Full Citation

Title: Do Universities Improve Local Economic Resilience?

Citation Type: Working Paper

Publication Year: 2021

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Abstract: We use a novel identification strategy to investigate whether regional universities make their local economies more resilient to adverse economic shocks. Our strategy is based on state governments assigning normal schools (to train teachers) and insane asylums to counties between 1830 and 1930. Normal schools later became much larger regional universities while asylum properties mostly continue as small state-owned psychiatric health facilities. Because site selection criteria were similar for these two types of institutions, comparing counties assigned a normal school versus an insane asylum identifies the effect of a regional university. We find that having a regional university roughly offset the negative effects of exposure to manufacturing declines, and we attribute a significant share of this resilience to the resilience of regional public university spending

Url: https://ftp.iza.org/dp14422.pdf

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Authors: Howard, Greg; Weinstein, Russell; Yang, Yuhao

Series Title: IZA Discussion Paper Series

Publication Number: 14422

Institution: IZA Institute of Labor Economics

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Publisher Location: Bonn

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Education, Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Poverty and Welfare

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