“A Few Really Good Artisanal Cheese Shops Is No Substitute for a Strong School System”

(p. 836) Moretti’s writing on the “creative class” takes issue with policies associated with Richard Florida, who has exerted a considerable influence on local policymakers worldwide. Moretti uses the example of Berlin, which is a cool place full of creative types but still isn’t much of an economic powerhouse, to make the case against Florida’s recommendations.
. . .
A problem exists if city governments start thinking that their main job is to be hip rather than competent. Having a few really good artisanal cheese shops is no substitute for a strong school system. Local leaders would do well to remember that an externality-creating skilled resident is as likely to be a forty-two-year-old mother who works in (p. 837) a lab as a twenty-five-year-old looking for a good time. The forty-two-year-old’s tastes in local amenities are likely to be quite different from those of the twenty-five-year-old. If Moretti’s caution against creative class policies achieves that end, then it will have done something quite positive.

For the full review, see:
Glaeser, Edward. “A Review of Enrico Moretti’s the New Geography of Jobs.” Journal of Economic Literature 51, no. 3 (Sept. 2013): 825-37.
(Note: ellipsis added.)

The book under review is:
Moretti, Enrico. The New Geography of Jobs. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Co., 2012.

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