Emil O W Kirkegaard

Definitely magic dirt. Always seems to know where the smart people live.

This is looking at where smart people grew up (and hence, usually born). The effect of universities is primarily due to children of smart people. The universities are themselves downstream of the population that contains them.

Didn’t I say that? There’s still agglomeration effects even if it were all population based, which it isn’t.

Are “agglomeration effects” those due to smart kids growing up around other smart people? If so, has empirical evidence for it been found (other than parental effects and Flynn effect)?

I think that’s a lot of what Chetty is finding in these IRS/geographic studies. Regression to mean isn’t really enough to explain some of his findings, which tend to suggest growing up around a lot of smart hard working people makes you smarter and harder working, and visa versa