ABSORPTIVE CAPACITY,KNOWLEDGE FLOWS,AND INNOVATION IN U.S. METROPOLITAN AREAS

High growth and progressive regions possess a culture that promotes innovation. Innovation depends on a region's ability to use its own existing knowledge and knowledge generated elsewhere. This paper demonstrates the importance of the ability to absorb external knowledge in explaining innovation productivity for 106 U.S. metropolitan areas. Using a spatial interaction model of patent citation flows with origin and destination dependence, the destination fixed‐effects coefficients provides a measure of a region's absorptive capacity. We identify local conditions that shape a region's absorptive capacity and demonstrate it has a positive and significant impact on innovation productivity.     

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 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.     

PRODUCTIVITY AND THE DENSITY OF HUMAN CAPITAL*

ABSTRACT We estimate a model of urban productivity in which the agglomeration effect of density is enhanced by a metropolitan area's stock of human capital. Estimation accounts for potential biases due to the endogeneity of density and industrial composition effects. Using new information on output per worker for U.S. metropolitan areas along with a measure of density that accounts for the spatial distribution of population, we find that a doubling of density increases productivity by 2–4 percent. Consistent with theories of learning and knowledge spillovers in cities, we demonstrate that the elasticity of average labor productivity with respect to density increases with human capital. Metropolitan areas with a human capital stock one standard deviation below the mean realize no productivity gain, while doubling density in metropolitan areas with a human capital stock one standard deviation above the mean yields productivity benefits that are about twice the average. These patterns are particularly pronounced in industries where the exchange of information and sharing of ideas are important parts of the production process.     

Leaves in the wind? Local policies of small and medium-sized towns in metropolitan regions

Small and medium-sized towns (SMSTs) contribute to the economic performance of whole metropolitan regions. However, the variety of factors that influence the economic development of SMSTs is understudied and the impact and relevance of their local policies are especially unclear. This article studies local policies of SMSTs within the metropolitan region of Zurich (Switzerland) and the impact of local policies on the economic specialization of these towns. Switzerland serves as an interesting context in which to study SMSTs, particularly those in metropolitan regions, due to their constant growth and the high local autonomy enjoyed by Swiss local governments. Using a multiple case study design that relies on a pair-wise comparison, we find that the economic specialization of SMSTs can mainly be explained by factors that are exogenous to local policy-making such as the town’s location and its connectivity. Land-use strategies are the only local policies that can influence the economic specialization of SMSTs. Therefore, SMSTs are well advised to invest in professionalized land-use departments and to coordinate their land-use strategies with neighbouring jurisdictions.     

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.     

Convergence and Divergence in the Australian Space Economy

Australia's space economy has changed rapidly since the 1970s through processes of globalisation, economic restructuring and demographic change. Trends in population distribution and patterns of employment and investment in economic activity highlight both spatial diffusion and concentration. Migration to ‘sun belt’ regions and suburban growth in the mega metro regions is creating population-led demand for production and services, thus creating investment growth and new employment in some consumer-oriented economic activities. However many internationally linked and national market serving economic functions are increasingly concentrated in the two largest cities at strategically located old and new nodes of agglomeration. No longer can population growth be equated directly with increased economic activity, and there are significant spatial mismatches between the outcomes of demographic and economic processes across the nation's cities and regions.     

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 .     

The development of geographical differences in education levels within the Swedish tourism industry

ABSTRACT

The nexus of workforce and destination development is a largely uncharted area within tourism research. The local human capital has above all been in focus when underlining tourism's potential to create employment even for the inexperienced and less educated. However, a discordant strand of theory holds the low levels of qualified knowledge within the industry responsible for absent destination development in areas struggling to develop competitive advantages. Additionally, the in-migration of a skilled workforce may be hampered by a lack of amenities attracting permanent residents. In order to explore whether the tourism sector is characterized by a less educated share of the workforce, a study was performed using micro-level data on the full working population of Sweden during the years 2000–2010. The workforce in tourism was compared to the total and two other low-skill sectors, and the results show that the educational aspects within tourism are more related to geography than economic sectors. Contrary to general presumptions, the workforce within the tourism sector has a higher level of formal education than the other selected sectors in regions with generally low educational levels. The implication is thus that strategies aimed at creating employment for the least educated in rural areas need to be reconsidered, and not unconditionally target the tourism sector. Above all, tourism development needs to be based on assessments of local preconditions rather than a generalized image.     

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.     

