reconsidering the regional economic development impacts of higher education institutions in the united states drucker j reconsidering the regional economic development impacts of higher education institutions in the united states regional studies this study models relationships between us higher education activities and regional economic performance 2001 11 advances include incorporating all degree granting institutions estimating spatial spillovers and comparing multiple economic outcomes including production and entrepreneurship higher education impacts vary by outcome measure but are less influential than in previous studies spillovers are substantial up to 60 miles 97 kilometres reflecting considerable influence across space more advanced degrees science and engineering education and population educational attainment are positively associated with entrepreneurial activity these findings encourage the traditional university missions of research and teaching and general policies promoting entrepreneurship to support economic performance

history path dependence and development evidence from colonial railroads settlers and cities in kenya little is known about the extent and forces of path dependence in developing countries colonial era railroad construction in kenya provides a natural experiment to study the emergence and persistence of spatial equilibrium data spanning over one century shows that railroads determined the location of european settlers asian traders and the main cities at independence europeans then left asians departed and railroads declined in the immediate post independence period constituting local shocks to physical and human capital yet the colonial cities persisted we test four explanations for path dependence based on institutional persistence technological change sunk investments and spatial coordination failures

amenity values versus land constraints the spatial effects of natural landscape features on housing values when local amenities are tied to natural land use features that cannot be developed for physical or regulatory reasons the corresponding implicit price estimates from a hedonic housing model may reflect local supply constraints and confound estimation of natural amenity values using a spatial simultaneous equations model of housing values and migration we examine whether local supply constraints from natural or preserved features have influenced the housing market results indicate that constraints associated with the presence of water bodies and some types of open space preservation have contributed to higher housing prices offsetting local demand for these natural amenities jel c31 r23

cities regions and competitiveness turok i 2004 cities regions and competitiveness regional studies38 1061 1075 competitiveness is a complex concept used in a variety of ways and contexts the paper reviews some of the main ideas particularly as they apply to cities and regions its definition should include the relative position of a region s firms in external markets the productivity of local resources and the extent to which they are used competition takes both an institutionalized form local public agencies competing overtly for investment and other resources and more importantly a less organized form involving firms trading in wider markets there are two contrasting perspectives on the competitive advantages of city regions one emphasizes the benefits of scale and diversity that flow from concentrations of economic activity the other stresses the quality of the interactions between firms and supporting institutions recent studies suggest that the significance of localized business networks or clusters might be exagge

commodity price instability and economic goal attainment in developing countries abstract this paper reviews the theoretical and empirical micro and macro foundations for the frequent claims that instabilities in international commodity markets have deleterious effects on goal attainment in primary commodity exporting developing countries this review leads to the conclusion that the available evidence does not support these claims the paper concludes with speculation on why such claims are so strong despite the lack of supporting evidence perhaps it is because of measurement problems and perhaps because of small but articulate groups with vested interests in overstating the problem

economic growth in a cross section of cities abstract we examine the relationship between urban characteristics in 1960 and urban growth between 1960 and 1990 income and population growth move together and both types of growth are 1 positively related to initial schooling 2 negatively related to initial unemployment and 3 negatively related to the initial share of employment in manufacturing racial composition and segregation are uncorrelated with urban growth across all cities but in cities with large nonwhite communities segregation is positively correlated with population growth government expenditures except for sanitation are uncorrelated with growth government debt is positively correlated with later growth

innovation in europe a tale of networks knowledge and trade in five cities this paper identifies four groups of theory that seek to explain the relationships between innovation and space these are traditional agglomeration theory networking learning and new competitiveness theory evidence on the last three most recent theories is sought by analysing the results of comparable surveys of innovative firms in amsterdam london milan paris and stuttgart the empirical results show that differences occur in the external relationships between firms and the global economy with respect to specific innovation projects broadly speaking the main differences identified show that in regional cities such as stuttgart and milan innovative activities are more linked to their regional and national economies than they are in the international world cities such as paris and london this suggests that attempts to generalize the network paradigm on industrial production are premature at least as far as innovation is concerned conversely the data demonstrate the significance of trading syste

