An Empirical Test of Urban Labor Matching
Miles M. Finney*
April 2006
Abstract
This study tests for the labor matching efficiency of cities by
examining the relationship between urbanization and the skills
variation of public school principals. The results imply larger
urban labor markets are generally more efficient at matching the
skills of residents to the skills required by employers. The
variation in labor skills among school principals is found to
decrease with urban size, which is evidence that urbanization
fosters more efficient labor matches.
* Department of Economics and Statistics, California State University, Los Angeles, CA
90032; phone: (323) 343-2937, email: [email protected] fax: (323) 343-5462.
The author would like to thank Simonetta Longhi and Janet Kohlhase for helpful
comments.