A simultaneous equations model of migration and economic change in nonmetropolitan areas

A simultaneous equations model of migration and economic growth in nonmetropolitan regions of the United States is estimated using data for 1960-1970. The dependent variables considered include in-migration, out-migration, growth in employment, and growth in income. The findings indicate that there is a definite link between the patterns of economic and demographic change in nonmetropolitan areas but that it differs in important respects from that which has been observed in metropolitan areas.     

Spatial Mismatch and the Structure of American Metropolitan Areas, 1970–2000

Abstract.  This paper analyzes the impact of employment and population shifts in U.S. metropolitan areas from 1970 to 2000 on a spatial mismatch index to determine how metropolitan residents reacted to changes in metropolitan employment distributions. In particular, it seeks to determine whether suburban employment growth created new areas to which access is valued or whether it repelled metropolitan residents and sparked population growth in more distant suburban locations. The results show that residents tended to move away from areas gaining jobs. Black residents, on the other hand, appeared to be attracted to areas that are experiencing employment growth.     

Employment Risk in U.S. Metropolitan and Nonmetropolitan Regions: the Influence of Industrial Specialization and Population Characteristics

Abstract.  A dynamic labor market model is used to motivate the inclusion of population characteristics and industrial structure as determinants of regional employment instability. We examine how these factors influence regional employment instability using data from both metropolitan and nonmetropolitan regions in the United States. We find that population characteristics are important determinants of employment volatility and that increased industrial specialization (reduced diversification) increases employment volatility, but the magnitude of that influence drops substantially once population characteristics are considered. We also find that the influence of population characteristics and industrial specialization varies significantly across metropolitan and nonmetropolitan regions.     

LAND AND URBAN ECONOMIC GROWTH IN CHINA*

ABSTRACT Land to accommodate urban development in China is provided through requisitions by government officials, suggesting that land availability may be a constraint on urban economic growth. An econometric model of urban GDP growth suggests that land has constrained economic growth in coastal areas but not elsewhere. Elasticities calculated from the estimated coefficients indicate that land availability has a larger proportional impact on economic growth than domestic and foreign investment, labor supply, and government spending. The estimated parameters provide evidence about arbitrage opportunities created by discrepancies between urban land value and compensation for requisitioned rural land, suggesting rural unrest associated with conversion of farmland to urban uses may have some economic roots.     

都市区与非都市区城镇用地扩张的驱动力研究——以长三角地区为例

本文利用土地变更调查数据与经济社会统计数据,分析2001-2006年间长三角地区都市区与非都市区以及都市区内部不同单元的城镇工矿用地变动差异和主要影响因素,探讨都市区城镇用地扩展的驱动机制及演变特征。研究发现,虽然长三角地区城镇用地的整体扩张速度正趋于放缓,但变化趋势在不同类型的区域间存在明显差异。都市区比非都市区增长地更快,其中外围县地区超越中心市成为新一轮的增长热点地区。利用人口、非农产业、房地产投资等社会经济活动指标数据所做的回归分析表明,非农产业的发展是推动都市区城镇用地扩展的关键因素,而对非都市区的城镇工矿用地扩展而言,城镇人口集聚的拉动仍在起主要影响作用。在都市区内部存在功能分工的背景下,中心市与外围县在驱动因素和效果上存在差异。     

Depressions and elevations of the southern archipelagoes of chile

The post‐war employment changes on Clydeside: the continued decline of the traditional industries, the slow expansion of the new growth industries, and the relative lack of change in the employment .structure of the conurbation. The effect of the employment changes on the pattern of industrial distribution in the conurbation in the light of a number of factors such as the availability of land, the City of Glasgow's redevelopment and overspill policies, the immigration of new firms, the outward movement of population, ‘and the role of central government policy. The possibility of changing circumstances resulting from more recent increased levels of redevelopment and the availability in the “centre of the conurbation of larger amounts of developable land on privately operated industrial estates.     

A dynamic phase transition model for spatial agglomeration processes

A nonlinear model of population migration is presented in order to provide a dynamic explanation for the formation of metropolitan areas. "In Section 2 the model is introduced in terms of the rate equations for the mean values of the regional population numbers with specifically chosen individual transition rates. Section 3 gives a survey of concepts and results for the convenience of the reader not interested in the details of the mathematical derivations. Section 4 derives the stationary solutions of the rate equations, that is, the equilibria of the system. Section 5 treats the time dependent solutions of the model equations focussing on the exact analytic solutions along so-called symmetry paths. Section 6 analyzes the dynamic stability of the symmetry path solutions and decides which stationary states are unstable and which are stable equilibrium states."     

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.     

