Bohemia and economic geography

This paper examines the geography of bohemia and the relationships between it, human capital, and high-technology industries. The underlying hypothesis is that the presence and concentration of bohemians in an area creates an environment or milieu that attracts other types of talented or high human capital individuals. The presence of such human capital in turn attracts and generates innovative, technology-based industries. To explore these factors, this paper introduces a new measure-the bohemian index-that directly measures the bohemian population at the MSA level. Statistical research examines the relationships between geographic concentrations of bohemians, human capital, and high-technology industry concentration. The findings support this hypothesis. The geography of bohemia is highly concentrated. The results indicate positive and significant relationships between the bohemian index and concentrations of high human capital individuals and between the bohemian index and concentrations of high-technology industry. The relationship between the bohemian index and high-technology concentrations is particularly strong.