The urban wage growth premium: sorting or learning?

Sabine D'Costa and Henry Overman

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: This paper is concerned with the urban wage premium and addresses two central issues about which the field has not yet reached a consensus: first, the extent to which sorting of high ability individuals into urban areas explains the urban wage premium and second, whether workers receive this wage premium immediately, or through faster wage growth over time. Using a large panel of worker-level data from Britain, we first demonstrate the existence of an urban premium for wage levels, which increases in city size. We next provide evidence of a city size premium on wage growth, but show that this effect is driven purely by the increase in wage that occurs in the first year that a worker moves to a larger location. Controlling for sorting on the basis of unobservables we find no evidence of an urban wage growth premium. Experience in cities does have some impact on wage growth, however. Specifically, we show that workers who have at some point worked in a city experience faster wage growth than those who have never worked in a city.

Keywords: urban wage premium; agglomeration; cities; wage growth; worker mobility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J31 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (80)

Published in Regional Science and Urban Economics, September, 2014, 48, pp. 168-179. ISSN: 0166-0462

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/59074/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The urban wage growth premium: Sorting or learning? (2014)
Working Paper: The Urban Wage Growth Premium: Sorting or Learning? (2013)
Working Paper: The urban wage growth premium: sorting or learning? (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:59074

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