Authors
Fabian Eckert
University of California, San Diego
Sharat Ganapati
Georgetown University
Conor Walsh
Visiting Scholar, Institute
Urban-Biased Growth: A Macroeconomic Analysis
Abstract
Since 1980, US wage growth has been fastest in large cities. Empirically, we show that most of this urban-biased growth reflects wage growth at large Business Services firms, which are also the most intensive users of ICT capital in the US economy. We provide an explicit economic mechanism whereby ICT is more complementary with labor at larger firms. Quantitatively, we find that with such a complementarity, the observed decline in ICT prices alone can account for most of the urban-biased growth, since Business Services firms in big cities tend to be large.
This paper previously circulated with the title "Skilled Scalable Services: The New Urban Bias in Economic Growth."
This paper previously circulated with the title "Skilled Tradable Services: The Transformation of U.S. High-Skill Labor Markets."
