The new knowledge economy and the experience economy are the two most recent techno-economic paradigms that appear to guide business executives and economic development practitioners and that frame the research of management and economic development academics. In this paper, we distinguished between knowledge cities and experience cities, and we performed a preliminary study of the association and alternative roles of education with income and inequality within urban areas. Specifically, we analyzed a number of competing models that investigate the main, mediating, and moderating effects of education on income and inequality in urban areas in the USA. Our findings suggest that education has a positive role in increasing income and, more importantly, in reducing inequality when we account for the concentration of knowledge and experience-based industries in the city. Distinctively, it is the knowledge-based sector that contributed significantly to this result.
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