jockeying for position what it means and why it matters to regional development policy when places compete malecki e j 2004 jockeying for position what it means and why it matters to regional development policy when places compete regional studies38 1093 1112 the realization that places compete for investment has expanded in recent years to encompass competition among places for the attention of migrants tourists and media glow as well as investment the most competitive places have been multidimensional in their attractions and have made the transition to the knowledge based economy the latest priority is being placed on attracting mobile workers and mobile investment creative workers are the core of the knowledge economy and of its geographies such as intelligent places and learning regions knowledge metrics innovation indices and report cards are increasingly common each seemingly developed to sort the list of places in a different order lists or league tables of the best places for business to live retire and visit are key features of economies and societies whose factors of success

contributions of universities to regional economic development a quasi experimental approach goldstein h a and renault c s 2004 contributions of universities to regional economic development a quasi experimental approach regional studies38 733 746 universities potentially contribute to regional economic development in a number of ways research creation of human capital through teaching technology development and transfer and co production of a favourable milieu we find that the research and technology creation functions generate significant knowledge spillovers that result in enhanced regional economic development that otherwise would not occur yet the magnitude of the contribution that universities research and technology development activities play is small compared with other factors we use a quasi experimental approach to explain variation in change in average earnings per job across 312 metropolitan statistical areas in the usa in 1969 86 and 1986 98 goldstein h a et renault c s 2004 la contribution des universites au developpement economique regional une facon qua

export instability and the domestic economy questions of causality the conventional view concerning the impact of export instability on the domestic economies of developing countries is one of pessimism export instability is thought to adversely affect the short run stability and longer run growth of income empirical evidence on these matters is however inconclusive this article applies a granger sims reduced form approach to examining whether export instability generates short run instability in domestic income for each of a sample of 20 trade dependent countries the results obtained strongly support the contention that export instability induces short run macroeconomic instability

job queues and the union status of workers this paper develops a model of the determination of the union status of workers that allows for the possibility of queuing for union jobs the empirical results derived using a sample from the university of michigan panel study of income dynamics are supportive of the queuing hypothesis the no queue model can be rejected using a likelihood ratio test this suggests that a simple probit or logit model for union status is misspecified because it is not based on any consistent behavioral theory an important implication of the model is that because most new entrants to the labor market prefer union jobs but cannot get them and because accrual of nonunion seniority makes workers progressively less likely to desire union jobs the union status of workers is largely determined by their success in being selected from the queue early in their working life

knowledge in cities this study identifies clusters of us and canadian metropolitan areas with similar knowledge traits these groups ranging from making regions characterised by knowledge about manufacturing to thinking regions noted for knowledge about the arts humanities it and commerce can be used by analysts and policy makers for the purposes of regional benchmarking or comparing the types of programme and infrastructure available to support closely related economic activities in addition these knowledge based clusters help to explain the types of region that have levels of economic development that exceed or fall short of other places with similar amounts of college attainment regression results show that engineering building enterprising and making regions are associated with higher levels of productivity and or income per capita while teaching understanding working and comforting regions have lower levels of economic development

cities and cultures we investigate whether cultural diversity across us cities measured as the variety of native languages spoken by city residents is associated with any effect on their productivity diversity of cultures may imply diversity of production skills of abilities and of occupations that enhances the productive performance of a city on the other hand transaction costs and frictions across groups may hurt productivity similarly diversity in available goods and services can increase utility but distaste for or hostility to different cultural groups may decrease it using census data from 1970 to 1990 we find that wages and employment density of us born workers were systematically higher ceteris paribus in cities with richer linguistic diversity these positive correlations reveal a net positive effect of diversity on productivity that survives robustness checks and instrumental variable estimation this effect is found to be stronger for highly educated workers and for white workers we also show that better assimilated non native speakers i e those who speak english well and have been in the us for more than five years are most beneficial to the productivity of us born workers

leveraging knowledge as a competitive asset the intensity performance and structure of universities entrepreneurial knowledge exchange activities at a regional level universities are no longer considered to be isolated islands of knowledge but as institutions increasingly engaged with a range of external partners through entrepreneurial activities this paper examines the associations between the intensity and performance of knowledge exchange activities undertaken in uk universities with non academic actors drawing on data concerning the structural factors of interactions of universities in the uk with external partners the paper sheds further light on the nature of these activities through a prism of competitive and uncompetitive regions in order to better understand how universities may be able to leverage both their knowledge and partnerships more effectively as competitive assets on the one hand it is found that academics in uncompetitive regions are more intensively engaged in entrepreneurial activities but generate less income from them than their counterparts in competitive regions suggesting that there are differences in the income generating capacity of academics across regions on the other hand academic knowledge is found to be more strongly bounded within a certain distance in uncompetitive regions whilst geographical distance seems less of a hindrance to academics in competitive regions