THE INFLUENCE OF ECONOMIC DIVERSITY ON UNEMPLOYMENT AND STABILITY*

ABSTRACT. For many years, regional scientists, economists, and geographers have been unable to clarify the influence of economic diversity on unemployment and instability in regional economies of the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. This article presents plausible theory, proper units of analysis, valid measures, and more inclusive models of the diversity-stability relationship. The findings are generalizable because the sample includes most metropolitan areas in the U.S. The empirical analysis estimates the influence of diversity, employment concentrated in unstable industries, population size, growth rate, and control variables on unemployment and employment instability during the 1972–88 period. The results indicate that metropolitan areas which are more diverse experience lower unemployment rates and less instability than areas which are less diverse.     

Determinants of Rent from Agricultural Land Around Metropolitan Areas

Three urban determinants of rent from agricultural land around metropolitan areas are incorporated into one rent model. The urban market factor and the transport cost as expressed in the Thünian crop rent equation are discussed in terms of their relevance to metropolitan areas. Then the effects on rent of the urban land market and urban economic change and their relationships with the market factor are examined. Graphic and mathematical expressions of a multideterminant model based on the combined crop system are developed, followed by a discussion on several variations of the model.     

Employment Deconcentration: A New Perspective on America's Postwar Urban Evolution

In this study we show that during the postwar era the United States experienced a decline in the share of urban employment accounted for by the relatively dense metropolitan areas and a corresponding rise in the share of relatively less dense ones. This trend, which we call employment deconcentration , is distinct from the other well–known regional trend, namely, the postwar movement of jobs and people from the frostbelt to the sunbelt. We also show that deconcentration has been accompanied by a similar trend within metropolitan areas, wherein employment share of the more dense sections of MSAs has declined and that of the less dense sections risen. We provide a general equilibrium model with density–driven congestion costs to suggest an explanation for employment deconcentration.     

Gender, space, and the location changes of jobs and people: a spatial simultaneous equations analysis

This article summarizes a spatial econometric analysis of local population and employment growth in the Netherlands, with specific reference to impacts of gender and space. The simultaneous equations model used distinguishes between population- and gender-specific employment groups, and includes autoregressive and cross-regressive spatial lags to detect relations both within and among these groups. Spatial weights matrices reflecting different bands of travel times are used to calculate the spatial lags and to gauge the spatial nature of these relations. The empirical results show that although population–employment interaction is more localized for women's employment, no gender difference exists in the direction of interaction. Employment growth for both men and women is more influenced by population growth than vice versa. The interaction within employment groups is even more important than population growth. Women's, and especially men's, local employment growth mostly benefits from the same employment growth in neighboring locations. Finally, interaction between these groups is practically absent, although men's employment growth may have a negative impact on women's employment growth within small geographic areas. In summary, the results confirm the crucial roles of gender and space, and offer important insights into possible relations within and among subgroups of jobs and people.     

Conflict on the urban fringe: Urbanization,environmental stress,and urban unrest in Africa

Most research on the security implications of environmental and demographic change does not explicitly distinguish between urban and rural areas. While statistical conflict analyses are increasingly sophisticated with respect to spatial and substantive disaggregation they largely ignore the possibility that urban and rural areas may be affected differently. In Africa, a continent assumed to be particularly vulnerable to the social and economic externalities of environmental and demographic change, less than one percent of the land mass is defined as ‘urban’. Yet, the population that lives in African cities is expected to increase by more than 150% between 2020 and 2050 according to UN population forecasts, massively outpacing rural population growth estimated at 35%. Given the vast social transformation associated with this process of rapid urbanization, understanding the dynamics and consequences of urban population growth in Sub-Saharan Africa, and its possible relationship with environmental factors is key to reducing vulnerabilities and facilitating sustainable urban growth on the continent. In this article we argue that high urban population growth may strain the provision of public services in urban areas, heighten competition over scarce urban land, and increase the chances of urban social unrest. We expect population pressure to have the most profound effects on social unrest in peri-urban areas, meaning the urban outskirts. We further investigate whether environmental push factors, operationalized as droughts happening in rural areas proximate to the urban centers, could be driving any effect of urban population growth on social disorder, possibly supporting concerns over climate change-induced social unrest. We test our expectations on a sample of similarly sized urban and peri-urban ‘grid cells’ covering the whole of the African continent for the 1997–2010 period, using geo-coded social unrest data. Our analysis shows that urban population growth is associated with increased unrest in the peri-urban areas only. We find no evidence, however, that this relationship is driven by environmental push factors in the form of nearby droughts. The study contributes insights relevant to the broader debates about possible security implications of hyper-urbanization and climate change.     

