Do Universities Improve Local Economic Resilience?

Arbeitspapier

We use a novel identification strategy to investigate whether regional universities make their local economies more resilient to adverse economic shocks. Our strategy is based on state governments assigning normal schools (to train teachers) and insane asylums to counties between 1830 and 1930. Normal schools later became much larger regional universities while asylum properties mostly continue as small state-owned psychiatric health facilities. Because site selection criteria were similar for these two types of institutions, comparing counties assigned a normal school versus an insane asylum identifies the effect of a regional university. We find that having a regional university roughly offset the negative effects of exposure to manufacturing declines, and we attribute a significant share of this resilience to the resilience of regional public university spending.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 14422

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; General Regional Economics (includes Regional Data) ; Higher Education; Research Institutions ; Demand and Supply of Labor: General
• Subject: manufacturing decline ; universities and economic growth ; resilience

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Howard, Greg ; Weinstein, Russell ; Yang, Yuhao
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2021

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/236453
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:41 AM CET