College Alumni Networks and Mobility Across Local Labor Markets (with Heidi Artigue) 

Job Market Paper (draft)

Abstract:  We quantify the impact of alumni networks on the geographic mobility of job seekers for nearly 1,400 US colleges and universities. We use detailed employment and education information on LinkedIn users to isolate college-educated workers who faced an exogenous job separation in a mass layoff or firm closure. Using a nested logit model of location choice, we compare the migration decisions of job seekers who were displaced in the same city and who attended different but similar and geographically proximate universities. We find that a 1% increase in the number of co-alumni in the city of displacement increases a job seeker's odds of staying there by 0.4%. Conditional on moving, a 1% increase in a potential destination's number of co-alumni increases the odds of choosing that city over another by 0.9%. Co-alumni may both impact job search and provide local amenities. Using data on the presence or absence of co-alumni at new jobs, we conclude that the job search channel is particularly important.  Co-alumni from the same or neighboring graduating class have much larger impacts on location choice, indicating true network effects rather than idiosyncratic matches between alumni of certain colleges and jobs in certain cities. We also find strong impacts of having more local co-alumni who work in the same industry.

The Labor Market Impacts of 21st Century STEM Enrollment Expansions in US Higher Education

The Dynamics of High-Skill Worker Reallocation: Evidence from the Dot-Com Bubble