Permanent Migrants and Cross-Border Workers: The Effects on the Host Country

Using a two-factor, two-good model, where only one of the goods is nontraded, I investigate the effects of immigration on the relative price of the two goods, the wage rate, and the rental price. I also demonstrate that the inflow of foreign workers gives rise to an increase in the welfare of the native inhabitants in the host country, and if the nontraded good is capital (labor) intensive, the inflow of permanent migrants is of more (less) benefit to the native inhabitants than the inflow of cross-border workers.     

Robustness of econometrically estimated local multipliers across different methods and data

Local traded‐goods employment multiplier estimates play an important role in the decision making of local policy makers. Therefore, it is important to understand the robustness of the approaches and quality of the data used in empirical studies. The local employment multiplier estimates by Moretti (AER; 2010) are a good benchmark for departure. In this paper, I find the traded‐goods multiplier falls within the range of 1.17 to 1.93, which is substantially lower than the estimate of 2.6 obtained by Moretti. I use multiple estimators in combination with two data sets, a range of controls and different ways of classifying traded industries to show the robustness and variability of local employment multiplier estimates. Finally, I demonstrate the sensitivity of Moretti's results. The most notable result being that Moretti's multiplier for separate skilled or unskilled workers in the nontraded sector is overestimated by a factor of 2.     

An empirical examination of shift-share instruments

Bartik's (1991, 1993) approach to identifying shocks in demand to regional economies has been used extensively for nearly 30 years. We chronicle the development of Bartik-type shift-share instruments and examine the empirical performance of alternative versions that use different combinations of national shift and local share variables in their construction. We offer three main findings. First, instruments constructed from shares that omit employment in nontraded sectors empirically dominate versions that include total employment. Second, industrial sectors with high average shares and low variation across areas are more likely to be nontraded and endogenous. This suggests placing large weights on nontraded sector shares worsens both relevance and potential endogeneity. Finally, we demonstrate national shifters other than employment, such as prices and wages, can be used to construct instruments with unique and relevant explanatory power.     

AMENITIES VERSUS LABOR MARKET OPPORTUNITIES: CHOOSING THE OPTIMAL DISTANCE TO MOVE*

ABSTRACT. A recent debate in the regional economics literature has focused attention on the motivation behind an individual's decision to migrate. Human-capital migration models emphasize labor market disequilibria whereas alternative (hedonic) migration models stress households’altered demand for nontraded goods. In this paper, we test the relative importance of these two possible motivations for moving between metropolitan areas. We use an intercity hedonic model to decompose wages into equilibrium and disequilibrium components. We then compare the separate influences of amenities and the disequilibrium component of wages on the distance moved between two metropolitan areas. Our findings indicate that both economic factors and amenity differentials are significant factors in explaining regional migration.     

Optimizing the Spatial Structure of the Agricultural Production Function

Important characteristics of spatial agricultural production functions are derived by introducing a non‐negative curvilinear spatial demand function for production input intensities. Given the usual neoclassical rationale assumptions of spatial demand for capital and labor inputs under competitive environment of farming in developing agricultural economies, the optimal production levels are determined by optimizing spatial demand for production inputs. Decreasing price‐to‐transport costs ratio (that is, decrease in the prices of capital goods or increase in freight rates) and increasing wage‐to‐travel costs ratio (that is, increase in labor wages or decrease in the travel rate) expand the limits of the (spatial) optimal boundary of the demand for agricultural capital goods and labor input respectively. These effects occur on account of the operation of (positive) spatial price gradient and (negative) wage‐gradient in the market region. It may be noted that elasticities of demand for production factors are spatially variant and have significant effects on the alterations in the structure of agricultural production. However, the spatial optimal solution of production has a complicated relationship with them. The price elasticity has negative and wage elasticity has positive spatial gradients in the market region. Farmers located in the periphery of the market region are not much affected by the proportionate changes occurring in the prices of agricultural capital goods but are more sensitive to the proportional changes in labor wages. Because of a decreasing trend in capital input demand and increase in labor input with distance from the market, capital‐product diminishes with a decreasing rate and labor‐product increases with an increasing rate in the spatial structure of agricultural production. As a result, capital‐labor ratio falls toward zero, which raises profit rate per unit of capital investment especially in the outer part of the market region. The equilibria of optimal production with price elasticity as well as of capital intensity with labor employment (that is, capital‐labor ratio as unity) determine spatial limits of the optimal production zone which is shifted outward subject to the provision of cheap transportation, stabilizing market prices and/or increasing wage rate at the market center. It will help in extending outwardly the optimal spatial limits of capital investment and will mobilize capital resources of farmers in the periphery for efficient and competitive capital‐dominated farming.     

