Local human capital and external economies: evidence for Spain

Abstract

It is assumed that human capital external economies can increase factor productivity. However, as human capital is accumulated in an unequal way in the territory, productivity improvements will be different among territories. So, in the presence of labour mobility, wage differences will induce migratory movements that would concentrate population in a given geographical area and increasing housing rents until the net advantage of residing and working in different places is equal. In this paper we estimate wage and housing rents equations following Rauch (1993) model using microdata from the EPF 1990/91. The results offer evidence of local human capital external economies for the Spanish economy.