STEADY-STATE LABOR TURNOVER AS OPTIMAL HOUSEHOLD BEHAVIOR*

ABSTRACT. Models of the firm with costly labor turnover and models of migration with location-specific consumption amenities are two standard explanations of the co-existence of persistent wage differentials with extensive labor mobility. Labor turnover models postulate a worker quit function where the quit rate is inversely related to the regional wage differential in the steady state. We use amenity-consumption models of migration to show conditions under which this postulate is consistent with household utility maximization. Our model extends standard amenity-consumption analysis by making the value of amenities contingent on the “state” of the household. These household states are defined in terms of demographic, education, and health characteristics and are assumed to follow a Markov process.     

ECONOMETRIC MODELING OF INTERREGIONAL LABOR MARKET LINKAGES*

ABSTRACT. This paper presents a statistical procedure for empirically establishing linkages between regional economies. Using Granger's definition of causality and the final prediction error technique for lag-length specification suggested by Hsiao, a linked, multiregional employment model is developed. The forecast performance of the linked model is compared to models which do not include interregional linkages. It is shown that forecast error is reduced by taking into account employment interrelationships between regions.     

A CRITIQUE OF CONVENTIONAL EXPLANATION OF LABOR MARKET,CONDITIONS FOR EMPLOYED BLACKS*

Historically, the pattern of black employment has differed considerably from the pattern of white employment. In addition, the U.S. economy has undergone structural changes such that service sector employment has increased at a faster pace than has employment in other sectors. While employed blacks have made some occupational advances in non-service areas (e.g., manufacturing), the employed work force is heavily concentrated in low wage occupations in the service sector. Neo-classical analyses of the pattern of black employment do not consider the significance of these structural changes. Segmentation theorists do consider these changes but downgrade the importance of the service sector. This paper draws attention to the overwhelming importance of the service sector in explaining the structure of black employment in the last twenty years.     

THE OPTIMAL CONVERGENCE OF REGIONAL INCOMES*

For many policy considerations it is assumed that the convergence of regional mean income will improve national equity by reducing overall inequality. The literature on decomposability of social welfare functions implies that this assumption is unwarranted. This paper develops a notion of optimal regional convergence. In general, the point of optimal convergence depends on the shapes of the regional income distributions, the inequality index used, and the rule for distributing interregional transfers. These concepts are illustrated with data on the regional income distributions of the Southern and Northern United States.     

MEASURING CONTRIBUTING FACTORS TO INTERREGIONAL AGRICULTURAL LABOR PRODUCTIVITY DIFFERENTIALS: A JOINT PROFIT FORMULATION*

ABSTRACT Using Taylor series approximations of joint profit functions, a methodology is outlined to quantify interregional differentials in the Canadian agriculture sector by region and to quantify the contributing factors to regional labor productivity differences. These contributing factors are output price differentials–both crop and livestock, differentials in “land and buildings” capital deepening, “other” capital deepening, energy prices, other material prices, and efficiency. The joint profit formulation permits the analysis of effects of regional specific output price and output mix differentials.     

THE JOURNEY-TO-WORK DISTANCE IN RELATION TO THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC CHARACTERISTICS OF WORKERS

The aim of this paper has been to explore the variation in the distance between the residence and work locations of industrial workers. This distance has been theoretically and empirically related to the income, number of dependents, marital status, sex, and age of workers whose job site was located in the centre of the city. A multiple regression model has shown the over-all importance of the budget constraint as a factor in the residential location decision relative to the job site. Of the variables included in the analysis, the wage rate of the worker is the strongest determinant of the location decision. Although workers who have the same budget constraint show weak locational relationships with the job site relative to the number of dependents and marital status, as suggested by the model, the only strong difference in spatial location occurs when the budget constraint is allowed to vary. Once workers have the means to increase their over-all utility level, they do trade off journey-to-work disutilities for residential facilities farther from the central city job site. But the social conditions of the worker tend to influence the residence-to-work distance only slightly when considered apart from the influence they may have on the wage rate. The over-all dependence of the journey-to-work distance on these variables in this setting hence was small, reaching an R value of only 0.38.     

THE ECONOMIC LAW OF MARKET AREAS: A FURTHER DISCUSSION*

ABSTRACT. The Economic Law of Market Areas, so named by Fetter, is concerned with the division of a territory between two competing centers. It is argued that this Law can be conveniently examined in terms of six cases, each of which is specified by a combination of differentials in freight rates and prices at the two centers. The locational significance of each case is considered, along with the form and dimensions of the market-area boundary between the two centers. Three of the cases are each shown to subsume a special case. It is further shown that for any case except one, a reversal of the differentials between the two centers, while resulting in a symmetrically-equivalent outcome, requires a different (and usually substantial) respecification of the case.     

MARKET CAPTURE BY TWO COMPETITORS: THE PREEMPTIVE LOCATION PROBLEM*

ABSTRACT. We consider a location and allocation game for two competitor firms, A and B, that each seek to locate p facilities in a network. A market is captured by a particular firm if that market's closest facility belongs to that firm rather than a competitor. The question is as follows: Firm A wants to locate its p facilities so that B, which enters also with p facilities after Firm A has located its facilities, will capture the minimum market value possible. That is, Firm A wishes to preempt Firm B in its bid to capture market share to the maximum extent possible. A model is presented that addresses this issue, together with solution methods and computing times.     

PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGY UNCERTAINTY AND THE OPTIMAL LOCATION OF THE FIRM*

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the implication of production-technology uncertainty for the exclusion theorem. The paper presents the result that the risk-averse firm facing production technology uncertainty prefers an intermediate location to avoid risk under certain conditions. The firm chooses an intermediate location (over a corner location) particularly if its degree of risk aversion overwhelms the inherent convexity of profit with respect to location. The latter depends, in turn, on the structure of production technology characterized by the elasticity of substitution and returns to scale parameters.     

TEXTS ON THE MOVE: TEXTUALITY AND HISTORICITY REVISITED

The last time texts were brought onto the general theoretical and methodological agenda of the human and social sciences, they were reintroduced into history in terms of an indefinite set of indefinitely complex contexts, which gave every text a specific date and location in a network of other texts and events. A couple of decades later, however, a more prominent feature of texts seems to be that they are permanently on the move: they circulate, have effects on other things, change and transform realities, and are at the same time themselves translated and modified. In the literature exploring the textuality of history, these dimensions have been under‐theorized and often ignored. To meet this challenge, we need to develop concepts and approaches that enable us to place the mobility of texts as well as their mobilizing force at the center of our current historical concerns. In this article we will explore what the consequences of this move could be, and what resources are already at hand in different scholarly traditions. Exploring the entanglements between actor‐network theory (ANT in the version of Bruno Latour), on the one hand, and literary criticism, linguistics, and book history, on the other, enables us to focus on how texts move and how they move others. We will proceed in this essay by identifying three decisive moments in twentieth‐ and twenty‐first‐century textual scholarship, often conceptualized as “turns,” which are linked to the works of three path‐breaking authors and which at the same time represent three different stages or forms of textuality: the linguistic turn (Saussure), the turn to writing (Derrida), and the turn to print (Eisenstein). Our discussions of these three moments and forms of textuality aim at uncovering how they also represent seminal moments in Bruno Latour's development of the theoretical and methodological complex now referred to as ANT.