Exploring factors contributing to the skill acquisition and movement of high skilled workers

Abstract

In this thesis I attempt to investigate two important areas within labour and urban economics that have a bearing on the skill composition and movement of high skilled workers While the first topic explores the returns to education for skilled managerial workers the second topic explores how location choices are made by skilled workers The motivation for combining these two independent areas of research is explained as follows Education has become the defining criteria to equip people with high end skills with more and more people joining higher education institutions for better career prospects For example Becker et al 2010 notes the rise in college education across the world since 1970 which has been primarily driven by a boom from women joining higher education Therefore not only is it important to understand the returns to education once an individual decides to invest in higher education but we also need to examine more closely features of the education system that contribute most towards skill acquisition by individuals and have a direct bearing on returns to education At the same time once these skills are acquired where would workers want to settle down to employ their skills Labour economics often does not consider the spatial dimension of workers in an economy or even how such spatial distributions arise in the first place Zenou 2009 Cities which host urban labour markets have many factors associated with them to bring together skilled workers What exactly are the factors that impact the locational preferences of skilled workers is something we wish to address in the second part of our thesis as a way of understanding the micro foundations of the spatial distribution of skills specifically dealing with individual behaviour We begin our study by first examining the literature on wage equations and the returns to skill from different sources We look at the relative importance education plays in human capital development versus other sources of human capital accumulation attributable to job and experience newline newline