While there is a general consensus on the importance of human capital to regional development, debate has emerged around two key issues. The first involves the efficacy of educational versus occupational measures (i.e. the creative class) of human capital, while the second revolves around the factors that affect its distribution. We use structural equation models and path analysis to examine the relations from these two alternative measures of human capital and regional income and wages, and also to isolate the relations of tolerance, consumer service amenities and the university on its distribution. We find that human capital and the creative class affect regional development through different channels. The creative class outperforms conventional educational attainment measures in accounting for regional labor productivity measured as wages, while conventional human capital does better in accounting for regional income. We find that tolerance is significantly associated with both human capital and the creative class as well as with wages and income. We also find that the cultural economy has both direct and indirect relationships to regional development and impacts both production and consumption.

Much research has suggested that night-time light (NTL) can be used as a proxy for a number of variables, including urbanization, density, and economic growth. As governments around the world either collect census data infrequently or are scaling back the amount of detail collected, alternate sources of population and economic information like NTL are being considered. But, just how close is the statistical relationship between NTL and economic activity at a fine-grained geographical level? This paper uses a combination of correlation analysis and geographically weighted regressions in order to examine if light can function as a proxy for economic activities at a finer level. We use a fine-grained geo-coded residential and industrial full sample micro-data set for Sweden, and match it with both radiance and saturated light emissions. We find that the correlation between NTL and economic activity is strong enough to make it a relatively good proxy for population and establishment density, but the correlation is weaker in relation to wages. In general, we find a stronger relation between light and density values, than with light and total values. We also find a closer connection between radiance light and economic activity, than with saturated light. Further, we find the link between light and economic activity, especially estimated by wages, to be slightly overestimated in large urban areas and underestimated in rural areas.

BackgroundThe importance of creativity as a driving force in regional economic growth and prosperity has been previously documented by one of us (Florida, 2002a;2002b;2002c). However, the mechanisms of this relationship not well understood. Knudsen et al (2003) have shown that innovative activity within a region is positively associated with population density and creative-class workforce, both jointly and separately. The explanation put forth suggests, but does not confirm, that high levels of density and creative-class employment create conditions under which innovations generated by the interactions between individuals are more likely to occur. In this paper we present evidence of these innovation-generating interactions. Theories of regional economic growth have stressed the importance of the role played by technological spillovers (for example,

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