Working Paper: NBER ID: w9953
Authors: Donald Boyd; Hamilton Lankford; Susanna Loeb; James Wyckoff
Abstract: This paper explores a little understood aspect of labor markets, their spatial geography. Using data from New York State, we find teacher labor markets to be geographically very small. Teachers express preferences to teach close to where they grew up and, controlling for proximity, they prefer areas with characteristics similar to their hometown. We discuss implications of these preferences for the successful recruitment of teachers, including the potential benefits of local recruiting and training. We also discuss implications for the modeling of teacher labor markets, including the possible biases that arise in estimates of compensating differentials when distance is omitted from the analyses. This study contributes to the literature on the geography of labor markets more generally by employing data on residential location during childhood instead of current residence, which may be endogenous to job choice.
Keywords: No keywords provided
JEL Codes: I2; J2; J3; J4; J6
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| teachers' residential locations during high school (R23) | teachers' job choices (J45) |
| geographic proximity of teachers' hometowns (R23) | teachers' employment locations (J45) |
| geographic scope of teacher labor markets (J45) | recruitment policies (J68) |