Download or read book Essays on Human Capital Heterogeneity and Agglomeration written by Michaela Patton and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation consists of three essays exploring how human capital heterogeneity within cities enhances individual productivity. Agglomeration theory suggests productivity is driven by rapid and frequent interactions with others in spatially-constrained areas. Using formal education data from the 2011 American Community Survey, we empirically test that theory by estimating the effects of local human capital stock characteristics on individual wages. In essay one, we posit that some kinds of knowledge are harder to exchange remotely and thus workers possessing those knowledge types benefit more from close physical proximity to others. Our theoretical framework demonstrates the returns to finding a partner to exchange ideas with are heterogeneous across knowledge types. We propose agglomerative environments favor "soft skills" where creativity and informal networking are important. Our empirical results show people with non-STEM majors benefit more from locating within a city. Conversely, terminal degrees such as a J.D. or M.D. experience a smaller urban wage premium. Essay two studies the role of specialization of human capital types for individual productivity. Glaeser et al. (1992) finds local industrial specialization has a non-increasing effect on employment and wage growth. Our empirical results indicate specialization of knowledge can play an important role in promoting productivity when simultaneously controlling for a population size effect via the urban wage premium. We find STEM-related knowledge benefits greatly from local specialization of knowledge. However, the urbanization effect from city population size often exceeds the specialization effect. The third essay studies how workers in cities learn from one another in dense economic settings. Following Winters (2014), we estimate the impact of changes in the local stock of particular knowledge types on individual wages. The richness of our data allows us to estimate the productivity effects from over 400 different combinations of human capital interactions. We find most knowledge types are more productive when local STEM presence increases. The effect is strongest among workers with higher levels of educational attainment in the earlier stages of their careers. Similarly, areas such as government and psychology generate productivity gains among others. However, the lowest productivity gains occur from interactions with religious or education backgrounds.
Download or read book Three Essays on Firm Heterogeneity and Regional Development written by Hisamitsu Saito and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The objective of this dissertation is to theoretically and empirically examine the role of firm heterogeneity in terms of productivity and skill-intensity in the agglomeration process and the effect of agglomeration on regional economic development. In the first essay, I analyze the effect of trade liberalization on agglomeration of high- and low-productivity firms and the consequences for regional economic development. By extending a new-economic-geography model, I find that competition, domestic and international, disperses low-productivity firms to less-developed regions. Trading with advanced countries also appears to bring about dispersion of economic activity. However, attempts by less-developed regions to provide monetary incentives are less likely to attract high-productivity firms. In the second essay, I empirically test the hypothesis that high-productivity (exporting) plants in Chile self-select to locate in large markets. Plants' raw productivity, i.e., productivity independent of agglomeration economies, is computed to obtain regional productivity-distribution measures. I find that high-productivity (exporting) plants indeed locate in a region where other plants in the same industry agglomerate, industrial structure is diversified and market size is large. Finally, plants' self-selection outweighs the contribution of agglomeration economies in increasing a region's productivity. In the third essay, I identify the mechanism by which human-capital spillovers occur at the plant-level and examine the relationship between spillovers and agglomeration of high skill-intensive plants in Chile. I employ plant-level production functions incorporating the absorptive capacity hypothesis, i.e., high skill-intensive plants benefit more from human-capital spillovers than others. Empirically, in 5 out of 8 manufacturing industries, the benefit from spillovers is larger in high skill-intensive plants. Plant entry and exit are also affected by spillovers resulting in regional skill disparities. The results of the three essays reveal locational preferences of various types of firms. Policy options for economic development through increases in regional productivity include specializing in targeted industry, diversifying regional industrial structure, enlarging the market size and workforce education. The results of this dissertation help local governments to evaluate of the benefits from each policy option, which when compared with their knowledge of costs, aid in the selection of an effective policy to improve regional well-being.
