Citation

Discussion Paper Details

Please find the details for DP14434 in an easy to copy and paste format below:

Full Details   |   Bibliographic Reference

Full Details

Title: Cities, Lights, and Skills in Developing Economies

Author(s): Donald R Davis, Jonathan Dingel and Antonio Miscio

Publication Date: February 2020

Keyword(s): cities, Metropolitan areas, satellite images, skill-biased agglomeration and Zipf's law

Programme Area(s): International Trade and Regional Economics

Abstract: In developed economies, agglomeration is skill-biased: larger cities are skill-abundant and exhibit higher skilled wage premia. This paper characterizes the spatial distributions of skills in Brazil, China, and India. To facilitate comparisons with developed-economy findings, we construct metropolitan areas for each of these economies by aggregating finer geographic units on the basis of contiguous areas of light in nighttime satellite images. Our results validate this procedure. These lights-based metropolitan areas mirror commuting-based definitions in the United States and Brazil. In China and India, which lack commuting-based definitions, lights-based metropolitan populations follow a power law, while administrative units do not. Examining variation in relative quantities and prices of skill across these metropolitan areas, we conclude that agglomeration is also skill-biased in Brazil, China, and India.

For full details and related downloads, please visit: https://cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=14434

Bibliographic Reference

Davis, D, Dingel, J and Miscio, A. 2020. 'Cities, Lights, and Skills in Developing Economies'. London, Centre for Economic Policy Research. https://cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=14434