Urban,Suburban, and Exurban Sprawl in the Rocky Mountain West: Evidence from Regional Adjustment Models*

Abstract. This article adapts a regional adjustment model to examine land use change in the Rocky Mountain West region of the United States. Three interrelated questions motivate the research. How does the proliferation of urban, suburban, and exurban sprawl in the Rocky Mountain West relate to the population and employment growth process? Are population and employment endogenously determined there? And what does this imply for the sustainability of economic development in the region? Through a series of regional adjustment models, the empirical analysis links population and employment growth in the Rocky Mountain West to explicit spatial outcomes and delivers substantive evidence of endogeneity between the two. The results suggest that the long‐term prosperity of the region depends on the preservation of the high quality of life it offers, and that greater intergovernmental coordination, careful infrastructure planning, and attention to the character of its economic structure may help to accomplish this. Future research should focus on looking deeper into certain explanatory variables used in this analysis and on developing a better picture of what the spatial equilibrium that regional adjustment models emulate may look like.     

METROPOLITAN OUTMIGRATION PATTERN OF CANADIAN LABOUR FORCE ENTRANTS, 1971–76

This paper analyses the 1971 -76 metropolitan out-migration pattern of Canadian males in the labour force entrance age group. Migration is conceptualized within a three-level choice framework, and statistical inference is based on a multinomial logit model. It was found (1) that the propensity to outmigrate and the destination choice pattern vary substantially among the 23 metropolitan areas; (2) that 83 per cent of the variation in the destination choice probabilities of metropolitanward migrants can be explained by only five variables (log of distance, cultural dissimilarity, temperature, employment growth, and population size); and (3) that housing conditions are essentially the results (rather than the causes) of intermetropolitan migration .     

METROPOLITAN AGGLOMERATION AND SECTORAL AGGREGATION*

ABSTRACT. This paper proposes a procedure with which sectoral production functions can be aggregated to metropolitan production functions in the presence of external economies of scale. The procedure specifies the production functions as part of general equilibrium models. Consistency of a one-sector and a two-sector general equilibrium model is defined in terms of equality of the distribution of a nation's population over its metropolitan areas in autarky.     

北京都市区就业-居住空间结构及特征研究

近二十年来,在经济社会转型和城市化进程不断加快的背景下,我国许多大城市的就业-居住空间结构发生了巨大的变化。本研究以北京都市区为例,建立北京都市区就业-居住基础地理信息数据库,运用GIS空间分析技术对北京就业-居住空间关系进行多尺度分析,在界定就业中心和居住中心的基础上,评价北京都市区的就业与居住平衡状况。研究结果表明,就业-居住分离是当今北京城市空间结构的突出特征。     

Working women in the city and urban wage growth in the United States

Although the female labor force participation rate of women has been steadily rising in the United States, there is substantial variation across cities. Previous cross‐county studies find that gender inequality in employment reduces economic efficiency hindering growth. This result is examined in a regional context, across metropolitan areas in the United States. Throughout multiple model formulations including instrumental variables approaches, higher initial female labor force participation rates are positively related to subsequent wage growth in metropolitan areas between 1980 and 2010. Specifically, every 10 percent increase in female labor force participation rates is associated with an increase in real wages of nearly 5 percent.     

COMPENSATION FOR COMMUTES IN THE LAND AND LABOR MARKETS: SOME EVIDENCE FROM THE TOKYO METROPOLITAN AREA*

ABSTRACT. Recent research suggests that in nonmonocentric cities compensation for commutes takes the form of both lower housing prices and higher wages. This paper develops a random utility model that predicts the probability of an actor choosing to commute between each residence and job in a metropolitan area conditional on the observed location of housing units and job sites. The model allows commuting time, origin-specific amenities, land prices, destination-specific amenities and wages to influence actors' choices. We estimate the model using maximum likelihood and generalized least squares techniques and data on commuting between each of 38 origin and 15 destination jurisdictions in the Tokyo metropolitan area. The empirical results show that, all else equal, a one percent increase in commuting time reduces the probability that a route (origin-destination combination) will be chosen by almost five percent. Origin-specific amenities are not completely capitalized into land prices and destination-specific amenities are not completely capitalized into wages. Desirable residential amenities include school quality and a low ratio of day to night population. Desirable workplace amenities include a large share of white collar jobs and a high density of employment.     

SPRAWL,BLIGHT, AND THE ROLE OF URBAN CONTAINMENT POLICIES: EVIDENCE FROM U.S. CITIES

U.S. post‐war suburbanization has reshaped the spatial pattern of growth in many metropolitan areas, with population and employment shift toward the suburbs resulting in the urban decay of central cities. This being the case, the adoption of adequate anti‐sprawl policies should lead to a reduction in city blight. Availability of detailed blight measures at the city level enables us to undertake a novel empirical analysis to test this hypothesis. The empirical specification presented here identifies the specific impact of more stringent anti‐sprawl policies adopted at the metro level, proxied by the adoption of urban containment policies, on city blight. Results indicate that the adoption of such policies has effectively contributed to the reduction of downtown deterioration.