princes and merchants european city growth before the industrial revolution as measured by the pace of city growth in western europe from 1000 to 1800 absolutist monarchs stunted the growth of commerce and industry a region ruled by an absolutist prince saw its total urban population shrink by one hundred thousand people per century relative to a region without absolutist government this might be explained by higher rates of taxation under revenue maximizing absolutist governments than under nonabsolutist governments which care more about general economic prosperity and less about state revenue

regional sorting of human capital the choice of location among young adults in sweden berck p tano s and westerlund o regional sorting of human capital the choice of location among young adults in sweden regional studies migration rates are highest among young adults especially students and their location choices affect the regional distribution of human capital growth and local public sector budgets using swedish register data on young adults the choice of whether to enrol in education and the choice of location are estimated jointly the results indicate a systematic selection into investment in further education based on school grades and associated preferences for locations with higher per capita tax bases for students the estimates indicate lower preferences for locations with higher shares of older people the importance of family networks for the choice of location is confirmed

urban growth and transportation we estimate the effects of interstate highways on the growth of u s cities between 1983 and 2003 we find that a 10 increase in a city s initial stock of highways causes about a 1 5 increase in its employment over this 20 year period to estimate a structural model of urban growth and transportation we rely on an instrumental variables estimation that uses a 1947 plan of the interstate highway system an 1898 map of railroads and maps of the early explorations of the u s as instruments for 1983 highways we investigate the role of interstate highways in the growth of u s cities our investigation is in three parts in the first we develop a simple structural model describing the joint evolution of highways and employment in cities in the second we develop an instrumental variables strategy that allows us to identify key parameters of our structural model we are also able to provide out of sample evidence for the validity of our estimates and for the central assumptions of our model in the third we use our estimates to assess counterfactual transportation policies we find that a 10 increase in a city s stock of interstate highways causes about a 1 5 increase in its employment over 20 years and that an additional kilometre of highway allocated to a city at random is associated with a larger increase in employment or population than is a road assigned to a city by the prevailing political process our results also suggest that too many new highways were built between 1983 and 2003 these findings are important for three reasons first transportation generally and infrastruc ture in particular are large segments of the economy the median u s household devotes about 18 of its income to road transportation while all levels of government together spend another 200 billion dollars annually overall the value of capital stock associated with road transporta tion in the u s tops 5 trillion dollars united states bureau of transportation statistics 2007 2010 given the magnitude of transportation expenditures it is important that the impact of these expenditures on economic growth be carefully evaluated and not assessed on the basis of the claims of advocacy groups our analysis provides a basis for assessing whether these resources are well allocated our results also provide useful guidance to policy makers charged with planning cities since changes in a city s transportation infrastructure cause changes to the city s employment new transportation infrastructure causes complementary changes in the demand for public utilities and schools our results provide a basis for estimating the magnitude of such changes finally this research is important to furthering our understanding of how cities operate and grow transportation costs are among the most fundamental quantities in theoretical models

growth and change in human capital across the canadian urban hierarchy 1996 2001 university degree holders in large cities are more prevalent and are growing at a more rapid pace than in smaller cities and rural areas this relatively high rate of growth stems from net migrator

racial diversity and macroeconomic productivity across us states and cities sparber c racial diversity and macroeconomic productivity across us states and cities regional studies racial diversity in the usa continues to rise past analyses have argued that diversity can have both positive and negative consequences the overall macroeconomic effects of diversity within the usa require further examination this paper exploits variation across us regions from 1980 to 2000 to determine whether racial heterogeneity creates gains or losses for states and cities fixed effects analysis indicates that diversity enhances the productivity of cities evidence at the state level is more ambiguous as significant results only appear in random effects specifications sparber c la diversite ethnique et la productivite macroeconomique a travers les etats et les grandes villes aux e u regional studies aux etats unis la diversite ethnique est toujours a la hausse des etudes anterieures ont cherche a affirmer que les consequences de la diversite ethnique peuvent s averer a la fois positives