Download or read book Essays on Human Capital written by Yang Wang and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation studies the role of human capital in urbanization and labor market in China. Chapter 1 models and quantifies the importance of within-firm skill complementarity in explaining cross-city productivity gaps in China. I argue that skill complementarity is an important driver of skill concentration which augments these productivity gaps with agglomeration economies. I develop a spatial general equilibrium model that captures an economy inhabited by heterogeneous individuals who form production teams through assortative matching and sort across cities in these teams. I structurally estimate the model using firm-level census data.Through counterfactual analysis, I find that within-firm skill complementarity accounts for 18% of cross-city productivity gaps in China. I further examine the general equilibrium effects of place-based policies: subsidizing skilled individuals to reside in second-tier cities. The simulated equilibrium shows local gains from such policies at the expense of other cities, suggesting an equity-efficiency trade-off in a spatial economy. Chapter 2 estimates the income gains from migrating for jobs after graduation using survey data on college graduates. I apply propensity score matching and compare students who have similar propensity to move. I find 12-15% gains in starting salary from this geographic mobility. The effect does not vary significantly across family background and education. Further analysis on mechanisms suggests that the migration premium is mainly attributed to local agglomeration factors at the destination. Chapter 3 turns to one type of human capital and studies the impact of retaking in English test on the labor market. I draw evidence from a national English test and exploit a manipulated regression discontinuity at the passing cutoff for certificates. While there is a positive relationship between scores and wages, I find a 10% jump in starting salary after graduation for those who barely pass the test and bunching just above the score threshold. Among students at risk of failing, retakers are positively selected in terms of abilities unrelated to English skills. Analysis from other job outcomes suggests that the wage gap at cutoff is associated with access to larger firms and state-owned firms.
Download or read book Essays on Human Capital Innovation and Growth with Heterogeneous Abilities written by King Yoong Lim and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book On Aggregating Human Capital Across Heterogeneous Cohorts written by Jakub Growiec and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Essays on Development Growth and Human Capital written by Wan-Jung Cheng and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chapter 1 proposes a new perspective to explain job polarization over the past few decades. Consisting of employment and wage polarization, job polarization is a widely documented phenomenon that involves the decline in both the employment shares and relative wages of middle-skill occupations with respect to high- and low-skill occupations. I present empirical evidence and build a task-based model demonstrating that job polarization stems from the interaction of the decrease in the relative price of capital goods, heterogeneity in job task production, and the complementarity of job tasks in final goods production. First, I construct a measure of occupation-level capital intensities and document that the tasks of middle-skill workers tend to be more capital intensive. Second, I build a task-based model with two goods sectors and three job tasks, where the job task production differs in capital intensity and how a worker's skill is utilized. The model shows that when there is a decrease in the price of capital goods, employment shifts away from capital-intensive tasks, and the relative wages are driven down, implying that decreasing price of capital goods predicts job polarization. A quantitative analysis suggests that the model can account for approximately one-third to one-half of the employment polarization and approximately half of the upper tail of the wage polarization in the U.S. between 1980 and 2010. Chapter 2 studies the endogenous formation of economic policies and its interplay with political institutions. Both the degree and the content of industrial policies are dispersed across countries. Some countries have active industrial policies while some do not. Among those with active industrial policies, some tend to target large conglomerates, while others target small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This paper studies how the industrial policy in an economy is endogenously determined under a political economy framework with lobbying. Two political parties compete for votes in the election; the one that takes office will decide the industrial policy. The two parties announce policy platforms prior to the election, and voters make decisions based on their expected welfare but may be swayed by election campaigns depending on their political awareness. The campaign is financed by political donations, and its effectiveness is determined by the party's influence on mass media. Contingent on the political environment, the model can capture three major types of policy schemes: no active industrial policies, active pro-conglomerates policies, and active pro-SMEs policies. Chapter 3 studies the influence of employers' quality on growth when talents are imperfect information. I build an innovation choice model that differentiates two types of innovations: incremental and radical innovations; the former is a productivity improvement over an existing product line, and the latter, the construction of a new product line with superior productivity. The arrival rate of successful innovations depends on worker's human capital, while innovation choices are made by managers. Worker's human capital is imperfect information to managers--only high-type managers can distinguish the necessary human capital for radical innovations. The mass of high-type managers thus determines the distribution of innovation implementation and affects individuals' incentives to invest in human capital. Since incremental innovations are subject to diminishing returns while radical innovations create space for future incremental innovations, a society lacking consistent inflow of high-type managers will suffer from slower growth in the long run.
