Are the most productive regions necessarily the most successful? Local effects of productivity growth on employment and earnings

Economists typically celebrate productivity growth as the chief way to improve living standards. Productivity growth may reduce costs, improve quality, or lead to innovation and new products, but if demand is insufficiently elastic, productivity growth can lead to weakening of labor markets. We study county‐level effects of productivity growth and productivity levels on growth in employment, income, and earnings. The results suggest that productivity growth generally suppresses job growth but has boosting effects on earnings and, to a lesser degree, on per‐capita income, although there is considerable variation across geographies and specific outcomes.     

Bites, nibbles, sips and puffs: new exotic goods in Norway in the 18th and the first half of the 19th century

The slow but significant changes in the material culture of European households that took place in the pre-industrial period are visible in several ways, such as in the changing patterns of housing, furnishing and clothing which have been illustrated in several studies. However, most of these studies focus on the pre-industrial economic leaders, often ignoring the changes taking place on the margins of the economic growth centres. This article seeks to rectify this by looking at changes in the material culture in one such 'marginal' country, namely Norway. The goods focused upon in this case are sugar, tobacco and coffee, which are often termed as exotic goods. These were new commodities in the 18th century and precisely because of their novelty and foreign origin, it is in many cases possible to trace how they spread in rural society, as well as how they impacted it. The emphasis has been put on rural areas for the simple reason that this was where the overall majority of Norwegians lived at the time.     

River metamorphosis and environmental change in the Macdonald Valley,New South Wales,since 1949

A significant metamorphosis of channel form occurred on the lower Macdonald River between 1949 and 1955; width and width-depth ratio increased and depth, sinuosity and weighted mean per cent silt-clay in the channel perimeter decreased. The channel has remained unstable since 1955, exhibiting frequent variations in bed elevation and a recent period of minor channel contraction followed by slight enlargement. Since 1946 there has been an increase in summer and annual rainfall and an abrupt, upward shift of the annual series flood frequency curve. As a result an increased proportion of the total sediment load of the river is now being transported as bed-material load. The change in sediment load is a result of greater stream competence and the consequent reworking of sandy sediment temporarily stored within the channel as benches. The observed channel changes are a quasi-adjustment to the increased flood and bed-material load discharges.     

CONVERGENCE AND THE U.S. STATES: A TIME-SERIES ANALYSIS*

ABSTRACT. After decades of apparent convergence, state and regional per capita earnings diverged between 1978 and 1988. A central tenet of the convergence hypothesis is that shocks to relative state and regional earnings, such as those of the 1978 to 1988 period, are transitory. We find evidence for convergence for the U.S. states and regions during the 1929 to 1990 period after allowing for a break in the rate at which the various states and regions were converging in 1946. An important finding of this research is that the US. states and regions achieved per capita earnings convergence by 1946.     

Marling & Evans,King's Stanley and Ebley Mills,Gloucestershire

Abstract

The economic causes of European emigration to the United States in the nineteenth century enjoy an established historiography, which considers many aspects of the pre-industrial economy from agriculture to the collapse of traditional industries. This paper examines the link between pre-industrial home textile manufacture and emigration from the German south-west. It draws on data from communities and households in the state of Württemberg, and finds that pre-industrial textile production was not a major determinant of migration patterns in the nineteenth century; instead, the localised rise and fall of textile work was influenced by the availability of emigration pathways, an inversion of results seen elsewhere.     

大理古城旅游房地产的发展及社会文化影响研究

"旅游房地产"近年发展迅猛,也引发了一些争议和讨论。本文以大理为案例地,对旅游房地产的发展及影响进行研究,构建了"产权属性-使用时间"双维度的产品谱系图,并研究其空间布局特点,总结其发展的共同特征,包括从空间形态上推动旅游城市化、适应于从观光向度假时代转变的旅游房地产产品演进、政府角色从直接投资者转向"城市助推器"等。结合深入的田野调查,本文分析了大理旅游房地产的社会-文化影响,探讨了以旅游房地产作为推动区域发展和旅游产业转型工具的政策的有效性,并提出相关的政策建议。     

Income Transfers Alone Won't Eradicate Poverty

Even in the current economic situation, in developed countries, rhetoric about cutting "poverty" is misleadingly outmoded—because it implicitly suggests that government income transfers can be the vehicle for achieving substantial reductions in poverty. Almost all Americans already live far above subsistence poverty: most because of their earnings, and the rest because of government transfer programs. This decline in material poverty is obscured by weaknesses in how the official U.S. poverty measure counts income. What is now called poverty is really "income inequality." Reducing income inequality is also a vitally important social goal, but it cannot be accomplished through income transfers alone. The authors argue that, although income transfers have a role to play in lessening the impact of material deprivation, real progress in raising incomes will require building the human capital of the economically disadvantaged. This means both increasing the earnings capacity of lower-income workers and reducing the number of female-headed families.     

