Agglomeration Economies and Race Specific Spillovers

Elizabeth Ananat (), Shihe Fu () and Stephen L. Ross ()
Additional contact information
Elizabeth Ananat: Barnard College, Columbia University
Stephen L. Ross: University of Connecticut

No 2020-069, Working Papers from Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group

Abstract: Racial social isolation within workplaces may reduce firm productivity. We provide descriptive evidence that African-Americans feel socially isolated from whites. To test whether isolation affects productivity, we estimate models of Total Factor Productivity for manufacturing firms allowing the returns to concentrated economic activity and human capital to vary by the match between each establishment's racial and ethnic composition and the composition of local area employment. Higher own-race representation increases the productivity return from employment density and concentrations of college educated workers. Looming demographic changes suggest that this drag on economic productivity may increase over time.

Keywords: agglomeration economies; firm productivity; human capital externalities; information networks; racial and ethnic isolation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J15 J24 L11 R12 R23 R32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo, nep-lma, nep-net and nep-ure
Note: MIP
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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http://humcap.uchicago.edu/RePEc/hka/wpaper/Ananat ... -race-spillovers.pdf First version, September, 2020 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Agglomeration Economies and Race Specific Spillovers (2021)
Working Paper: Agglomeration Economies and Race Specific Spillovers (2020)
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