Grads on the go: Measuring college‐specific labor markets for graduates
本文提出衡量美国大学毕业生劳动力市场的新指标，发现约50%的毕业生在母校最近的大都市区工作，且精英四年制院校毕业生地理分布更广；该指标可预测大学代际经济流动性，并量化“人才流失”对公共高等教育投资社会回报的影响。
Abstract This paper introduces a new measure of the labor markets served by colleges and universities across the United States. About 50% of recent college graduates are living and working in the metro area nearest the institution they attended, with this figure climbing to 67% in‐state. The geographic dispersion of alumni is more than twice as great for highly selective 4‐year institutions as for 2‐year institutions. However, more than one quarter of 2‐year institutions disperse alumni more diversely than the average public 4‐year institution. In one application of these data, we find that the average strength of the labor market to which a college sends its graduates predicts college‐specific intergenerational economic mobility. In a second application, we quantify the extent of “brain drain” across areas and illustrate the importance of considering migration patterns of college graduates when estimating the social return on public investment in higher education.