Locational disadvantage and the spatial distribution of government expenditure on urban infrastructure and services in metropolitan Sydney (1988–2015)

Provision of public services by state governments rather than municipalities is considered an important urban governance factor preventing deeper levels of socio‐spatial inequality in Australian cities. The paper examines the spatial patterns of investment by the New South Wales state government in a wide range of services and infrastructure in metropolitan Sydney over 28 budget years from 1988/89 to 2015/16. We examined the relationship between volume and type of investment in infrastructure and services, and considered a local area's socioeconomic characteristics, distance from the central business district, and designation as a strategic site in metropolitan plans. Despite an overall redistributive approach favouring relatively disadvantaged areas, the most disadvantaged suburbs in metropolitan Sydney had significantly lower levels of investment. When funding was directed to the most disadvantaged suburbs, it was often in the form of new social housing development, reinforcing both the concentration of poverty and disadvantage in resource access. The findings suggest that this is a case of under‐investment by the state government in areas already populated by disadvantaged communities rather than a market‐driven process whereby disadvantaged households move into poorly resourced neighbourhoods.     

Rescaling regions in the state: The New Regionalism in California

A “new civic regionalism” – based on participatory, inclusive and partnership models of governance – has recently been rolled out in California to tackle the challenges of urban growth, planning and economic development across the State's diverse metropolitan and rural regions. Backed by non-profits and private foundations, California's New Regionalism has been packaged as a flexible and responsive grassroots governance initiative, which is designed to circumnavigate State and local government. Its proponents have been influenced by New Regionalist ideas and practices circulating nationally and internationally. Despite this, our explanation for the rise of the New Regionalism in California is not grounded in these wider theoretical and policy developments; nor do we see it as the outcome of a “new politics of scale” framed around the region. Instead, California's newest regionalism is part of a much longer-standing social movement spearheaded by large-scale business interests and directed at reorganizing local and State government powers particularly in urban regions. This regional reform movement has sought to rationalize land use and environmental planning, coordinate infrastructure, and make government more fiscally efficient and responsive to growth. Over the longer term, its efforts have been undermined by the fiscal fallout of the property tax revolt, Proposition 13. Our analysis calls into question some of the claims in the literature on state rescaling and suggests the value of collapsing the conceptual distinction made between new spaces of political regionalism and regional economic spaces.     

Berlin: The Metropolis as a Production Space

Metropolitan regions can be regarded as economic areas comprising various sub-economies with different forms of economic and spatial organization. The purpose of this article is to undertake a critical appraisal of the vision of Berlin as a 'service metropolis' through empirical observation of sectoral trends and locational patterns in the city, and to establish that Berlin's urban area is a major production space with a complex fabric of specialized production districts. This spatial organization will be examined in terms of the level of agglomeration of various sub-economies with special reference to the formation of local enterprise clusters in the Berlin economic area. Berlin's specialization profile and the employment trend in the city compared with other metropolitan cities in Germany make it clear that the metropolis of Berlin is under threat as a production space, and this threat partly stems from the way in which the real estate business has developed in the Berlin area.     

Land Absorption in U.S. Metropolitan Areas: Estimates and Projections from Regional Adjustment Models

This article adapts a regional adjustment model to estimate and project the spatial outcome of population and employment growth in U.S. metropolitan areas. The three-equation multiplicative model of population change, employment change, and land absorption is estimated using three-stage least squares to account for endogeneity among the dependent variables and contemporaneous correlation across the system of equations. In addition to the core model, alternative specifications are estimated, imposing the initial conditions of size, land availability, and economic structure. The stability of the solutions is then examined using reduced-form equations estimated via the seemingly unrelated regression equations approach. The results reveal substantive evidence that population and employment growth are jointly determined, of how the two affect the outcome of land development, and, perhaps most importantly, stable and fractionally reasonable estimates at projected equilibrium points. Lastly, the adapted model controlling for the initial condition of land availability is used to project patterns of land consumption at equilibrium in 50 rapid-growth metropolitan areas.     

TELECOMMUNICATION EXTERNAL ECONOMIES,CITY SIZE AND OPTIMAL PRICING FOR TELECOMMUNICATIONS*

ABSTRACT. In this paper I make use of a city systems model to examine how telecommunications may affect cities in urban systems. The model offers an explanation for the observation that the share of employment in the communication-intensive producer-service sector increases with city size in the U.S. I suggest that external scale economies associated with metropolitan employment size, telecommunication network size and total number of intrametropolitan telecommunication contacts are possible explanations for this observation. I go on to suggest that the presence of telecommunication size and contact level external scale economies at the metropolitan level affects the optimal price that should be charged for local telecommunication services.     

