High-skilled workers' Spatial Concentration and Cities' Productivity: The Case of Latin America

The gol of this investigation is to cast light on the relationship between high-skilled work-ers’ spatial concentration and cities’ productivity in Latin America. The relationship is notclear at first sight. On the one... [ view full abstract ]

The gol of this investigation is to cast light on the relationship between high-skilled work-ers’ spatial concentration and cities’ productivity in Latin America. The relationship is notclear at first sight. On the one hand high-skilled workers’ segregation would take advantageof agglomeration economies and cause positive spillovers amongst the most advantaged thatcould compensate productivity losses due the existence of low-skilled workers ghettos. Onthe other hand, it would be the case that those spillovers are not enough for compensat-ing the worse-off groups’ productivity losses, and hence the aggregated productivity wouldbe negatively affected. We calculate this group segregation for a group of Latin Americancountries’ most important cities. We found a negative and significant relationship amongstcities’ productivity and high-skilled workers segregation. However, we found evidence of aquadratic relationship between segregation and productivity as well.