Higher education institutions (HEIs) represent an enormous density of investment and resources, concentrating infrastructure spending and creating high human capital citizens and knowledge spillovers increasingly seen as critical to advancing regional quality of life. While HEIs’ prominent role in promoting regional economic growth, innovation, and attractiveness receives considerable research attention, most of that attention is paid to aspects of HEIs that are directly related to STEM activity. There are various theories that suggest spillovers from non-STEM activity at HEIs as well, specifically in the arts. This study examines whether spillovers occur for HEIs’ large capital investments in the arts. Specifically, we focus on HEI investments in arts physical infrastructure and whether these investments have any effects on regional-level business activity, including jobs and firms. To analyze HEI spillovers of physical arts infrastructure on regional jobs and firms, we use construction starts data on building projects from Dodge Analytics, Inc. and data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, which include administrative data for every college, university, and technical/vocational institution that participates in the federal student financial aid programs. We couple these data with public data on regional-level socioeconomic indicators from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Zip-code Business Patterns data. We employ a quasi-experimental propensity-score matching design in order to control for a host of HEI and regional-level characteristics in examining the impact of infrastructure investments. The results suggest strong and consistent spillover effects (i.e. overall and specifically in the arts industry) for regions with HEIs that make these investments.

高等教育机构 (HEI) 代表着巨大的投资和资源密度，集中了基础设施支出并创造了高人力资本公民，知识溢出越来越被视为提高区域生活质量的关键。虽然高校在促进区域经济增长、创新和吸引力方面的突出作用受到了相当多的研究关注，但大部分注意力都集中在与 STEM 活动直接相关的高校方面。有各种理论表明高等教育机构的非 STEM 活动也有溢出效应，特别是在艺术领域。本研究考察了高等教育机构对艺术的大量资本投资是否会产生溢出效应。具体来说，我们关注高等教育对艺术实体基础设施的投资，以及这些投资是否对区域级商业活动（包括就业和公司）产生任何影响。为了分析实体艺术基础设施对区域工作和公司的 HEI 溢出效应，我们使用了来自 Dodge Analytics, Inc. 的建筑项目开工数据和来自综合高等教育数据系统的数据，其中包括每个学院、大学和技术部门的行政数据/参与联邦学生资助计划的职业机构。我们将这些数据与来自美国人口普查局邮政编码商业模式数据的区域级社会经济指标的公共数据相结合。我们采用准实验倾向得分匹配设计，以便在检查基础设施投资的影响时控制大量 HEI 和区域级特征。结果表明，对拥有这些投资的高等教育机构的地区而言，产生了强烈而一致的溢出效应（即总体上和特别是在艺术行业中）。