The economic literature has been silent on two key channels regarding how innovation affects labor supply: skilled-worker migration and “local production” of college graduates. Through these two channels, innovation influences wage divergence, skill levels, and productivity across urban areas. Using patents to proxy for regional innovation, we find that from 2005 to 2015, local college-graduate production plays a greater role in explaining US skill divergence across urban counties. Our findings suggest that local governments should focus on investing in greater local capacity for developing innovations and increasing their local higher-education capacity. Conversely, efforts to attract highly-educated workers from elsewhere should be relatively de-emphasized.

经济文献对创新如何影响劳动力供应的两个关键渠道保持沉默：技术工人迁移和大学毕业生的“本地生产”。通过这两个渠道，创新影响城市地区的工资差异、技能水平和生产力。使用专利来代理区域创新，我们发现从 2005 年到 2015 年，地方大学毕业生的产出在解释美国各城市县的技能差异方面发挥了更大的作用。我们的研究结果表明，地方政府应重点投资于提高当地发展创新能力和提高当地高等教育能力的能力。相反，应该相对淡化从其他地方吸引受过高等教育的工人的努力。