Finding Externalities: An Empirical Study on the US Agricultural Industry

This paper searches for another empirical evidence supporting positive externalities from higher education. Using state-level US data on agriculture and IT industries, we find that there are positive spillover effects from more-knowledge intensive workers in the IT industry to less-knowledge intensive workers in the agricultural industry. According to our empirical findings, one well-educated IT worker generates and contributes $11,000 to the agricultural industry, which implies that the benefits of higher education are diffused from education beneficiaries to the other member of society.