The Distance to a University and Regional Output : A Study of how Distance to a University Impacts the Economic Productivity of a Municipality

Abstract: The Swedish population is rapidly increasing in educational level in the past two decades and educational level has long been a topic of interest for labor productivity. This increase in educational level brings up an interesting discussion of whether the remoteness of a university helps create productivity and if so by how much. This is a study that will try and explain the impact on regional productivity by having a university closer, using the distance to the closest university of each municipality in Sweden, and depending on what quality this university possess. Using simple OLS regressions results have shown some reasons for increased productivity, either positive or negative, while distance showed to not matter for regional productivity at all. This field is somewhat untouched, and with further research and by including other geographical economic theories, it could become an interesting study.