Tasks, cities and urban wage premia

Anja Grujovic-Vischer

No 1807, CEPREMAP Working Papers (Docweb) from CEPREMAP

Abstract: Combining rich administrative data for Germany with representative workforce surveys, I find that job task content is robustly predictive of differences in urban wage premia across otherwise observationally equivalent individuals. Based on this, I propose a model where productive advantages of cities are inherently task-specific. Workers of higher ability have a comparative advantage in the tasks whose production benefits the most from urban spillovers. In equilibrium, bigger cities generate larger externalities for more able agents and urban wage premia is skill-biased. I estimate the model using German worker panel data on 336 districts, 331 occupations, 3 education categories and 3 tasks. I find that one standard deviation increase in abstract task intensity is associated with a 5-percentage point increase in the elasticity of earnings with respect to population size. Differences in task-specific urban wage premia remain significant even after controlling for skill premia of larger cities.

Keywords: urban wage premium; agglomeration economies; task production (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 48 pages
Date: 2018-11
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpm:docweb:1807

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