs the results improve measures of productivity and feature large differences in land rents wage and housing cost differences across metropolitan areas are accounted for more by productivity than quality of life differences regressions using individual amenities reveal that the most productive and valuable cities are typically coastal sunny mild educated and large

a theory of brain drain and public funding for higher education in the united states support for higher education has been decreasing in the united states from 1980 to 2005 real state appropriations for higher education per student have decreased an average of 20 percent with only 6 states increasing funding one reason cited for decreased university funding has been the mobility of college graduates ronald a wirtz 2003 in fact the college educated often leave the state that subsidized their education yolanda k kodrzycki 2001 found that 37 percent of people with a bachelor s degree changed their state of residence between 1979 and 1996 compared to 19 percent of those with a high school education or less although state policymakers are concerned about outmigration empirical studies present contrasting evidence regarding the relationship between outmigration and university funding james g strathman 1994 polgreen 2008 thus a structured model is needed to clarify this relationship to our knowledge we are the first to develop such a theory building upon a theory of international brain drain developed by kaz miyagiwa 1991 we develop a model that includes heterogeneity in ability among college graduates and emphasizes the role of economies of scale in the returns to higher education we depart from miyagiwa s paper in several important ways 1 we study domestic brain drain within the united states but brain drain across state boundaries differs from international brain drain we define brain drain as the net emigration of college graduates skilled personnel from the state where they got their college degree to another state 2 we account for different degrees of returns to scale a theory of brain drain and public funding for higher education in the united states

determinants of the intrahousehold allocation of food in the rural philippines this study shows that the opportunity cost of time for husbands and wives can affect the intrahousehold distribution of food in a developing country equations which explain the relative allocation of calories within households were estimated for husbands wives and children with data for the rural philippines the estimating equation is derivable from both a joint household utility function and a bargaining model because the same households were included in the four survey rounds the various observations for a given individual were averaged for each variable in the estimation procedure wages were estimated using the heckman approach

socially optimal social security and education subsidization in a dynastic model with human capital externalities fertility and endogenous growth abstract this paper considers socially optimal government policies in a dynastic family model with physical capital human capital endogenous fertility and positive spillovers from average human capital such spillovers reduce human capital investment but raise fertility from their social optimum we first characterize the social optimum with a non convex feasible set due to the quantity quality tradeoff concerning children we then show that social security and education subsidization together financed by labor income taxes can fully eliminate the efficiency losses of the spillovers and achieve the social optimum under plausible conditions however none of the policies can do so alone

investments in education too much or not enough abstract this paper shows that both the external effects and overeducation approach use the same empirical wage equation to test empirical implications it proves that at least one of the approaches is invalid or needs other methods to test its implications

optimal social security in a dynastic model with human capital externalities fertility and endogenous growth abstract in this paper we investigate the optimal scale of pay as you go social security in a dynastic family model with human capital externalities fertility and endogenous growth human capital externalities reduce the return to human capital investment and hence lead to under investment in human capital and over reproduction of the population if the taste for the number of children is sufficiently weak relative to the taste for the welfare of children social security can be welfare enhancing by reducing fertility and raising human capital investment per child

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

birth order and the intrahousehold allocation of time and education this paper develops a model of intrahousehold allocation with endogenous fertility which captures the relationship between birth order and investment in children it shows that a birth order effect in intrahouse hold allocation can arise even without assumptions about parental preferences for specific birth orders of children or genetic endowments varying by birth order the important contribution is that fertility is treated as endogenous a possibility that other models of intrahousehold allocation have ignored the implications of the model are that children with higher birth orders that is who are born later have an advantage over siblings with lower birth orders and that parents who are inequality averse will not have more than one child the model furthermore shows that not taking account of the endogeneity of fertility when analyzing intrahousehold allocation may seriously bias the results the effects of a child s birth order on its human capital accumulation are analyzed using a longitudinal

human capital pricing equations with an application to estimating the effect of schooling quality on earnings this paper formulates and estimates alternative models for the pricing of labor services we present economic models that rationalize empirical specifications in the literature and we offer evidence on the validity of those specifications widely used efficiency units models of labor services are inconsistent with evidence from the u s labor market a model of heterogeneous skills provides a more accurate description of earnings data we present evidence that the pursuit of comparative advantage and selective migration are important features of the u s labor market when these features are included in the model the only support for an effect of schooling quality on earnings is through the return to college education three interactions are empirically important in explaining log wage equations a between schooling quality and education b between regional labor market shocks and education and c between region of residence and regionof birth because of this third interaction which can arise from comparative advantage in the labor market no unique quality effect on returns to education can be defined independently of the market in which it is used

