High‐speed railroads and economic geography: Evidence from Japan

Our study shows that high‐speed railroads (HSR) can either polarize or diffuse economic geography based on the sector and distance between cities. Economic activities could agglomerate from distant to core areas, while disperse from core toward its periphery at the same time. Empirical evidence from the 1982 introduction of two major HSRs in Japan, which halved intercity transit time, support this. Noncore areas lost 3–6 percent population; service employment declined 7 percent, whereas manufacturing employment increased by 21 percent. Municipalities within approximately 150 km of Tokyo expanded, while the distant ones contracted. The net result is that the Tokyo metropolitan area agglomerates because of HSR.     

南京市区就业空间布局研究

本文采取就业密度分析方法,对南京市区就业空间布局进行实证研究。在南京市区现有11个区的基础上将南京市区划分为159个研究单元。依据2005年南京市1%人口抽样调查资料中"区县层面"分行业就业数据,以及2006年南京市用地现状图,修正匹配得到各个研究单元制造业、服务业、商业金融业及总的就业密度值。并运用Arcgis软件对就业密度值进行核密度分析以及3D模拟,分析南京市区制造业、服务业以及总就业的空间布局特征及原因机制。     

The determinants of county growth

The determinants of population and employment growth were explored from a broader interregional (as opposed to intraregional) perspective. Data for the 1970s, at the county level of disaggregation, were used to analyze the effects of economic, demographic, and climatic variables on population and employment growth in a simultaneous equation framework. The use of data from the more than 3000 US counties provides a considerably larger testing ground than those used in previous research. The point of departure was a conventional, general equilibrium model in which both households and producers are geographically mobile. The study's dependent variables refer to population, total, and manufacturing employment densities. Family income had a powerful effect in stimulating both population and employment density. A 10% increase in family income led to a 7.9% increase in total and a 9.2% increase in manufacturing employment densities. High family income must stand for high demand, and thus, firms are drawn to an area. High family income also drew households to an area. A 10% increase in family income led to a 5.5% increase in population density. High family income must represent "good" neighborhoods for households. High family income was positively correlated with population and employment density, but in other recent studies either a negative and significant relationship or an insignificant relationship were reported. Local taxes consist of the receipts of county government and those of municipalities, townships, school districts, and special districts within the county. The elasticities reported in Table 4 suggest that a 10% increase in such taxes resulted in about a 0.072% reduction in county population density during the decade. The Industrial Revenue Bonds (IRBs) and the percent of the labor force that is unionized are 2 potential policy instruments at the state level. The study results suggest that IRBs have not stimulated either manufacturing or total employment, and the coefficients were statistically insignificant in the structural equations. The elasticities imply that a 10% increase in percent union reduces total employment by 0.42% and manufacturing employment by 0.18%. The effect on population was tiny. Further, while not intended, the interstate highway program may have been a significant redistributor of population and employment but has not caused immigration of people and jobs from central cities.     

上海都市区制造业就业格局的演化及影响因素

制造业是城市经济的重要组成部分和推动城市空间格局演化的重要驱动力。本文采用上海1996年、2004年、2008年制造业企业分街道就业数据,分析上海都市区制造业的空间格局演化,采用计量模型探究了制造业就业分布的主要影响因素。研究表明,上海都市区制造业就业空间格局已经基本实现了郊区化,并涌现出了稳定的制造业次中心;区位、交通、地价和政策因素对制造业就业格局的形成有着显著作用,而且这些因素的作用存在着显著的行业间差异性。为实现制造业的合理布局和城市空间结构优化,政府应该尊重市场规律和不同产业的特点,为不同产业选址布局提供相应的空间供给和基础设施。     

THE LOCATIONAL DYNAMICS OF MANUFACTURING IN CHINA'S COUNTIES: INFLUENCE OF EXPRESSWAY INVESTMENT

This study investigates the impact of expressway investment in China's counties. By identifying expressway accessibility through toll station locations, we estimate the manufacturing distribution along expressways for 2001–2005. We find that expressway accessibility promotes manufacturing employment for inland counties by around 41 percent; however, for coastal counties that already have high road density and dense manufacturing layouts, the returns from new expressways are small. Furthermore, counties close to large cities benefit more from expressway accessibility than do counties that are far from them. The gap first increases in the period of expressway construction and then decreases as expressway effects are smoothed.     

