This paper assesses regional inequality in contemporary urban China by predicting earningss for individual workers in multiple provinces, comparing the province of maximum predicted earnings to the province of residence and assessing the predicted gains from relocation. The paper performs the...

This paper substantiates the debate following Richard Florida’s suggestion to measure regional human capital by creative occupations rather than education. Consistent with Florida’s notion of creativity, it suggests a microfoundation that relates creativity to workers’ cognitive and...

The stylized fact that the fraction of workers who are college graduates appears to increase more in US cities where the initial share is larger has attracted significant attention. Furthermore, more educated cities appear to grow faster. These two trends could portend the divergence of cities...

This paper assesses regional inequality in urban China. It predicts earnings for each worker in multiple provinces, compares provinces of residence and maximum predicted earnings, and estimates predicted relocation gains. It presents a reference comparison for the U.S. in 1940. Only 7.4% of U.S....

This article is devoted to an investigation of the forms of human capital that characterize cities at different levels of the US urban hierarchy. Basic data on human capital are drawn from the O*Net information system. A first analytical exercise shows that for the USA as a whole, occupations...

This paper studies how the changing geographic distribution of skilled workers in the US affects theoretical models that use Gibrat's law to explain the size distribution of cities. In the empirical literature, a divergence hypothesis holds that college share increases faster in cities where...

Human capital is typically viewed as generating a number of desirable outcomes, including economic growth. Yet, in spite of its importance, few empirical studies have explored why some economies accumulate more human capital than others. This paper attempts to do so using a sample of more than...