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ERIC Number: EJ929929
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2011-Jun
Pages: 20
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0037-7732
EISSN: N/A
Why Does the Spatial Agglomeration of Firms Benefit Workers? Examining the Role of Organizational Diversity in U.S. Industries and Labor Markets
Fullerton, Andrew S.; Villemez, Wayne J.
Social Forces, v89 n4 p1145-1164 Jun 2011
Several recent studies across the social sciences show that the spatial agglomeration of employment in a local labor market benefits both firms and workers in terms of better firm performance and higher wages. Drawing from the organizational ecology perspective, we argue that workers receive higher wages in large industrial clusters and urban labor markets because of the greater degree of organizational diversity relative to smaller local industries and labor markets. Using data from the 1990 PUMS-L, we employ a three-level hierarchical linear model in order to test hypotheses regarding organizational diversity and the effects of industrial and urban agglomeration on wages. We find that workers benefit from both forms of agglomeration due to greater establishment size and industrial diversity in large industrial clusters and urban labor markets. We also find that urban agglomeration has a larger substantive effect on wages than industrial agglomeration in reduced models, but the industrial agglomeration effect is more robust across models. These findings support the organizational ecology perspective, which suggests that workers earn higher wages in local industry clusters and urban labor markets because greater organizational diversity leads to more optimal matching between workers and employers. However, the wage premium associated with urban labor markets is also due to other factors, such as greater levels of human capital and higher rates of union density (Contains 3 tables and 5 notes.)
University of North Carolina Press. 116 South Boundary Street, P.O. Box 2288, Chapel Hill, NC 27515-2288. Tel: 800-848-6224; Tel: 919-966-7449; Fax: 919-962-2704; e-mail: uncpress@unc.edu; Web site: http://uncpress.unc.edu/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Adult Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A