Do colleges and universities increase their region's human capital?

Jaison Abel and Richard Deitz

No 401, Staff Reports from Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Abstract: We investigate whether the degree production and research and development (R&D) activities of colleges and universities are related to the amount and types of human capital present in the metropolitan areas where the institutions are located. We find that degree production has only a small positive relationship with local stocks of human capital, suggesting that migration plays an important role in the geographic distribution of human capital. Moreover, we show that spillovers from academic R&D activities tilt the structure of local labor markets toward occupations requiring innovation and technical training. These findings demonstrate that colleges and universities raise local human capital levels by increasing both the supply of and demand for skill.

Keywords: human capital; higher education; knowledge spillovers; local economic development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 O18 R10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-10-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-geo, nep-hrm, nep-lab, nep-mic and nep-ure
Note: For a published version of this report, see Jaison R. Abel and Richard Deitz, "Do Colleges and Universities Increase Their Region's Human Capital?" Journal of Economic Geography 12, no. 2 (May 2012): 667-91.
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Journal Article: Do colleges and universities increase their region's human capital? (2012)
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