Download or read book Essays on Human Capital Institutions and Economic Growth written by Babar Hussain and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Heterogeneity in human capital and economic growht written by Stefania Zotteri and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 25 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics written by V. Henderson and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2004-07-21 with total page 1081 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The new Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics: Cities and Geography reviews, synthesizes and extends the key developments in urban and regional economics and their strong connection to other recent developments in modern economics. Of particular interest is the development of the new economic geography and its incorporation along with innovations in industrial organization, endogenous growth, network theory and applied econometrics into urban and regional economics. The chapters cover theoretical developments concerning the forces of agglomeration, the nature of neighborhoods and human capital externalities, the foundations of systems of cities, the development of local political institutions, regional agglomerations and regional growth. Such massive progress in understanding the theory behind urban and regional phenomenon is consistent with on-going progress in the field since the late 1960’s. What is unprecedented are the developments on the empirical side: the development of a wide body of knowledge concerning the nature of urban externalities, city size distributions, urban sprawl, urban and regional trade, and regional convergence, as well as a body of knowledge on specific regions of the world—Europe, Asia and North America, both current and historical. The Handbook is a key reference piece for anyone wishing to understand the developments in the field.
Download or read book Agglomeration Economics written by Edward L. Glaeser and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-04-15 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When firms and people are located near each other in cities and in industrial clusters, they benefit in various ways, including by reducing the costs of exchanging goods and ideas. One might assume that these benefits would become less important as transportation and communication costs fall. Paradoxically, however, cities have become increasingly important, and even within cities industrial clusters remain vital. Agglomeration Economics brings together a group of essays that examine the reasons why economic activity continues to cluster together despite the falling costs of moving goods and transmitting information. The studies cover a wide range of topics and approach the economics of agglomeration from different angles. Together they advance our understanding of agglomeration and its implications for a globalized world.
Download or read book Cities Agglomeration and Spatial Equilibrium written by Edward Ludwig Glaeser and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 220 million Americans crowd together in the 3% of the country that is urban. 35 million people live in the vast metropolis of Tokyo, the most productive urban area in the world. The central city of Mumbai alone has 12 million people, and Shanghai almost as many. We choose to live cheek by jowl, in a planet with vast amounts of space. Yet despite all of the land available to us, we choose to live in proximity to cities. Using economics to understand this phenomenon, the urban economist uses the tools of economic theory and empirical data to explain why cities exist and to analyze urban issues such as housing, education, crime, poverty and social interaction. Drawing on the success of his Lindahl lectures, Edward Glaeser provides a rigorous account of his research and unique thinking on cities. Using a series of simple models and economic theory, Glaeser illustrates the primary features of urban economics including the concepts of spatial equilibrium and agglomeration economies. Written for a mathematically inclined audience with an interest in urban economics and cities, the book is written to be accessible to theorists and non-theorists alike and should provide a basis for further empirical work.
Download or read book BDEIM 2022 written by Paulo Batista and published by European Alliance for Innovation. This book was released on 2023-06-14 with total page 1107 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: BDEIM 2022 created an academic platform for academic communication and scientific innovation, brought together experts, scholars, and scientists in the fields of big data economy and information management from all over the world to present their research results and to exchange information, promoted the industrial cooperation of academic achievements, and facilitated the collaboration in the future among all the participants. The scope of the conference covered all areas of research in big data economy and information management, including Big Data Mining, Economic Statistics under Big Data, Sensor Network and Internet of Things, Computer Science and Internet, Network and Information Security, Database Technology, etc. The conference brought together about 150 participants, primarily from China, but also from USA, France, Portugal, and other countries. This volume contains the papers presented at the 3rd International Conference on Big Data Economy and Information Management (BDEIM 2022), held during December 2nd-3rd, 2023 in Zhengzhou, China.
