Migration, self-selection and learning in cities
- Autores: Jorge Martín de la Roca Macchiavello
- Directores de la Tesis: Diego Puga (dir. tes.), Samuel Bentolila (tut. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo (UIMP) ( España ) en 2012
- Idioma: español
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Gianmarco Ottaviano (presid.), David Franz Dorn (secret.), Laura Hospido Quintana (voc.), Klaus Desmet (voc.), Elisabet Viladecans Marsal (voc.)
- Materias:
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- Resumen
The core of this doctoral dissertation examines three reasons why firms may be willing to pay more to workers in bigger cities. First, there may be some static advantages associated with bigger cities.
Second, these cities may allow workers to accumulate more valuable experience. Third, workers who are inherently more productive may choose to locate there. Using a large and rich panel data set for workers in Spain, I provide a quantitative assessment of the importance of each of these three mechanisms in generating earnings differentials across cities of different sizes.
The results show there are substantial static and dynamic advantages from working in bigger cities. About onehalf of these gains are static and tied to currently working in a big city. The other half accrues over time as workers accumulate more valuable experience in big cities. Furthermore, workers are able to take these dynamic gains with them when they relocate, which suggests that learning in big cities is important.
Although the highlyskilled and productive workers in small cities migrate to the big cities, most of this selection can be accounted by observables such as educational attainment or occupational skills. When I compare the distributions of innate ability across cities of different sizes, i.e., the level of ability prior to any accrued dynamic benefits in big cities, the distributions are remarkably similar. Sorting of more able workers into big cities plays at best a minor role in explaining earnings differentials.
I conclude that workers in bigger cities are not particularly different in terms of innate ability. It is working in cities of different sizes that makes their earnings diverge. The combination of static gains and learning advantages, together with the fact that higherability workers benefit more from working in bigger cities, explain why the observed distribution of earnings in bigger cities has a higher mean and variance.
The evidence provided on the relative importance of these three mechanisms should guide further research to focus on microfounded theories that can explain how static and dynamic advantages generate higher earnings in big cities. These two mechanisms are the main drivers of the observed citysize earnings premium.