public goods institutions human capital and growth evidence from german history what are the origins and consequences of the state as a provider of public goods we study public goods provision established through new laws in german cities during the 1500s cities that adopted the laws subsequently began to differentially produce and attract human capital and to grow faster legal change occurred where ideological competition introduced by the protestant reformation interacted with local politics we study plagues that shifted local politics in a narrow period as sources of exogenous variation in public goods institutions and find support for a causal interpretation of the relationship between legal change human capital and growth

on the distributional aspects of urban growth abstract although many theories of urban growth have broad implications regarding the dynamics of wage inequality little empirical work has explored the issue this paper studies the relationship between the growth of three measures of economic activity population employment and per capita income and a variety of wage dispersion measures across a sample of us metropolitan areas between 1970 and 1990 overall the results indicate a negative association between the two cities experiencing more rapid growth also tend to witness smaller increases or larger decreases in their inequality such findings offer some support to theories stressing growth mechanisms which equalize productivity across workers

urban competitiveness and us metropolitan centres in this paper the urban competitiveness of 23 major us cities is examined the methodology allows the obtaining of results that are not available to other methodologies several determinants of urban competitiveness are identified that are statistically verifiable and it is possible to show how both these determinants and the competitiveness of 23 us urban economies have changed during the past two decades the results are presented in a manner that will be of use to urban decision makers and planners this study follows up on two earlier studies of this topic

european cities in the knowledge economy towards a typology the shift towards a knowledge based economy seems to favour some well endowed urban areas however not all cities benefit equally this paper discusses the shift towards a knowledge based economy

scientific labour markets networks and regional innovation systems lawton smith h and waters r scientific labour markets networks and regional innovation systems regional studies while quality of the labour force in a locality is the single most important component of local competitiveness the regional innovation systems literature has relatively neglected processes of labour force development this paper addresses two questions what is the role of labour markets in the making of regions as innovative systems and what is the role of labour markets in regional innovation systems the labour market and specifically the networks that exist between highly skilled workers are positioned at the centre of the analysis using evidence from the uk high technology economies of cambridgeshire and oxfordshire lawton smith h and waters r lawton smith h et wat

human capital and industrialization evidence from the age of enlightenment while human capital is a strong predictor of economic development today its importance for the industrial revolution is typically assessed as minor to resolve this puzzling contrast we differentiate average human capital worker skills from upper tail knowledge both theoretically and empirically we build a simple two sector model where worker skills raise the productivity in both agriculture and manufacturing and scientific knowledge affects the entrepreneurial ability to keep up with a rapidly advancing technological frontier the model predicts that the local presence of knowledge elites is unimportant in the pre industrial era but drives growth thereafter worker skills in contrast are not crucial for growth to measure the historical presence of knowledge elites we use city level subscriptions to the famous encyclopedie in mid 18th century france we show that subscriber density is a strong predictor of city growth after 1750 but not before the onset of french industrialization alternative measures of development confirm this pattern soldier height and industrial activity are strongly associated with subscriber density after but not before 1750 literacy on the other hand does not predict growth finally by joining data on british patents with a large french firm survey from 1837 we provide evidence for the mechanism upper tail knowledge raised the productivity in innovative industrial technology

correlating the knowledge base of cities with economic growth the competitive advantage of cities in the developed world is increasingly thought to lie in their superior access to the knowledge base the generation of new knowledge through investment in research and development leads to new products services and processes which form the basis of the new economy attempts to correlate knowledge creation with economic growth have therefore tended to use r d measures such as the numbers of research establishments in a rather narrow sense this paper develops a much wider measure of the knowledge base comprising tacit knowledge codified knowledge and knowledge infrastructure for 19 european cities with the exception of the two world cities london and paris which significantly underperform there is a broad relationship between the quality of the knowledge base and economic change as measured by the competitive shift share residual

okun s law in panels of countries and states this article contributes to the empirical literature of okun s law in three respects first in contrast to the limited data used in the existing studies we employ two extensive across countries and across states i e within a country panel data sets to investigate the validity of okun s law second the use of the pooled mean group pmg estimator permits us not to pre filter the data as often done in the current literature and can take into account the possibility of cointegration between unemployment and output third in addition to the short run relationship or cyclical components between unemployment and output we also estimate the long run linkage between these two important variables empirical results show that unemployment and output are long run cointegrated irrespective of using country or state level data moreover the unemployment output linkages are found to be negative and highly significant both in the short and long run our results not only confirm the validity of okun s law