SMALL BUSINESS VIABILITY IN THE URBAN GHETTO*

ABSTRACT Within the minority communities of large SMSAs, neither the black-owned business nor the small nonminority enterprises are flourishing. Facing limited access to financial capital as well as constrained markets, the ghetto firms that do persist are typically quite small in terms of sales and employment. Among black establishments, the least educated entrepreneurs are the ones who are most likely to remain in business. Unless greater financial capital is forthcoming and better educated owners are induced to remain in business, the business community that is located in minority neighborhoods of large urban areas may be destined to stagnate.     

Airport delays and metropolitan employment

This study provides the first empirical assessment of the impact airline delays have on urban employment. While previous works have suggested that road congestion can slow down regional development, the influence of air traffic delays on metro‐level jobs has not been examined comprehensively. The present study uses a nine‐year panel of quarterly data, which covers passenger airline traffic and delays at airports across urban areas in the United States. The panel also includes data on total and industry‐specific employment at the metropolitan‐area level. Our empirical estimates of the impact of air traffic on total employment are comparable to previously reported measures in the literature. However, we find that service‐sector employment is less sensitive to air traffic than other studies suggested. We provide new evidence confirming that delays have a negative effect on employment, a finding that is robust to various specifications of our empirical model. Our results indicate that a 10 percent increase in the number of delayed flights leads to up to a 0.15 percent decrease in total and service‐sector employment, a 0.47 percent decline in leisure and hospitality employment, and a 0.7 percent reduction in the employment level of goods‐producing jobs.     

THE IMPACT OF SPECIFIC-SECTOR CHANGES IN EMPLOYMENT ON ECONOMIC GROWTH, LABOR MARKET PERFORMANCE AND MIGRATION

ABSTRACT.  It is common in empirical regional economics to use total employment as an explanatory variable while investigating issues such as the level and distribution of income and migration. This paper argues that sector-specific changes in employment and labor market performance can have different effects on economic growth, the collection of tax revenue, migration, and the level and distribution of household income. As such, it is important to model sectors separately. We find that expansions in employment opportunities for a high-wage sector such as computer manufacturing or bioengineering, a medium-wage sector manufacturing, and the lower-wage sector of retailing have differing economic consequences for a small city. We use a data intensive computable general equilibrium model to obtain these results.     

Accounting for Air Pollution Emissions in Measures of State Manufacturing Productivity Growth

A Malmquist-Luenberger productivity index is employed to account for both marketed output and the output of pollution abatement activities of U.S. state manufacturing sectors for –1986. The index allows us to decompose the change in productivity into measures of change in efficiency and technical change. By accounting for the change in emissions, average annual productivity growth is 3.6 percent, whereas it is 1.7 percent when emissions are ignored. We also find adjusted productivity growth improved after 1977, and "Frost Belt" states with rapidly growing manufacturing sectors have significantly higher rates of productivity growth than "Sun Belt" states with slow growing manufacturing sectors.     

深圳市就业空间结构及其演变(2001-2004)

本文基于2001年基本单位普查和2004年经济普查数据,探讨深圳市就业空间结构的特征及演化趋势。研究表明,深圳市的就业空间结构存在就业密度下降、集聚程度不强、制造业占绝对地位、服务业郊区化等现象,而规划和市场是推动其演变的主要力量,在二者的共同作用下,深圳市就业空间结构将呈现以下的演变趋势:(1)从"带状组团式"向"网状组团式"转变;(2)制造业转型导致就业规模缩减;(3)服务业郊区化促进中心外围组团发展;(4)高端服务业集聚进一步增强。     

