THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF NO-GROWTH

Problems of scarcity generate critical political issues as advanced industrial societies shift away from growth-oriented economies. This analysis recommends substituting more abundant political resources for scarce economic ones. Appropriate scenario resulting from these substitution patterns are subjected to speculative analysis.     

ROMANO-BRITISH PEOPLE AND THE LANGUAGE OF SOCIOLOGY

Summary.   Despite the vast amount of work and the huge database for Roman Britain, the people of the province remain very difficult to discern. There are many reasons for this, but one is that we have not yet learned to look behind the disjecta membra of archaeology in order to understand the structure and nature of society, and how the Roman Conquest may have impacted upon it. The language of sociology offers scope for thought, especially when combined with examples drawn from historically documented societies in later periods. Whilst models drawn from the classical world are important, attention also needs to be focused on the local, and on the factors that determined the shape of people's lives and influenced their daily activities. Not all these are archaeologically detectable; nevertheless an appreciation of their existence is an important pre-requisite in attempting explanations of patterns in the data.     

THE EFFECTS OF METROPOLITAN JOB GROWTH ON THE SIZE DISTRIBUTION OF FAMILY INCOME*

ABSTRACT. This article examines how a metropolitan area's job growth affects its income distribution, using CPS data from 1979 to 1988. Metropolitan growth increases the poorest quintile's income by a greater percentage than for the average family. Metropolitan growth also increases the value of property owned by the richest quintiles. Economic development programs to increase local growth will have a net progressive effect if the cost per job created is low, and these costs are financed by personal taxes. But programs with a high cost per job, or financed by cutting welfare, will reduce the net income of the poorest quintile.     

MUNICIPAL AMALGAMATION AND THE GROWTH OF THE LOCAL PUBLIC SECTOR IN SWEDEN*

ABSTRACT. The proposition that a decentralized structure of local governments can effectively constrain public sector growth is empirically investigated. Data on Swedish municipal sector size for the 1942–87 period are analyzed within the context of a median voter model. The results indicate that decentralization, measured by the number of units of local government serving a given population, constrains the influence of institutional factors (e.g., rent seeking, bureaucracy) on local budgets as long as these units exceed some minimal threshold size. The findings support the view that communities should be given the flexibility to determine their own ideal pattern of local governments.     

INDUSTRIAL CENTERS AND REGIONAL GROWTH IN THE PRESENCE OF LOCAL INPUTS*

ABSTRACT. A large proportion of regional production takes place in nontraded goods and services. In addition, significant productivity increases can be observed in some segments of this sector. Starting from these two empirical observations we construct a model of growth in a two-region setting with factor mobility. The growth process is based on endogenous technological change in the nontraded input sector, whose output serves as an input in the production of one of the two final goods, the so-called industrial good. We consider two extreme cases, one with locally limited, the other with interregional knowledge spillovers. Conditions are established under which interior solutions with production of local inputs and steady-state growth in both regions result, and others under which we find a core-periphery pattern with growth concentrated in one region only. The stability of the equilibria is discussed by considering the transition processes. Finally, it is shown that catching-up as well as leapfrogging may occur, if new technologies become available.     

THE DETERMINANTS OF STATE MANUFACTURING GROWTH RATES: A TWO-DIGIT-LEVEL ANALYSIS*

ABSTRACT. This paper analyzes 1954–1987 state manufacturing employment growth in 19 two-digit industries. Markets were found to be the strongest influence in 18 industries. Labor was the second strongest, followed by a threshold variable. Weaker influences were resources, taxes, and amenities. Regional values for the market, labor, and threshold variables corresponded well with regional employment change in the Manufacturing Belt and all other regions of the U.S.     

MODELING DYNAMIC INTERINDUSTRY REGIONAL GROWTH IN THE PRESENCE OF STRUCTURAL SHIFTS AND OUTLIERS*

ABSTRACT. Kraybill and Dorfman (1992) propose a model of intermediate and export demand which uses ordinary least-squares and linear systems techniques to produce a state-space representation of the time element of output change. Their model produces dynamic multipliers which trace the temporal path of regional growth, and has many advantages over previously employed time series methods. This study extends their methodology to accommodate structural shifts and outliers found in the least-squares relationship between industry and export output by using a recently-introduced technique–multiprocess mixture estimation. An application of the Kraybill-Dorfman method and the extensions proposed here to monthly time series data on Ohio employment is used to illustrate these issues.     

SERVICE EXPORTS AND REGIONAL GROWTH IN THE POSTINDUSTRIAL ERA*

ABSTRACT. The role of service industries in the regional growth process has been debated for decades. Although the importance of services in providing an essential framework for the development of exports has long been acknowledged, their ability to initiate growth has never been generally accepted. In this paper the change in composition of exports from Canada's four western provinces between 1974 and 1979 is analyzed. It was observed that service exports increased more rapidly than exports of goods on both a direct and a direct-plus-indirect basis in 88 percent of comparisons. In absolute terms, the gain in service exports was equal to 89 percent of that for goods exports.