power couples changes in the locational choice of the college educated 1940 1990 college educated couples are increasingly located in large metropolitan areas these areas were home to 32 percent of all college educated couples in 1940 39 percent in 1970 and 50 percent in 1990 we investigate whether this trend can be explained by increasing urbanization of the college educated or the growth of dual career households and the resulting severity of the colocation problem we argue that the latter explanation is the primary one smaller cities may therefore experience reduced inflows of human capital relative to the past and thus become poorer

a journey without maps the regional policies of the 1964 70 british labour government o hara g 2005 a journey without maps the regional policies of the 1964 70 british labour government regional studies 39 1183 1195 this paper examines four influences on british regional policy in the late 1960s party politics in the context of the economic environment the structure of government the influence of the new regional economics and the impact of new knowledge and statistics much of the confusion of british regional policies in the 1960s is found to have been due to political and administrative divisions allowed by the fact that new theoretical approaches and data were so novel and uncertain policies are therefore advocated that are based on established research clearly and simply defined and determined democratically within regions themselves

the short run impact of fluctuating primary commodity prices on three developing economies columbia ivory coast and kenya abstract computable general equilibrium models are used to study the short run impact of fluctuating primary commodity prices on the economies of columbia ivory coast and kenya the results indicate that these economies are destabilized by primary commodity price fluctuations unless governments act to hold real domestic absorption constant to achieve this however would require foreign exchange reserves in excess of the level normally available to these governments for the purpose of stabilizing domestic economic activity

making friends or making things interfirm transactions in the sheffield metal working cluster the paper comprises an examination of the material inputs of a sample of 70 small firms in the sheffield metal working cluster and an assessment of the extent to which purchases are accompanied by face to face embodied transactions it is shown that there are no significant differences between the level of embodied transactions accompanying local intra cluster material links and those associated with non local flows it seems that on this measure at least and within this cluster the sheffield metal working cluster lacks the dense network of embodied transactions with local suppliers suggested in the wider literature the lower than expected measures of embodied transactions suggest that one of the mechanisms for the transfer of knowledge between buyers and suppliers within an industrial cluster is poorly developed in this particular case

globalization and the skilled city abstract the location of economic activity both across and within countries has undergone dramatic shifts over the last five decades three key trends stand out first cross country inequality has declined as many developing countries have grown rapidly second economic geography within countries has instead grown more unequal in both the developed and the developing world third within country spatial disparities have grown mainly because of the disproportionate success of skilled cities in this paper i develop a model that jointly explains these patterns as a consequence of deepening international economic integration my model explains the faster population and output growth of skilled cities as well as their tendency to increase their initial skill advantage consistent with the evidence my theory predicts a non monotonic path of urban growth in developed countries the model predicts a future shift in worldwide urban hierarchies as some developing world cities overtake unskilled cities in industrialized countries along global supply chains

labor market discrimination against hispanic and black men h ispanic american men have lower average wage rates than white non hispanics in 1975 the average white non hispanic male wage earner in the united states earned 5 97 an hour mexican men earned 4 31 72 as much as white non hispanics puerto rican men earned 4 52 76 as much and cuban men earned 5 33 89 as much as white non hispanics by way of comparison black men s average wages in 1975 were 4 65 78 of the white male wage several possible reasons for the hispanics lower wages come to mind among them are age and education geographic location immigration language difficulties and discrimination for example as shown in table 1 mexicans and puerto ricans are younger on average than the white non hispanic population and earnings tend to rise with age hispanics have lower average levels of education than white non hispanics and wages are positively associated with education many mexican americans live in the southwest where prices are relatively low moreover hispanics are more likely to be recent immigrants and to lack fluency in english than white non hispanics and so to be at a disadvantage in the labor market in addition there is a widespread belief that hispanics suffer from employment discrimination and cannot obtain the wages that their human capital would command if they were non hispanic whites how much of the wage differentials described above are due to each of these factors and to other inter group differences in wage related characteristics in particular how much impact does labor market discrimination have on the average hispanic man s wage and how does this compare with discrimination against blacks this paper provides answers to these questions a few other efforts have been made to analyze the relative earnings of hispanic and white nonhispanic men using 1960 and 1970 census data fogel 1966 poston and alvirez 1973 poston alvirez and tienda 1976 long 1977 and gwartney and long 1978 we use more recent data from the 1976 survey of income and education this data set enables us to measure wage rates more accurately and to specify the wage function more completely than does the census unlike previous analysts in estimating the wage function we take account of possible selectivity bias due to the distinction between average wage offers and average observed wages thus we hope to obtain a more accurate and up to date measure of labor market discrimination against hispanic men section ii explains the method used to separate the minority white non hispanic wage differential into the portions due to differences in average characteristics and the portion due to differences in unobserved factors and discrimination taking into account the possibility of selectivity bias in the observed wage sample section iii describes the data used in the study and the specification of the wage equation the breakdown of the observed wage differentials into components due to differences in participation in the wage and salary sector local price levels average characteristics and discrimination are presented in section iv section v summarizes our findings and discusses their implications for efforts to improve the economic situation of hispanics in the united states

