Do Natural Amenities Attract High-tech Jobs? Evidence From a Smoothed Bayesian Spatial Model

We investigate the popular theory that high-technology workers are drawn to high amenity locations and then the jobs follow the workers. Using a novel data set that tracks high-technology job growth by US county, we estimate spatial parameters of the response of high-tech job growth to the level of local natural amenities. For estimation we utilize a reasonably new class of models, smooth coefficient models, taking advantage of their flexibility to allow the response of high-tech job growth to be nonlinear with respect to the level of natural amenities. Our results show that amenities are not an important driver for high-technology employment growth. Natural amenities matter most within the subset of US counties that are micropolitan, where they can influence location decisions.