THE DETERMINANTS OF 1963–77 REGIONAL MANUFACTURING GROWTH: WHY THE SOUTH AND WEST GROW*

ABSTRACT. This paper analyzes 1963–77 manufacturing employment growth in the 48 contiguous states. Six factors jointly explain 96 percent of the variance. Markets explains 55 percent; climate, 15 percent; a rural state attraction, 11 percent; unionization, 6 percent; thresholds, 5 percent; and amenities, 4 percent. Resources, taxes, and business climate lack significance. Sunbelt-Frostbelt is a false dichotomy: the Northwest grew as fast as the South. The real contrast–largely caused by markets–is between growth rates of 6 percent in the Manufacturing Belt, 35 percent in its bordering Transition Zone, and 58 percent in the combined South and West.     

THE IMPACT OF LOCAL DECENTRALIZATION ON ECONOMIC GROWTH: EVIDENCE FROM U.S. COUNTIES*

ABSTRACT We analyze the impact of fiscal decentralization on U.S. county population, employment, and real income growth. Our findings suggest that government organization matters for local economic growth, but that the impacts vary by government unit and by economic indicator. We find that single‐purpose governments per square mile have a positive impact on metropolitan population and employment growth, but no significant impact on nonmetropolitan counties. In contrast, the fragmentation of general‐purpose governments per capita has a negative impact on employment and population growth in nonmetropolitan counties. Our results suggest that local government decentralization matters differently for metropolitan and nonmetropolitan counties.     

Commuting to the Istanbul Historical Core: The Case of Industrial Employees

The aim of this paper is firstly, to determine the types of manufacturing activities which are at present active in the Istanbul Historical Core and secondly, to establish the daily commuting pattern of industrial employment. With this information to hand, it is then possible to assess the impact of the transportation pattern on the historical core and the metropolitan area as a whole. The results show that industrial employees commuting to work in the historical core face more difficulties, by way of duration-distance-change, than the average value observed in the metropolitan area. Moving manufacturing activities away from the historical core will not only decrease the difficulties faced by industrial employees in this area, but will also relieve this 2400 year old area from the burden of traffic congestion, environmental and noise pollution, and create usable building capacity .     

Land Evaluation and Regional Pricing in the Soviet Union

The author examines the use of the Lorenz curve and the Florence method for measuring the degree of spatial concentration of industry in a given area, and then develops an index of his own, based on ratio of the industrial output, value of plant, and industrial employment per unit area in a region to the industrial output, value of plant, and industrial employment per unit area in the country (or larger regional entity) as a whole. Findings for the major economic regions and middle-level regions (oblasts, krays, ASSRs) of the RSFSR are shown in the form of tables, graphs and map. A pronounced spread in levels of concentration is found between the European and Asian portions of the RSFSR, with concentration levels in the Central Russian region (at one extreme) and the Soviet Far East (at the other extreme) differing by a factor of 56.     

China’s services sector: the new engine of economic growth

This paper presents a review of services sector development in China. It is found that China’s services have recently emerged as the dominant contributor to economic growth and job creation. Trade in services has also increased dramatically, although China maintains a huge deficit. In comparison with economies at a similar stage of development, however, China’s services sector is lagging behind. Both GDP and employment shares of the services sector are relatively small. Services trade also accounts for a relatively small share of China’s total trade. In particular, China’s new services are underdeveloped. As per capita income rises and resultant urbanization accelerates, the country’s services sector is expected to expand further and hence play a key role in rebalancing China’s economy away from its over-reliance on manufacturing and exporting. To reach this goal, further reforms and prudent government policies are needed.     

