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Title: Smart Cafe Cities: Testing human capital externalities in the Boston metropolitan area

Citation Type: Journal Article

Publication Year: 2007

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Abstract: Existing studies have explored only one or, in some cases, two mechanisms by which human capitalexternalities percolate at the macrogeographic levels. This study, however, uses the 1990 Massachusettscensus data to test four mechanisms at the microgeographic levels, in the Boston metropolitan area labormarket. We propose that individual workers can learn from their occupational and industrial peers in thesame local labor market through four channels: depth of human capital stock, Marshallian labor marketexternalities, Jacobs labor market externalities, and thickness of the local labor market. We find that alltypes of human capital externalities are significant across census blocks. Different types of externalitiesattenuate at different speeds over distances. For example, the effect of human capital depth decays rapidlybeyond three miles away from block centroids. We conclude that knowledge spillovers are very localizedwithin a microgeographic scope in cities that we call, Smart Caf Cities. 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Authors: Fu, Shihe

Periodical (Full): Journal of Urban Economics

Issue:

Volume: 61

Pages: 86-111

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Other

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