University graduates in metropolitan and peripheral areas: mobility, occupational choice and outcomes

ABSTRACT

This study explores the relationship between mobility patterns, occupational choices and performance outcomes of university graduates from metropolitan and peripheral areas. After statistical matching, we find opposite outcomes for geographically mobile wage earners and entrepreneurs. Graduates from the periphery who stay in the study region to work have an inferior performance outcome compared with those who move to the metropolitan region. This ‘penalty’ is not present for non-movers in metropolitan areas. Non-mobile entrepreneurs benefit from attachment to their home region, in particular in the periphery. These findings can help direct regional policy aimed at retaining graduates and promoting regional development.

KEYWORDS:

• mobility patterns
• entrepreneurs
• wage earners
• coarsened exact matching
• Denmark

JEL:

• I21
• J61
• L26
• R23

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This study benefitted from valuable comments and feedback from participants at the Regional Innovation Policies Conference in Florence, November 2019, as well as from the two anonymous reviewers. The authors also thank Helen Lawton Smith, Sharmistha Bagchi-Sen and Shiri M. Breznitz for organizing the special issue.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Roskilde University, University of Copenhagen, Technical University of Denmark, Copenhagen Business School or IT University of Copenhagen. Some of these universities, as well as Aalborg University in the North Denmark region, have campuses outside their main region. Graduates from these campuses are excluded from the analysis.

2. See https://rn.dk/service/english.

3. The applied wage measure is unavailable after 2010.

4. By including this variable, we control for the nominal wage level being higher in the metropolitan region compared with North Denmark.