does history matter only when it matters little the case of city industry location when will an industry subject to agglomeration economies move from an old high cost site to a new low cost site it is argued that history in the form of sunk costs resulting from the operation of many firms at a site creates a first mover disadvantage that can prevent relocation it is demonstrated that developers of industrial parks can partly overcome this inertia through discriminatory pricing of land over time and empirical evidence is provided that they actually engage in such behavior it is also shown that other aspects of developer land sale strategy can be a source of information on the nature of interfirm externalities

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

implications of productive government spending for fiscal policy abstract the standard assumption in macroeconomics that government spending is unproductive can have substantive implications for tax and spending policy productive government spending introduces a positive feedback between the tax rate the productive capacity of the economy and tax revenue we allow marginal tax revenue to be optimally allocated between productive subsidies to human capital and utility enhancing government consumption and calculate laffer curves for the us productive government spending yields higher revenue maximizing tax rates steeper slopes at low tax rates and higher peaks the differences are particularly pronounced for the labor tax laffer curve the use of tax revenue is an important determinant of the actual revenue that a tax rate increase generates

classic or new monopsony searching for evidence in nursing labor markets the market for registered nurses rns is often offered as an example of classic monopsony while a new monopsony literature emphasizes that firm labor supply is upward sloping independent of market structure using data from multiple sources we explore the relationship between nursing wages in hospitals and measures of classic and new monopsony wage level analysis fails to provide support for classic monopsony the relative wages of rns in 240 u s labor markets being largely uncorrelated with hospital system concentration longitudinal analysis shows nursing wages declining with increases in hospital concentration we interpret these results as providing support for classic monopsony effects in the short run but question whether wage effects are sustained in the long run no relationship is found between nursing wages and a new monopsony measure of mobility but support for new monopsony is found for women elsewhere in the labor market rns display greater interemployer mobility than do women or men in general two conclusions follow first upward sloping labor supply need not imply monopsonistic outcomes second absent more compelling evidence nursing should not be held up as a prototypical example of monopsony classic or new

food for thought the birth order effect and resource allocation in indonesia abstractdespite the large literature linking birth order to socio economic outcomes research uncovering the mechanisms that drive these effects has been rare we construct a unique measure of nutritional variety to examine whether differential resource allocation among siblings explains the birth order effect on cognitive ability we document birth order differences among children and young adults showing that second and third borns perform worse on cognitive assessments compared to their firstborn siblings we find further evidence suggesting that second and third born children frequently eat a smaller variety of food than their first born counterparts however this differentiation in food allocation does not appear to drive the differences in cognitive ability in our sample to our knowledge this article is the first both to confirm the presence of a birth order effect on cognition in a developing country and to test empirically whether a difference in food allocation contributes to this effect

power couples changes in the locational choice of the college educated 1940 1990 college educated couples are increasingly located in large metropolitan areas these areas were home to 32 percent of all college educated couples in 1940 39 percent in 1970 and 50 percent in 1990 we investigate whether this trend can be explained by increasing urbanization of the college educated or the growth of dual career households and the resulting severity of the colocation problem we argue that the latter explanation is the primary one smaller cities may therefore experience reduced inflows of human capital relative to the past and thus become poorer

nutrition health birth order and seasonality intrahousehold allocation among children in rural india abstract nutrients available to children are determined largely by intrahousehold allocations there are a number of reasons why birth order may affect these allocations a model is developed to estimate critical parameters of parental preferences regarding the allocation of nutrients among their children latent variable estimates for rural south india indicate that parental preferences have productivity equity tradeoffs and parents favor older children the productivity equity tradeoff however is much less for the lean season therefore when food is scarcest parents follow more closely a pure investment strategy exposing their more vulnerable children to greater malnutrition tisk