The service sector,regional specialization,and economic growth in the Victorian economy

During the Victorian period there were substantial regional variations in employment in the service industries. Explanations of economic growth in this period have been dominated by the notion that it was industry-led. If that were so, service growth would be a function of industrial growth. Testing of this thesis by econometric methods suggested that industry provided a poor explanation for variations in services, and that the main explanation was provided by variations in income. This raised other questions, since income per head in the industrial areas was generally much lower than in the less industrialized and service-oriented south of England. There is an abundance of evidence to suggest that this service-oriented regional growth was not derived from industrial development but from international trade and finance together with the consumer spending of a wealthy landed society. There was thus a substantial element of economic and spatial dualism in the Victorian economy. The role of heavy industry in Victorian growth thus needs to be revised considerably downward, and the importance of services and the South East region in particular revised considerably upward. Indeed it is by no means sure that the industrial regions provided the principal stimulus to Victorian growth: the evidence of this study would suggest otherwise.     

Increasing returns to scale in the towns of early Tudor England

Abstract

Urban agglomeration economies make cities central to theories of modern economic growth. There is historical evidence for the presence of Smithian growth and agglomeration effects in English towns c.1450-1670, but seminal assessments deny the presence of agglomeration effects and productivity gains to Early Modern English towns. This study evaluates the presence of increasing returns to scale (IRS) in aggregate urban economic outputs—the empirical signature of feedbacks between Smithian growth and agglomeration effects—among the towns of 16th century England. To do so, we test a model from settlement scaling theory against the 1524/5 Lay Subsidy returns. Analysis of these data indicates that Tudor towns exhibited IRS—a finding that is robust to alternative interpretations of the data. IRS holds even for the smallest towns in our sample, suggesting the absence of town size thresholds for the emergence of agglomeration effects. Spatial patterning of scaling residuals further suggests regional demand-side interactions with Smithian-agglomeration feedbacks. These findings suggest the presence of agglomeration effects and Smithian growth in pre-industrial English towns. This begs us to reconsider the economic performance of Early Modern English towns, and suggests that the qualitative economic dynamics of contemporary cities may be applicable to premodern settlements in general.     

北京房地产中介空间格局演化特征及驱动因素分析

本文基于微观企业数据,采用泰森多边形、核密度及空间自相关方法,多尺度考察2001-2010年北京房地产中介门店空间格局演化特征,通过构建地理加权回归模型（GWR）,探究2010年房地产中介空间格局驱动因素。研究表明：①房地产中介集中分布在城六区,数量增速最快功能区是城市发展新区。②空间格局不均衡性增大,空间集聚态势加强。③集聚主核心点出现由"东城"向"朝阳"方向的东推位移,集聚程度加深,主核心区团块面积扩大,次级核心点增多,"两轴、两带、多中心"基本版图形成。④空间集聚现象明显,热点区域扩张,但始终集中在区域中心。⑤驱动效应最大的因素为常住人口,多种驱动因素效应均比较强的街区（乡镇）基本上属于各区县经济水平相对发达的区域。此外,政府政策对其影响也较大。     

A model for estimation of the relation between a nation and a colonial area,applied to the Denmark‐Greenland relations

A model based on identification of three different phases of relations between a nation and a colonial area is set up by the author. The phases are called the colonial phase, the assimilation phase, and the autonomous phase, respectively. Each phase is characterized by special aspects of law, culture, economics, politics and administration, through which the sciences are combined and integrated to a phase model. Appropriate systems of accounts related to the phases are discussed and set up. Furthermore, the model is applied to the relations between Denmark and Greenland, and it is shown that although Greenland formally is found to be in the autonomous phase, real matters such as the economy and administration still are in the assimilation phase. Finally it is pointed out that the official accounts for Greenland are inappropriate to estimate the real current economic relations between Denmark and Greenland.     

基于时变参数模型的中国房地产投资研究

房地产投资能够直接带动国民经济增长,但发展过快也会给经济带来负效应,协调好房地产投资与国民经济发展的关系尤为重要。本文首先综述国内外相关研究成果,发现现有定量研究无法真实反映房地产业本身结构的变化;其次,建立时变参数模型,对房地产投资与国民经济发展之间的关系进行了实证研究;最后得出研究结论和政策建议。本文的研究结论:一是房地产投资对GDP拉动作用显著;二是房地产投资受GDP、国内银行贷款以及利率的影响各不相同。与现有研究文献相比较,本文在研究视角和方法上均有-定的突破。     

Does EU cohesion policy work? Theory and evidence

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of European Cohesion Policy in the regions of 12 EU countries in the period 1991–2008, on the basis of a spatial growth model, which allows for the identification of both direct and indirect effects of EU funds on GDP per worker growth. We find that “Objective 1” funds are characterized by strong spatial externalities and a positive and concave effect on the growth of GDP per worker, which reaches a peak at the ratio funds/GDP of approximately 3 percent and becomes non‐significant after 4 percent. “Objective 2” and “Cohesion” funds have nonsignificant effects, while all the other funds exert a positive and significant effect, but their size is very limited. EU Cohesion Policy, moreover, appears to have increased its effectiveness over time. In the period 2000–2006 Objective 1 funds are estimated to have a median multiplier equal to 1.52, and to have added 0.37 percent to the GDP per worker growth. Overall, in the period 1991–2008, funds are estimated to have added 1.4 percent to the median annual growth, and to have reduced regional disparities of 8 basis points in terms of the Gini index.     

