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Smart cities and attracting knowledge workers: Which cities attract highly‐educated workers in the 21st century?
Author(s) -
Betz Michael R.,
Partridge Mark D.,
Fallah Belal
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
papers in regional science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.937
H-Index - 64
eISSN - 1435-5957
pISSN - 1056-8190
DOI - 10.1111/pirs.12163
Subject(s) - human capital , economies of agglomeration , construct (python library) , business , labour economics , urban agglomeration , demographic economics , economic growth , economic geography , economics , computer science , programming language
Abstract Regional policy‐makers have long sought to attract highly‐educated workers with a view to stimulating economic growth and vibrancy. Previous studies over the decades leading up to the new millennium show human capital divergence across cities, where the share of college graduates grew faster in cities that had larger initial shares of college‐educated workers. However, labour markets have changed significantly post‐2000, likely affecting migration decisions of highly‐skilled workers. Additionally, past studies have not controlled for important changes in industry education levels and overall industry composition that may influence city‐level college graduate growth. We use detailed 4‐digit NAICS industry employment data combined with public micro‐data to construct measures of industry skill upgrading and changes in industry composition to control for their effects on human capital growth. We find agglomeration forces, rather than initial graduate share, explains college‐graduate share growth post‐2000. We also decompose graduates into bachelors and postgraduate degree holders to determine whether different forces are at play on growth of graduates at different education levels.