The Role of Transportation Speed in Facilitating High Skilled Worker Matching and Interaction

Siqi Zheng, the Samuel Tak Lee Associate Professor of Real Estate Development and Entrepreneurship and Faculty Director, Samuel Tak Lee Real Estate Entrepreneurship Lab at MIT,  will present "The Role of Transportation Speed in Facilitating High Skilled Worker Matching and Interaction" on Friday, March 2nd from 10:30am-12:00pm in Room 250A, Agricultural Administration (2120 Fyffe Road, Columbus, OH 43210)

Abstract: High skilled workers gain from face to face interactions. If the skilled can move at higher speeds, then such knowledge diffusion and idea flows are likely to reach greater distances. This paper uses the construction of China’s high speed rail (HSR) network as a natural experiment to test this claim. Since bullet trains reduce cross-city commute times, they reduce the cost of face-to-face interactions between skilled workers who live and work in different cities. Using a complete data base listing research paper publication and citations, we document a complementarity effect between knowledge production and the transportation network. Co-authors’ productivity rises and more new co-author pairs emerge when secondary cities are connected to China’s spatial centers of top universities.

This event is open to the public. No RSVP is necessary.