the effect of unions on the employment of blacks hispanics and women to investigate whether unions have helped or hindered the employment prospects of minorities and women the author analyzes data on 1 273 california manufacturing plants for the period 1974 80 the

determinants of income growth in metropolitan and nonmetropolitan labor markets this article analyzes determinants of growth across labor markets in the united states using a production function approach based on four inputs labor manufacturing investment human capital investment and public capital investment we find little role for public capital investment in growth but that manufacturing investment spurred growth in nonmetropolitan areas in contrast to metropolitan areas we also find that human capital investment mattered more for metropolitan areas than for nonmetropolitan areas further the presence of more colleges and universities more household amenities and lower tax rates are all found to have encouraged human capital accumulation in u s labor markets copyright 2008 oxford university press

why has house price dispersion gone up we calibrate a dynamic general equilibrium island model to investigate the 30 year increase in the level of house prices and their dispersion across u s metropolitan areas the model is based on two main assumptions households o w in and out metropolitan areas in response to local productivity shocks and the housing supply cannot adjust instantly because of technological and regulatory constraints the calibration reveals that the observed tightening of housing supply regulation cannot quantitatively account for the rise in the level and dispersion of house prices in equilibrium workers o w out of tightly regulated towards less regulated metropolitan areas undoing most of the price impact of local supply restrictions in contrast the observed increase in wage dispersion across metropolitan areas does create the observed increase in the level and dispersion of house prices workers o w towards exceptionally productive metropolitan areas and drive house prices up the calibration also suggests that the welfare eects of housing supply regulation are large when wages become more dispersed

the economic performance of cities a markov switching approach abstract this paper examines the determinants of employment growth in metro areas to obtain growth rates we use a markov switching model that separates a city s growth path into two distinct phases high and low each with its own growth rate the simple average growth rate over some period is therefore the weighted average of the high phase and low phase growth rates with the weight being the frequency of the two phases we estimate the effects of a variety of factors separately for the high phase and low phase growth rates growth in the high phase is related to both human capital and industry mix while growth in the low phase is related to industry mix only specifically the relative importance of manufacturing overall our results strongly reject the notion that city level characteristics influence employment growth equally across the phases of the business cycle

primary commodity price fluctuations and developing countries an econometric model of copper and zambia abstract most of the literature on commodity price fluctuations and their impact on development has been based on cross country data and aggregated export earnings the results have been inconclusive largely because the analysis fails to recognize the importance of country and commodity differences this paper isolates a single commodity copper and a single country zambia which copper export earnings loom large in the economy it then presents an econometric model of the country consisting of a disaggregated copper export sector with links to a macro model of the whole economy fluctuations in export prices around a smooth trend are then simulated and their impact on the non export sectors observed through such a development indicators as exployment levels gdp levels and growth rates general price levels and final demand

understanding the economic performance of metropolitan areas in the united states examining the drivers of metropolitan economic performance this paper models two dependent variables change from 1990 to 2000 in gross metropolitan product and msa employment it is found that initial year economic structure an above average share of manufacturing employment agglomeration economies human capital share of population with bachelor degrees or higher and presence of state right to work laws are positively and significantly related to gmp and employment growth while the economic age of the area percentage of black non hispanic residents and average wage at the beginning of the period are negatively and significantly related to both the regional dummy variables commonly used to explain economic growth and typically highly significant are augmented by including climate related amenity business environment and economic age when these three variables are included in the model as independent variables with the regional dummy variables all three are significant for growth in gmp and

