TY  - JOUR
AU  - Ottaviano,Gianmarco I.P.
AU  - Peri,Giovanni
TI  - The Economic Value of Cultural Diversity: Evidence from US Cities
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 10904
PY  - 2004
Y2  - November 2004
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10904
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10904.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Gianmarco Ottaviano
Department of Economics
Bocconi University
Via Roentgen 1
20136 Milan
Italy
E-Mail: gianmarco.ottaviano@unibocconi.it

Giovanni Peri
Department of Economics
University of California, Davis
One Shields Avenue
Davis, CA 95616
Tel: 530/752-3033
E-Mail: gperi@ucdavis.edu
AB  - What are the economic consequences to U.S. natives of the growing diversity of American cities? Is their productivity or utility affected by cultural diversity as measured by diversity of countries of birth of U.S. residents? We document in this paper a very robust correlation: US-born citizens living in metropolitan areas where the share of foreign-born increased between 1970 and 1990, experienced a significant increase in their wage and in the rental price of their housing. Such finding is economically significant and survives omitted variable bias and endogeneity bias. As people and firms are mobile across cities in the long run we argue that, in equilibrium, these correlations are consistent only with a net positive effect of cultural diversity on productivity of natives.
ER  -