IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp14422.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Do Universities Improve Local Economic Resilience?

Author

Listed:
  • Howard, Greg

    (University of Illinois)

  • Weinstein, Russell

    (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

  • Yang, Yuhao

    (University of Illinois)

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Howard, Greg & Weinstein, Russell & Yang, Yuhao, 2021. "Do Universities Improve Local Economic Resilience?," IZA Discussion Papers 14422, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp14422
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp14422.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gagliardi, Luisa & Moretti, Enrico & Serafinelli, Michel, 2023. "The World's Rust Belts: The Heterogeneous Effects of Deindustrialization on 1,993 Cities in Six Countries," IZA Discussion Papers 16648, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Smith, Cory & Kulka, Amrita, 2024. "Population Centers and Coordination: Evidence from County-Seat Wars," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 724, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    3. Kulka, Amrita & Smith, Cory, 2024. "Population Centers and Coordination : Evidence from County-Seat Wars," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1518, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    4. Luisa Gagliardi,, "undated". "The World’s Rust Belts: The Heterogeneous Effects of Deindustrialization on 1,993 Cities in Six Countries," RF Berlin - CReAM Discussion Paper Series 2317, Rockwool Foundation Berlin (RF Berlin) - Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    universities and economic growth; manufacturing decline; resilience;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • R10 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - General
    • I23 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Higher Education; Research Institutions
    • J20 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp14422. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.