ENTREPRENEURSHIP,INFORMATION, AND GROWTH

We examine the contribution to economic growth of entrepreneurial marketplace information within a regional endogenous growth framework. Entrepreneurs are posited to provide an input to economic growth through the information revealed by their successes and failures. We empirically identify this information source with the regional variation in establishment births and deaths. To account for the potential endogeneity caused by forward‐looking entrepreneurs, we utilize instruments based on historic mining activity. We find that the information spillover component of local establishment birth and death rates have significant positive effects on subsequent entrepreneurship and employment growth for U.S. counties and metropolitan areas.     

Knowledge Networks as a Regional Development Resource: A Network Analysis of the Interlinks between Scientific Institutions and Regional Firms in the Metropolitan region of Hanover,Germany

The debate on regional innovation potentials has concentrated in recent times upon the topic of regional knowledge networking. This article presents the findings of the first phase of a detailed network analysis of the cooperation relations between scientific institutions and firms in the “metropolitan region Hanover-Brunswick-Göttingen”. The research concentrated on the regional and supra-regional cooperation relations of approximately 500 science establishments of the region, including their interlinks with private sector firms. This analysis of a polycentric metropolitan region's knowledge networks in different fields of competence produced detailed information on the density of knowledge interlinking within the region, on the degree of connectivity between the region's scientific institutions and private sector firms, and on central network nodes within the regional innovation networks. The case study exemplifies the methodical approach of a regional network analysis and emphasizes the role of knowledge networks as a development resource which is of particular relevance to the region's innovation capacities.     

Perceptions of trekking tourism and social and environmental change in Nepal's Himalayas

The Himalayas are among the world's youngest mountain ranges. In addition to the geologic processes of mountain building and erosion, they are also highly vulnerable to human influenced change, occurring at local, national, regional, and international scales. A photo-elicitation methodology is employed to show how residents perceive those changes from historical perspectives, as well as their current conditions and impacts on their daily lives. Nepal's Khumbu region has undergone major social and environmental transformations since the 1960s when international trekking first began to influence the area's economy. The current perceptions of Khumbu residents of these changes are assessed through photo-elicitation interviews. Their responses are placed in the historical context of: (1) institutional and political changes, most of which have been driven by national government policies; (2) social and economic changes, for which the tourism economy has been central; and (3) environmental changes, reflecting the impacts of resource management and climate change. The mostly positive perceptions of Khumbu residents toward how their region has changed reflects general improvements in the physical and cultural landscapes of the Khumbu over time, as well as its continuing geographic isolation, which has helped to slow the rate of globalization, while also keeping the region a dynamic and popular tourist destination.     

REGIONAL POPULATION–EMPLOYMENT DYNAMICS ACROSS DIFFERENT SECTORS OF THE ECONOMY*

ABSTRACT An important subset of the literature on agglomeration externalities hypothesizes that intrasectoral and intersectoral relations are endogenously determined in models of local and regional economic growth. Remarkably, structural adjustment models describing the spatio‐temporal dynamics of population and employment levels or growth traditionally do not include intersectoral economic dynamics. This paper argues and shows that allowing for economic linkages across sectors in these models adds considerable value, especially in forecasting. An econometric model of population–employment dynamics, in which sectoral variations in economic development are explicitly taken into account, is applied to a large urban planning policy proposal in the Netherlands. The empirical analyses suggest that population dynamics are largely exogenous, population changes drive employment in particular in the industry and retail sectors, and employment in all sectors depends strongly on intersectoral dynamics. Intersectoral dynamics appear as important drivers of regional sectoral employment changes; they are even more important than population changes, and their effect shows up clearly even within the Dutch institutional context where strict regulatory housing and planning restrictions are enforced.     

Urban Transition and Interstate Relations in a Dynamic Post-Soviet Borderland: The Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China

Two noted American geographers examine transition in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (a de facto Soviet protectorate in the 1930s and early 1940s) within the context of that region's strategic position. The paper, based on field work exploring urbanization in the People's Republic of China, investigates the area's role as a bridgehead and corridor for emerging economic relations between China and the neighboring republics of Central Asia. The focus is on the demographic dimensions of urban growth and the underlying geopolitical and economic factors. Considerable attention also is given to the implications of increased trade and improvements in transportation links with the newly independent Central Asian states. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: F14, F15, O15, O18. 4 figures, 6 tables, 51 references.