The Role of Consumer Amenities to Human Capital in Sweden : A study on how consumer amenities affect the change in share of highly educated people in Swedish municipalities.

Sammanfattning: Municipalities in Sweden need to find ways to attract human capital to address their long-term economic needs. Over the last two decades, scholars have pointed out that consumer amenities have become one of the key determinants of labor attraction. The purpose of this thesis is to find out if consumer amenities play a role in the locational choices of highly educated individuals in Sweden. Variables aiming to capture consumer amenities have been examined to see if they significantly relate to the variations in change in the share of highly educated across Sweden’s 290 municipalities. These variables were tested together with a base equation of independent variables using a series of OLS regressions aiming to capture what factors influence the location choices of highly educated. The findings of our paper are in line with the theories and supports that a municipality with a higher level of Consumer Amenities will attract and retain a higher share of Highly Educated individuals. Our results also support the theory, that economic opportunities do have a primary role in attracting the highly educated.