take the money and run political turnover rent seeking and economic growth abstract we find a negative and significant relationship between gubernatorial turnover and u s state economic growth although our finding of an inverse relationship between growth and political instability may seem to contradict olson s 1982a famous hypothesis regarding the growth retarding nature of political stability such constitutional political changes were not primarily what olson had in mind we argue that enhanced political turnover is associated with more rent seeking since payoffs to focusing on special interest redistributive policies vs general growth enhancing ones are greater for less durable regimes therefore we interpret our evidence as supportive of olson s broader argument concerning the negative affect of rent seeking behavior on growth

the impact of industrial and occupational structure on black white employment allocation this research focuses on the factors associated with the differential distribution of black and white men across labor market positions hypotheses concerning the effects of industrial and occupational characteristics are derived using an eclectic approach which draws heavily on the labor market segmentation literature incorporated as it ell are ideas from neoclassical and institutional economics and from the occupational segregation and class approaches in sociology the results raise some intriguing puzzles in terms of the contrasting effects of occupational versus industrial unionization and the opposite signed effects of market power and size overall the results provide a mixed evaluation of both the neoclassical approach and the dual economy approach to the explanation of black white employment differences perhaps the most important result from this research is the demonstration of the existence and form of the systematic patterning of the allocation of blacks and whites to labor market positions net of the influence of their individual wtork related characteristics

distributive politics and economic growth a crude distinction between economics and politics would be that economics is concerned with expanding the pie while politics is about distributing it in this paper we analyze the relationship between the two we focus on how an economy s initial configuration of resources shapes the political struggle for income and wealth distribution and how that in turn affects long run growth our main conclusion is that inequality is conducive to the adoption of growth retarding policies we derive this result from a simple political economy model of growth and present cross country evidence consistent with it the key feature of our model is that individuals differ in their relative factor endowments we distinguish between two types of factors an accumulated factor called capital and a nonaccumulated factor called labor growth is driven by the expansion of the capital stock which is in turn determined by individual saving decisions long run growth is endogenous as the aggregate production function is taken to be linearly homogeneous in capital and productive government services taken together the provision of government services is financed by a tax on capital because government services are productive a small tax on

the decline of private sector unionism and the gender wage gap between 1973 and 1988 private sector unionism fell by 9 5 percentage points more for men than women and the gender wage gap one minus the ratio of female to male wages decreased by 09 these trends support two findings first unionism fell more slowly for women primarily because the probability of unionism fell most rapidly in jobs dominated by males second the greater decline in unionism among males is responsible for approximately one seventh of the 09 decline in the gender wage gap

intercity trade and the industrial diversification of cities abstract the industrial diversification of cities is explained without imposing linkages among industries in each of two city industries a manufacture is produced competitively as the final good using labor and industry specific differentiated services manufacturers import the services of their industry from all cities that produce them since their technology favors variety in specialized cities the city industry is large and many services are locally available but the two manufactures have to be traded among cities in diversified cities the two manufactures are produced in the same city and each industry crowds out half the local services of the other but manufactures need not be imported a lower cost of trading manufactures e g railroads and intercity highways favors a system of specialized cities while a lower cost of trading services e g telephone the internet favors a system of diversified cities since the latter cities rely more on imported services having fewer locally a larger cost share of services favors specialization and high intra city commuting cost and population growth favor diversification

innovation and cooperation in the small firm sector evidence from northern britain freel m s and harrison r t 2006 innovation and cooperation in the small firm sector evidence from northern britain regional studies 40 289 305 over the last 20 years network based models of innovation led economic development have grown increasingly popular to both the polity and the academy in contrast to earlier linear conceptions innovation is viewed as a systemic phenomenon in which interactive learning and cooperative entrepreneurship are fundamental the way that systems and in turn networks are usually defined is by the volume and characteristics of the linkages that bind them together accordingly drawing upon a recent survey of small firms in scotland and northern england 1347 responses the paper is concerned with mapping the extent of small firm innovation related networking and understanding the unique contribution such networks make to the successful introduction of new products and processes importantly it investigated the impact of networking on innovation in both manu

is tolerance good or bad for growth we investigate how tolerance as measured by attitudes toward different types of neighbors affects economic growth in a sample of 54 countries unlike previous studies by richard florida and others we find that tolerance toward homosexuals is negatively related to growth for tolerance toward people of a different race we do not find robust results but the sign of the estimated coefficients is positive suggesting that inclusion of people irrespective of race makes good use of productive capacity we propose mechanisms to explain these divergent findings which clarify why different kinds of tolerance may be of different economic importance