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

urban effects on participation and wages are there gender differences abstract this paper estimates participation and wage equations using panel data from the united kingdom to explore gender differences in urban wage and participation premiums the results suggest a small but economically significant urban participation premium for women but none for men results from the wage estimations suggest that after controlling for sample selectivity observed and unobserved heterogeneity the urban premium is larger for women this wage premium is also larger for married or cohabiting women relative to others there is also evidence of higher urban returns to experience for men and lower urban wage depreciation for both men and women

estimating housing demand with an application to explaining racial segregation in cities we present a three stage nonparametric estimation procedure to recover willingness to pay for housing attributes in the first stage we estimate a nonparametric hedonic home price function in the second stage we recover each consumer s taste parameters for product characteristics using first order conditions for utility maximization finally in the third stage we estimate the distribution of household tastes as a function of household demographics as an application of our methods we compare alternative explanations for why blacks choose to live in center cities while whites suburbanize

the external benefits of higher education abstractthe external benefits of higher education regional studies the private market benefits of education are widely studied at the micro level although the magnitude of their macroeconomic impact is disputed however there are additional benefits of education that are less well understood in this paper the macroeconomic effects of external benefits of higher education are estimated using the micro to macro simulation approach two types of externalities are explored technology spillovers and productivity spillovers in the labour market these links are illustrated and the results suggest they could be very large however this is qualified by the dearth of microeconomic evidence for which the authors hope to encourage further work

employment resilience in europe and the 2008 economic crisis insights from micro level data doran j and fingleton b employment resilience in europe and the 2008 economic crisis insights from micro level data regional studies this paper analyses employment resilience to the 2008 economic crisis using individual level data from the european social survey ess combined with nuts 1 regional economic statistics it models employment outcomes for individuals for 2002 08 and generates counterfactual outcomes for 2010 for individual level employment assuming there is no recession a resilience index based on the difference between employment outcomes assuming actual economic conditions and a no recession counterfactual is generated resilience varies substantially and is higher in german and french regions than in peripheral regions highly educated individuals middle aged individuals unionized workers and men are more resilient

why do cities pay more an empirical examination of some competing theories of the urban wage premium abstract ols regression identifies a 19 percent wage advantage for workers in large urban areas fixed effects estimation suggests that two thirds of this premium can be explained by cities attracting workers of higher unmeasured skills and ability the remaining wage premium is shown to consist of both level and growth elements the wage level effect is consistent with a productivity advantage for firms located in cities the wage growth effect is shown to relate in part to a cumulative advantage in the returns to job mobility for urban workers this last finding highlights the importance of coordination in urban labor markets

the social multiplier aggregate data is often used to make inferences about individual level behavior if there are social interactions in which one person s actions influence his neighbor s incentives or information then these inferences are inappropriate the presence of positive social interactions or strategic complementarities implies the existence of a social multiplier where aggregate relationships will overstate individual elasticities we present a brief model and then estimate the size of the social multiplier in three areas the impact of education on wages the impact of demographics on crime and group membership among dartmouth roommates in these contexts there is a significant social multiplier jel ho jo co

the wider impacts of high technology employment evidence from u s cities abstract innovative high technology industries are commonly described as drivers of regional development tech workers earn high wages but they are also said to generate knock on effects throughout the local economies that host them spurring growth in jobs and wages in nontradable activities at the same time in iconic high tech agglomerations like the san francisco bay area the home of silicon valley the success of the tech industry creates tensions in part as living costs rise beyond the reach of many non tech workers across a large sample of u s cities this paper explores these issues systematically combining annual data on wages employment and prices from the quarterly census of employment and wages the department of housing and urban development and the consumer price index it estimates how growth in tradable tech employment affects the real living cost deflated wages of local workers in nontradable sectors results indicate that high technology employment has significant positive but modest effects on the real wages of workers in nontradable sectors these effects appear to be spread consistently across different kinds of nontradable activities in terms of substantive wider impacts tech appears benign though fairly ineffectual

how important is human capital for development evidence from immigrant earnings this paper offers new evidence on the sources of cross country income differences it exploits the idea that observing immigrant workers from different countries in the same labor market provides an opportunity to estimate their human capital endowments these estimates suggest that human and physical capital account for only a fraction of cross country income differences for countries below 40 of the us output per worker less than half of the output gap relative to the us is attributed to human and physical capital

the more the merrier the effect of family size and birth order on children s education there is an extensive theoretical literature that postulates a tradeoff between child quantity and quality within a family however there is little causal evidence that speaks to this theory using a rich dataset on the entire population of norway over an extended period of time we examine the effects of family size and birth order on the educational attainment of children while we find a negative correlation between family size and children s education when we include indicators for birth order and or use twin births as an instrument family size effects become negligible in addition birth order has a significant and large negative effect on children s education we also study adult earnings employment and teenage childbearing and find strong evidence for birth order effects with these outcomes particularly among women these findings suggest the need to revisit economic models of fertility and child production focusing not only on differences across families but differences within families as well

