Smart Cities: Quality of Life, Productivity, and the Growth Effects of Human Capital

By Jesse M. Shapiro. Review of Economics and Statistics, 2005

1,108 citations recorded by the source corpus.

From 1940 to 1990, a 10% increase in a metropolitan area's concentration of college-educated residents was associated with a 0.8% increase in subsequent employment growth. Instrumental variables estimates support a causal relationship between college graduates and employment growth, but show no evidence of an effect of high school graduates. Using data on growth in wages, rents, and house values, I calibrate a neoclassical city growth model and find that roughly 60% of the employment growth effect of college graduates is due to enhanced productivity growth, the rest being caused by growth in the quality of life. This finding contrasts with the common argument that human capital generates employment growth in urban areas solely through changes in productivity.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9475beac0568ebcb76ef403df8317d5cab7d67c5

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Citations in the corpus

Is tolerance good or bad for growth? (2010, neutral): “cities, hence implying that tolerance and an ability to attract creative individuals are not that central— see Glaeser et al. (1995), Glaeser and Saiz (2004), Glaeser (2005 )a nd Shapiro (2006) .”
What is Different About Urbanization in Rich and Poor Countries? Cities in Brazil, China, India and the United States (2017, neutral): “…the share of adults with college degrees and population growth between 1960 and 1990 within the U.S. Subsequent work (Glaeser and Saiz, 2004; Shapiro, 2006) has shown that this correlation persists for more recent periods, and that skills also predict the growth of income at the local level…”
Smart Cities in Europe (2011, background): “Shapiro (2008) provides an excellent and convincing bridge between the two views.”
Smart City and information technology: A review (2019, background): “4b): Zanella (Zanella et al., n.d.), Caragliu (Caragliu et al., 2011), Batty (Batty et al., 2012), Shapiro (Shapiro, 2006), Perera (Perera et al., 2014), that explores the concept of sensing as a service and its relation to the IoT; and Botta (Botta et al., 2016), that reviews the integration of…”
Creating value from Social Big Data: Implications for Smart Tourism Destinations (2017, background): “…a high degree of innovation and the presence of open, integrated and shared processes for enhancing the quality of life for both residents and tourists (Caragliu, Del Bo, & Nijkamp, 2009, Wang & Xiang, 2012, Micera, Presenza, Splendiani, & Del Chiappa, 2013; Komninos, 2002; Shapiro, 2006).”
Urban Digital Twins for Smart Cities and Citizens: The Case Study of Herrenberg, Germany (2020, background): “The definition of the matter ranges from the interrelationship between the education of the urban population, local amenities and attractiveness for educated citizens [11,12], and emphasizing the importance of the creative class [13] up to theories describing cities or projects that use information ”
The local innovation spillovers of listed firms (2021, background): “The second channel through which knowledge can be transferred locally from one firm to another is by inventors moving across firms in the same area. Beginning with the case study of Saxenian (1994) who compares Silicon Valley with Route 128 (Boston), the ability for inventors to change jobs has been”
Does traffic congestion reduce employment growth (2009, background): “Other research examines how aggregate growth is affected by deeply-lagged city characteristics, which include the initial level of human capital (Glaeser et al., 1995; Simon, 1998; Simon and Nardinelli, 2002; Shapiro, 2006), natural characteristics (Beeson et al.”
Modelling the smart city performance (2012, neutral): “(Komninos 2002, Shapiro 2008, Deakin 2010).”
Cities, Skills and Regional Change (2014, background): “It follows the work of SHAPIRO (2006) and GLAESER and SAIZ (2004) and attempts to assess the reasons why skilled cities might grow more quickly.”