Agglomeration and job matching among college graduates

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractWe study one potential source of urban agglomeration economies: better job matching.Focusing on college graduates, we construct two direct measures of job matching based on how well an individual's job corresponds to his or her college education. Consistent with matching-based theories of urban agglomeration, we find evidence that larger and thicker local labor markets help college graduates find better jobs by increasing both the likelihood and quality of a match. We then assess the extent to which better job matching of college-educated workers increases individual-level wages and thereby contributes to the urban wage premium. While we find that college graduates with better job matches do indeed earn higher wages on average, the contribution of such job matching to aggregate urban productivity appears to be relatively modest.

STEM graduates, human capital externalities, and wages in the U.S.

“…Many take jobs that use their education very little, and some take jobs for which they are overeducated (Robst 2007a,b;Abel and Deitz 2012b). Furthermore, part of the value of a college education is that it is a credential that signals one's innate ability to employers, independent of the knowledge and skills gained.…”

Agglomeration Effect of Skill-Based Local Labor Pooling: Evidence of South Korea

“…Duranton and Puga [7] presented a theoretical foundation that shows that improving the quality and frequency of matching employees with firms serves as a channel through which local labor pooling contributes to the productivity of local firms. Abel and Deitz [8] provided empirical findings that a thick labor market helps college graduates in the United States find jobs that more closely match their education. Andini et al [13] examined four aspects of local labor pools, including turnover, learning, matching, and hold up, and their Italian empirical analysis showed a positive association between turnover and on-the-job training and labor market density.…”

“…Urban economic theorists have developed models related to the concentration of various firms and production factors in a city and their generation of urban advantages: sharing specialized production inputs, enhancing learning and spreading specific knowledge, and facilitating higher-quality matches between workers and firms [7]. In particular, a thick labor market represents a source of agglomeration economies by reducing employee search costs, increasing churning rates, and improving the likelihood of strong matches between workers and firms [8,9]. This line of study has indicated that a large local labor pool has a positive effect on both firms and workers during job searches and matching processes in populated urban areas.…”

Why Cities Emerge and Grow? Explanations of Theoretical and Empirical Studies

“…Например, оценки вероятно-стей согласования знаний выпускников и требований вакансий (Abel, Deitz, 2015;Gan, Li, 2016) показали, что области специализации, где больше ва-кансий и больше кандидатов, демонстрируют более высокие показатели со-гласования полученного образования и требований нанимателей. Другим примером является работа Д. Коста и М. Кан (Costa, Kahn, 2000), где рассма-тривается выбор места жительства супругов, оба из которых имеют высшее образование и степень колледжа.…”