Enrico Moretti on Jobs, Cities, and Innovation

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4.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 25 June 2012

⏱️ 72 minutes

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Summary

Enrico Moretti of the University of California, Berkeley and the author of the New Geography of Jobs talks to EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the ideas in his book. Moretti traces how the economic success of cities and the workers who live there depends on the education of those workers. Moretti argues that there are spillover effects from educated workers--increased in jobs and wages in the city. He uses changes in the fortunes of Seattle and Albuquerque over the last three decades as an example of how small changes can affect the path of economic development and suggests a strong role for serendipity in determining which cities become hubs for high-tech innovation. The conversation concludes with Moretti making the case for increasing investments in education and research and development.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host Russ Roberts
0:13.9	of George Mason University and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Our website is econtalk.org
0:21.2	where you can subscribe, find other episodes, comment on this podcast, and find links to
0:26.5	other information related to today's conversation. Our email address is maleaddycontalk.org. We'd
0:33.6	love to hear from you. Today's June 14th, 2012, and my guest is Enrico
0:42.6	Moretti, Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he holds the
0:47.2	Michael Peavy and Donald Vile Career Development Chair in Labor Economics. He is the author of
0:53.2	the new geography of jobs in Enrico Welcome to Econ Talk. Thank you very much Russ. Our topic
0:59.2	for today is the new geography of jobs, the ideas in your book. What has changed over the last
1:04.2	three decades? What's new about the geography of jobs? Well, the last three decades has seen two major
1:12.2	global changes that have reshaped the American labor market. One change is the acceleration
1:20.2	of globalization. The second change is a variety of technological innovations that have affected
1:31.2	the productivity of different workers differently. These two changes are global in scope, but they
1:41.2	have profoundly different effects on the local economy of different metropolitan areas
1:49.2	in the United States. Globalization and technological progress have increased and strengthened the
1:57.2	labor market of some areas, but they are also weakened the labor market in other areas. This
2:04.2	has resulted in a redistribution of jobs, wealth, and population across metropolitan areas in our country.
2:14.2	What are some of the cities that are doing particularly well and have particularly high education? What
2:21.2	are some of the cities that are not doing very well and have low levels of education on average?
2:26.2	The level of education is crucial because for the past three decades, the average level of education
2:33.2	in the workforce has been the key predictor of the economic success of communities. Communities that
2:40.2	have a lot of highly educated workers, especially a lot of college-educated workers,
	...

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