urban attributes and wage disparities in brazil a multilevel hierarchical model fontes g g simoes r f and hermeto camilo de oliveira a m urban attributes and wage disparities in brazil a multilevel hierarchical model regional studies this paper examines the effects of urban scale and productive structure on individual wage levels in brazilian cities and metropolitan areas in 1990 and 2000 the estimation through hierarchical linear models enabled the inclusion of variables in different levels individual and urban and the decomposition of total wage variance the results showed significant and huge wage disparities among workers who share similar personal attributes but live in different regions of the country in addition the disparities persisted from 1990 to 2000 finally the results provided evidence that local economic and labour market factors played an important role in wage determination

appropriate technology and income differences this article studies the relative productivity of skilled to unskilled workers across countries relative productivities are broken down into the human capital embodied in skilled workers and relative physical productivities reflecting production techniques i find that skilled workers from poorer countries embody less human capital and are also relatively less physically productive furthermore results show that production techniques are inappropriate for most low income countries and these countries experience large increases in gdp per capita by increasing the relative physical productivity of skilled to unskilled workers this suggests that there are significant barriers to the adoption of skill complementary technologies

india s trilemma financial liberalisation exchange rates and monetary policy1 a key challenge for macroeconomic policy in open economies is how to simultaneously manage exchange rates interest rates and capital account openness the trilemma this study calculates a trilemma index for india and investigates its evolution over time we find that financial integration has increased markedly after the mid 2000s with corresponding limitations on monetary independence mi and exchange rate stability es in addition we empirically confirm that a rise in one trilemma variable is traded off with a drop in the weighted sum of the other two i e the trilemma configuration is binding in india finally we consider the implications of changes in the trilemma index for macroeconomic outcomes we find that greater mi systemically contributes to lower inflation so the twin goals of es and capital account openness may create policy dilemmas in particular economic environments es is associated with less inflation volatility suggesting that there may be secondary benefits channelled through import and commodity prices in these relationships however changes in international reserves are not statistically significant suggesting that foreign exchange market intervention has not mitigated the trilemma trade off in india

does the birth order affect the cognitive development of a child this article investigates the link between position in the birth order and early scholastic ability using matched mother child data from the national longitudinal survey of youth 1979 cohort nlsy79 i find that being the first born is beneficial even after controlling for nonlinear effects of family size and child characteristics the verbal ability of first borns is about one tenth of a sd higher than for children in the middle of the birth order there is no evidence that last borns fare better than intermediate children the first born advantage is confirmed by estimates from within family variation models and i argue that the findings are consistent with the resource dilution hypothesis

determinants of income growth in metropolitan and nonmetropolitan labor markets this article analyzes determinants of growth across labor markets in the united states using a production function approach based on four inputs labor manufacturing investment human capital investment and public capital investment we find little role for public capital investment in growth but that manufacturing investment spurred growth in nonmetropolitan areas in contrast to metropolitan areas we also find that human capital investment mattered more for metropolitan areas than for nonmetropolitan areas further the presence of more colleges and universities more household amenities and lower tax rates are all found to have encouraged human capital accumulation in u s labor markets copyright 2008 oxford university press

intrafirm human capital externalities and selection bias this article investigates the existence of intrafirm human capital externalities in the spanish economy in doing so it focusses on two estimation issues first a semiparametric methodology is used to estimate externalities in a more flexible way that allows to affect all parameters in the equation second two approaches to control for selection bias are designed for use in cross section data our results show a higher externality effect on wages when using the semi parametric approach as compared to the standard estimation approach additionally the estimations even when controlling for selection bias give evidence of externalities

how large are learning externalities the quantitative features of human capital externalities are not fully understood although static externalities are estimated in some studies learning externalities remain mostly unestimated by calibrating a growth model this article provides an estimate of learning externalities the calibration uses an equilibrium condition that equates private returns on physical capital and human capital the results suggest that sizable learning externalities exist even in a conservative setup the estimated social rate of return on human capital is 9 0 compared to the private rate of return 6 6 therefore human capital externalities are an important source of economic growth