The influence of the 'spaces of everyday life' on pregnancy health

Given the recent focus of medical geography on the social influences of health and illness, this paper draws upon a socio‐theoretical framework to show the link between pregnancy health and the spaces of everyday life. The health of pregnant women is becoming increasingly important given that 85 percent of women work during their pregnancy. Employment during pregnancy is consistently linked with good health for infants; however, large discrepancies exist on the effects for employed mothers. This study estimates the health effect of women's employment during pregnancy with data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth. Findings show that women's involvement in paid employment has a beneficial impact for infants compared to women not involved in paid labour. Women who work one job or more per week experience more health problems than women who work less than one job per week. Finally, women who work in male‐dominated and gender‐neutral workspaces experience significantly more prenatal problems than women in female‐dominated workspaces. In conclusion, there is evidence to support that differences in employment status, number of workplaces involved in and gendered workspaces influence the experience of health and illness that are negotiated in the spaces of everyday life.     

The changing geography of the Canadian manufacturing sector in metropolitan and rural regions, 1976–1997

This paper documents the changing geography of the Canadian manufacturing sector over a 22‐year period (1976–1997). It does so by looking at the shifts in employment and differences in production worker wages across different levels of the rural/urban hierarchy—central cities, adjacent suburbs, medium and small cities and rural areas. The analysis demonstrates that the most dramatic shifts in manufacturing employment were from the central cities of large metropolitan regions to their suburbs. Paralleling trends in the United States, rural regions of Canada have increased their share of manufacturing employment. Rising rural employment shares were due to declining employment shares of small cities and, to a lesser degree, large urban regions. Increasing rural employment was particularly prominent in Quebec, where employment shifted away from the Montreal region. The changing fortunes of rural and urban areas were not the result of across‐the‐board shifts in manufacturing employment, but were the net outcome of differing locational patterns across industries. In contrast to the situation in the United States, wages in Canada do not consistently decline, moving down the rural/urban hierarchy from the largest cities to the most rural parts of the country. Only after controlling for the types of manufacturing industries found in rural and urban regions is it apparent that wages decline with the size of place .     

DEVELOPMENT POLICIES,URBAN UNEMPLOYMENT AND DEFORESTATION: THE ROLE OF INFRASTRUCTURE AND TAX POLICY IN A TWO-SECTOR MODEL*

ABSTRACT. We model an economy of a developing country that produces an exportable manufactured good in an urban sector and a nontradable rural good. Manufacturing faces a fixed wage, which encourages urban unemployment. Changes in cultivated area in the rural sector involve deforestation or reforestation at frontiers. Government taxes to pay for urban infrastructure that assists the manufacturing sector. Increases in urban infrastructure may relieve or exacerbate frontier deforestation but expands manufacturing employment and reduces urban unemployment. Rural transportation improvements exacerbate frontier deforestation but expand employment in the urban manufacturing sector. A larger population, ceteris paribus, widens the rural-urban wage gap and exacerbates deforestation, but may cause manufacturing employment to expand or contract.     

非正规就业视角下的制造业空间重构——基于2000、2010年地级及以上城市的实证研究

我国制造业的空间重构不仅表现为整体格局和职能强度的变化,更体现在内部构成要素的分化上。我国从事制造业的正规与非正规从业人员比例由2000年的41.7:58.3转变为2010年的29.3:70.7。两者的空间结构差异明显,非正规就业密度由沿海向内陆逐步递减,而正规就业在内陆省会城市存在明显高地。本文分析了制造业重构过程中的六类城市及其分布变化。研究表明,全球化进程和就业门槛显著促进了非正规就业增长;非正规就业也与经济发展存在共生关系,但与制度环境并无显著关联;此外廉价劳动力、市场可达性与规模经济对制造业的区位选择具有显著影响。     

THE EMPLOYMENT CREATION EFFECTS OF FACTOR SUBSIDIES: SOME ESTIMATES FOR NORTHERN IRELAND MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY, 1955-1983

In this paper, I use estimates of the parameters of an industry demand function and a CES production function for Northern Ireland manufacturing in order to measure the relative impact of factor subsidies on employment, capital, and output. A simulation model is able to differentiate the output and substitution effects of subsidies. The results indicate that since manufacturing industry in the province tends to operate with a labor-intensive technology and, since its price-elasticity of demand for output is very low, the employment creating effects of capital subsidies are strongly negative.