Download or read book International Productivity Monitor written by OECD and published by OECD Publishing. This book was released on 2017-07-17 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 32nd issue of the International Productivity Monitor is a special issue produced in collaboration with the OECD. All articles published in this issue were selected from papers presented at the First Annual Conference of the OECD Global Forum on Productivity held in Lisbon, Portugal, July ...
Download or read book The Economics of Agglomeration written by William C. Strange and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This inspiring collection compiles the most essential papers encompassing agglomeration economies. Agglomeration economies are manifested in cities and industry clusters shaping the neighborhoods and the regions that contain them. The literature is unified around several themes: Improvements in econometric methods and data, geographic scales at which agglomeration economies operate, micro-neighborhoods and mega-regions. The volume also uncovers the forces driving the field including labor markets, input markets and dynamic phenomena such as innovation, technology change and growth. Prefaced by an original introduction from the editor, this collection promises to be a useful tool for scholars as well as a fascinating read to those interested in the subject area"--
Download or read book The New Geography of Jobs written by Enrico Moretti and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2012 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Makes correlations between success and geography, explaining how such rising centers of innovation as San Francisco and Austin are likely to offer influential opportunities and shape the national and global economies in positive or detrimental ways.
Download or read book Under Rewarded Efforts written by Santiago Levy Algazi and published by Inter-American Development Bank. This book was released on 2018-07-11 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why has an economy that has done so many things right failed to grow fast? Under-Rewarded Efforts traces Mexico’s disappointing growth to flawed microeconomic policies that have suppressed productivity growth and nullified the expected benefits of the country’s reform efforts. Fast growth will not occur doing more of the same or focusing on issues that may be key bottlenecks to productivity growth elsewhere, but not in Mexico. It will only result from inclusive institutions that effectively protect workers against risks, redistribute towards those in need, and simultaneously align entrepreneurs’ and workers’ incentives to raise productivity.
Download or read book Making It Big written by Andrea Ciani and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2020-10-08 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Economic and social progress requires a diverse ecosystem of firms that play complementary roles. Making It Big: Why Developing Countries Need More Large Firms constitutes one of the most up-to-date assessments of how large firms are created in low- and middle-income countries and their role in development. It argues that large firms advance a range of development objectives in ways that other firms do not: large firms are more likely to innovate, export, and offer training and are more likely to adopt international standards of quality, among other contributions. Their particularities are closely associated with productivity advantages and translate into improved outcomes not only for their owners but also for their workers and for smaller enterprises in their value chains. The challenge for economic development, however, is that production does not reach economic scale in low- and middle-income countries. Why are large firms scarcer in developing countries? Drawing on a rare set of data from public and private sources, as well as proprietary data from the International Finance Corporation and case studies, this book shows that large firms are often born large—or with the attributes of largeness. In other words, what is distinct about them is often in place from day one of their operations. To fill the “missing top†? of the firm-size distribution with additional large firms, governments should support the creation of such firms by opening markets to greater competition. In low-income countries, this objective can be achieved through simple policy reorientation, such as breaking oligopolies, removing unnecessary restrictions to international trade and investment, and establishing strong rules to prevent the abuse of market power. Governments should also strive to ensure that private actors have the skills, technology, intelligence, infrastructure, and finance they need to create large ventures. Additionally, they should actively work to spread the benefits from production at scale across the largest possible number of market participants. This book seeks to bring frontier thinking and evidence on the role and origins of large firms to a wide range of readers, including academics, development practitioners and policy makers.
