Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Successful Cities are Educated Cities

From Ed Glaeser and Albert Saiz:

For more than a century, educated cities have grown more quickly than comparable cities
with less human capital. This fact survives a battery of other control variables,
metropolitan area fixed effects and tests for reverse causality. We also find that skilled
cities are growing because they are becoming more economically productive (relative to
less skilled cities), not because these cities are becoming more attractive places to live.
Most surprisingly, we find evidence suggesting that the skills-city growth connection
occurs mainly in declining areas and occurs in large part because skilled cities are better at
adapting to economic shocks. As in Schultz (1964), skills appear to permit adaptation.

1 comment:

Chuck said...

The paper demonstrates very little.
Two professors conclude that we should invest in education. Imagine that! A good example of all that is wrong in U.S. economics.