Earnings Functions When Wages and Prices Vary by Location
证明，教育回报率在不同地方劳动力市场并非固定不变，而是在高成本高宜居地区较低，对美国数据的分析支持这一结论，挑战了劳动经济学中视教育回报率为单一参数的标准做法。
Economists generally assume, implicitly, that "the return to schooling" is invariant across local labor markets. We demonstrate that this outcome pertains if and only if preferences are homothetic-a special case that seems unlikely. Our theory predicts that returns to education will instead be relatively low in expensive high-amenity locations. Our analysis of U.S. data provides support for this contention; returns to college are especially low in such cities as San Francisco and Seattle. Our findings call into question standard empirical exercises in labor economics that treat the returns to education as a single parameter. (c) 2009 by The University of Chicago.