Agglomeration and job matching among college graduates
Jaison Abel and
Richard Deitz
Regional Science and Urban Economics, 2015, vol. 51, issue C, 14-24
Abstract:
We examine job matching as a potential source of urban agglomeration economies. Focusing on college graduates, we construct two direct measures of job matching based on how well an individual's job corresponds to their college education. Consistent with matching-based theories of urban agglomeration, we find evidence that larger and thicker local labor markets increase both the likelihood and quality of a job match for college graduates. 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. We find that college graduates with better job matches do indeed earn higher wages on average, though the contribution of such job matching to aggregate urban productivity appears to be relatively modest.
Keywords: Agglomeration; Labor market matching; Productivity; Underemployment; Urban wage premium (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 J24 J31 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (33)
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166046214001264
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
Related works:
Working Paper: Agglomeration and job matching among college graduates (2012) 
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:regeco:v:51:y:2015:i:c:p:14-24
DOI: 10.1016/j.regsciurbeco.2014.12.001
Access Statistics for this article
Regional Science and Urban Economics is currently edited by D.P McMillen and Y. Zenou
More articles in Regional Science and Urban Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().