On the Sources of Instability in the Rank-Size Rule: Some Simple Tests of Gibrat's Law

While the implications of the Simon model of urban growth, e.g., the rank-size rule, have been explored in numerous papers, the assumptions of that model have not, to my knowledge, been subjected to empirical verification. This paper represents an initial attempt to do so, emphasizing those sources of variation in the growth of cities typically singled out in Simon's verbal statements of the model: births, deaths, rural-urban, urban-rural, and urban-urban migration. It is found that over the recent past the assumptions concerning these components are all violated and violated in the direction of upward curvature away from the log-linear relationship between city size and rank predicted by the model, an upward curvature which we in fact observe.     

房地产投资决策支持系统开发设计研究

投资决策是房地产开发的必要前提,但决策分析是一个相当复杂的过程,需对开发项目及其所处市场环境所包含的大量资料数据运用科学方法进行分析、运算和决策。而这些过程的实现必须借助于计算机信息管理和决策支持系统技术。本文在房地产投资决策支持系统实例设计开发的基础上,介绍了该决策支持系统的系统开发目标、系统功能结构和模块划分、系统数据的特点、系统运用的特点,以及系统数据管理设计、系统模型设计和系统输入输出设计等。最后根据房地产投资决策实务及相关计算机软件的发展,提出了该系统未来功能完善和版本升级的方向。     

Quality turns in Nordic food: a comparative analysis of specialty food in Denmark,Norway and Sweden

ABSTRACT

This article compares the development of specialty food in Denmark, Norway and Sweden using a number of quantitative indicators as well as a qualitative analysis of government policy. The analysis shows that specialty food has increased in importance in all three countries over the last twenty years, but there are important differences in the kind of specialty food that has developed and the nature of government intervention and governance structures. Overall, Sweden appears to have the largest production of specialty food and drink and is particularly strong in organic production and consumption, farm processing and farm shops. Norway has a large number of products with protected origin and also leads in the number of farmers’ markets. Denmark lags behind the other countries on most indicators, but has witnessed the fastest growth in microbreweries over the last five years. Theoretically, the article challenges the ‘negative’ definition of specialty food as ‘non-industrial’ or ‘alternative’, and suggests a more nuanced approach. Empirically, it points towards the possible existence of a ‘Scandinavian model’ of specialty food governance with extensive interaction between central government, local government and private firms to stimulate the growth of specialty food.     

MIGRATION AND SELF‐SELECTION: MEASURED EARNINGS AND LATENT CHARACTERISTICS*

ABSTRACT Research in regional and labor economics has established that economic incentives play a significant role in the process of internal migration. The most common approach is to view migration as a form of human capital investment undertaken by individuals who expect to benefit from the standpoint of increased earnings. One of the central concepts in these models is self‐selection. Individuals who self‐select the option of migration tend to differ from the nonmigrant population in ways that are not measured in most data sets. The contribution of this paper is in its distinction between two aspects of migrant selection. On one hand, some workers possess unmeasured traits that might simultaneously affect their wages and their propensity to engage in risky human capital investment such as migration. On the other hand, measured earnings might exert a direct effect on migration. Based on samples of employed Swedish males and females at two points in time, this study seeks first to examine whether migration between the two periods occurs in the presence of correlation between unmeasured factors present in both earnings during the first period and the subsequent decision to migrate. Second, it looks for an explicit role of earnings per se in the migration decision. Results of the study provide support for selection based on unmeasured traits for both genders. For females, there is also evidence of selection based on measured earnings.     

Making Real Estate Markets: The Co-Production of Race and Property Value in Early 20th Century Appraisal Science

Analysing the standardisation of appraisal alongside the development of modern real estate markets in the early 20^th century, this article demonstrates that the construction of a racialised proper(tied) economic subjectivity was pivotal for realtors’ ability to secure legitimacy and profit as a burgeoning profession. Appraisal embedded racial logics within real estate markets such that their routine functioning could generate the submarket differentiation necessary for the realisation of class-monopoly rent. This study’s focus on appraisal before federal redlining addresses key lacunae in the historiography of segregation by foregrounding markets’ historical function as infrastructures that produce and spatialise the social difference crucial for profit in real estate. This article also seeks to inform engagements with contemporary processes of land speculation, commodification, and financialisation shaping US cities by advocating attention to the specific mechanisms that constitute race as a modality for the appropriation of surplus by real estate capital.     

Mafia doesn't live here anymore: Antimafia policies and housing prices

It is well known that the value of a house depends both on the physical characteristics and on some features of the neighborhood in which it is located. If so, organized-crime activities can significantly affect urban real estate values. Antimafia policies, in turn, can be intended as a tool to influence those external features. This paper compares the effects on real estate values of the two main antimafia policies implemented in Italy since the 1990s at the municipal level. While we do not find any significant effect of dismissal policies on house prices, we find a statistically significant effect of reassignment policies depending on the specific destination of confiscated property.