Enrico Moretti

About

Enrico Moretti is the Michael Peevey and Donald Vial Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. His research covers the fields of labor economics and urban economics, with a focus on the economics of cities and regions. He serves as the Editor in Chief of the Journal of Economic Perspectives and is a Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Additionally, he is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research in London, and affiliated with the Institute for the Study of Labor in Bonn. Professor Moretti has received several awards and honors, including the Society of Labor Economists’ Rosen Prize, the Carlo Alberto Medal, the IZA Young Labor Economist Award, and a Fulbright Fellowship. His book, “The New Geography of Jobs,” has been translated into seven languages and was awarded the William Bowen Prize for significant contributions to understanding public policy and the labor market.

Research topics

• Labour economics
• Economics
• Microeconomics
• Macroeconomics
• Geography
• Industrial organization
• Economic geography
• Mathematics
• Demographic economics
• Agricultural economics

Selected publications

• The Effect of High-Tech Clusters on the Productivity of Top Inventors

  American Economic Review · 2021 · 275 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  The high-tech sector is concentrated in a small number of cities. The ten largest clusters in computer science, semiconductors, and biology account for 69 percent, 77 percent, and 59 percent of all US inventors, respectively. Using longitudinal data on 109,846 inventors, I find that geographical agglomeration results in significant productivity gains. When an inventor moves to a city with a large cluster of inventors in the same field, she experiences a sizable increase in the number and quality…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Wage Equalization and Regional Misallocation: Evidence from Italian and German Provinces

  Journal of the European Economic Association · 2021 · 90 citations

  Italy and Germany have similar geographical differences in firm productivity—with the North more productive than the South in Italy and the West more productive than the East in Germany—but have adopted different models of wage bargaining. Italy sets wages based on nationwide contracts that allow for limited local wage adjustments, while Germany has moved toward a more flexible system that allows for local bargaining. We find that Italy exhibits limited geographical wage differences in nominal t…

  DOI

• Matching in Cities

  Journal of the European Economic Association · 2022-02-09 · 85 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  Abstract Using administrative German data, we show that large cities allow for a more efficient matching between workers and firms and this has important consequences for geographical inequality. Specifically, the match between high-quality workers and high-quality plants is significantly tighter in large cities relative to small cities. Wages in large cities are higher not only because of the higher worker quality but also because of a stronger assortative matching. Strong assortative matching…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Where is Standard of Living the Highest? Local Prices and the Geography of Consumption

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2021-12-01 · 66 citations

  reportSenior author

  Income differences across US cities are well documented, but little is known about the level of standard of living in each city—defined as the amount of market-based consumption that residents are able to afford. In this paper we provide estimates of the standard of living by commuting zone for households in a given income or education group, and we study how they relate to local cost of living. Using a novel dataset, we observe debit and credit card transactions, check and ACH payments, and c…

  PublisherDOI

• Estimating Who Benefits from Productivity Growth: Local and Distant Effects of City Productivity Growth on Wages, Rents, and Inequality

  The Review of Economics and Statistics · 2022 · 29 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Abstract We first estimate the direct effects on local workers’ earnings and housing costs from increases in local labor demand caused by gains in city-level manufacturing productivity. We find that local workers benefit from productivity growth, even after subtracting increases in housing costs. These gains are larger for local less educated workers, such that productivity growth reduces local inequality. We then propose and implement a new transparent method of estimating indirect effects of l…

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Janet Currie

  Princeton University

  62 shared

• Susanna Stillavato

  University of Milan

  49 shared

• Giuditta Carretti

  University of Florence

  49 shared

• Andrea Monte

  University of Verona

  49 shared

• Fabrizio Esposito

  49 shared

• Mirko Manetti

  University of Florence

  49 shared

• Claudia Cerulli

  Foro Italico University of Rome

  49 shared

• Paola Zamparo

  University of Verona

  49 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Economics

  University of California, Berkeley

  1999

• M.A., Economics

  University of California, Berkeley

  1996

• B.A., Economics

  University of Rome 'La Sapienza'

  1992

Awards & honors

• Society of Labor Economists’ Rosen Prize for outstanding con…
• Carlo Alberto Medal
• IZA Young Labor Economist Award
• Fulbright Fellowship
• William Bowen Prize for the most important contribution towa…

Similar researchers at University of California, Berkeley

• Antoine Levyh-38
• Richard H. Stantonh-34
• Amir Kermanih-30