Human capital is observed to be an important contributor to growth but unevenly distributed geographically. While there is consensus on the importance of human capital to economic development, debate takes shape around two central issues. First, there is the question of how best to measure human...

We investigate the effects on individuals’ productivity (captured through their wage income) of two social networks in which individuals are embedded: their residential neighborhood and their workplace. We avail ourselves of Swedish micro-level data which makes it possible to identify...

Research on human capital generally focuses on the regional level, and neglects the relative effects of its distribution between center cities and surrounding suburbs. This research examines the effects of this intra-metropolitan distribution on economic performance. The findings indicate that...

While there is a general consensus on the importance of human capital to regional development, debate has emerged around two key issues. The first involves the efficacy of educational versus occupational measures (i.e. the creative class) of human capital, while the second revolves around the...

The aim of this paper is to introduce an alternative measure that incorporates the concept of a global Malmquist productivity index with a directional distance function. Unlike a conventional geometric mean form of the Malmquist-Luenberger productivity index, this global index is circular and...

This research provides new data and insight metropolitan areas worldwide. It summarizes new data, derived from satellite images of the world at night, to provide systematic estimates of the economic activity generated by cities and metropolitan areas worldwide. It identifies 681 global...

The importance of metropolitan regions as national growth and development engines, and in particular as driving forces in national as well as global innovation processes is well recognized. This paper highlights the role of metropolitan regions in different contexts in order to lay a foundation...

Research has suggested that night-time light (NTL) can be used as a proxy for a number of variables, including urbanization, density, and economic growth. But, just how close is the relationship between NTL and economic activity? This paper uses a combination of correlation analysis and...

Human capital theory suggests that higher education, as a means of capability creation and of ability screening, is positively associated with individuals’ success as entrepreneurs. This paper argues that social capital perspectives, in particular the theory of local embeddedness and team...

The importance of cities to economic dynamism and growth cannot be emphasized enough. It is crucial for our understanding of what drives economic growth to understand how cities emerge, develop and prosper. This paper investigates the emergence of cities from a spontaneous order and urban...