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF FIXED INPUT COEFFICIENTS UNDER AGGREGATION*

ABSTRACT A fixed input coefficient is traditionally interpreted as the additional input from one sector that is required for an additional unit of output in another sector. It is shown that this ratio of increments is, in general, not fixed under aggregation. A tight upper and lower bound for its variation are derived. A necessary and sufficient condition for the ratio to be fixed is obtained. As a consequence, adopting the common assumption of fixed input coefficients implies that additional assumptions at any subaggregate level are required. Similar results are given for the Leontief inverse, whose typical element is usually interpreted as the additional output in one sector that is required for an additional unit of final demand in another sector.     

Governance Structures: Using IAD to Understand Variation in Service Delivery for Club Goods with Information Asymmetry

Club goods with information asymmetry are frequently provided through mixed economies of for‐profit, nonprofit, and public providers. Theory explaining mixed economies relies on sector to classify providers based on assumptions that sector‐level differences in how organizations either distribute or reinvest profit will affect behavior. However, this classification is overly broad and is not able to adequately capture the diversity of providers of these types of goods. The author utilizes the Institutional Analysis and Development framework to identify six “governance structures” in the for‐profit and nonprofit sectors. Governance structures are constitutional‐choice level rule variations in who has the power to make rules. I argue that there are two types of power that affect rules: (1) concentration of constitutional‐choice level decision‐making power (i.e., how many principals) and (2) proximity of monitoring and enforcement of those rules. The extent to which the constitutional rules actually guide service delivery outcomes depends on a nested rule environment. Only if there is consistency across three level of rules (constitutional, collective, and operational) can we connect sector to outcomes. The empirical reality of service delivery, particularly for club goods with information asymmetry, is far too complex for simplistic assumptions linking profit distribution or its reinvestment to outcomes. This article directs further research toward building contingent theory, with if/then conditions, based on empirical research.     

NGOs and Environmental Public Goods: Institutional Alternatives to Property Rights

NGOs are linked to environmental objectives for good reason: non-profit NGOs provide a flexible, private-sector answer to the provision of international environmental public goods. The non-profit sector can link for-profit, non-profit, and public-sector objectives in complex contracts. This article examines how, for the case of the National Biodiversity Institute (INBio) in Costa Rica, such complex contracts with both domestic and international parties provide partial solutions to public goods problems in the absence of private property rights over genetic resources. INBio's ‘monopoly’ position, legitimized by the local government, brings in rents from genetic resources which are reinvested in the production of public goods.     

THE URBAN ENTERPRISE ZONE*

ABSTRACT This paper provides an analytical framework of urban enterprise zones in a context of regional development. The direct and indirect impacts of urban enterprise zones on regional economies such as job creation, urban unemployment, agricultural wage and changes in the regional economic structure are analyzed by incorporating the intermediate goods sector. The study suggests that the establishment of urban enterprise zones is a beneficial and effective policy instrument which can be used in promoting urban renewal and regional economic growth.     

AGGLOMERATION AND GROWTH WITH ENDOGENOUS EXPENDITURE SHARES*

ABSTRACT We develop a New Economic Geography and Growth model which, by using a CES utility function in the second‐stage optimization problem, allows for expenditure shares in industrial goods to be endogenously determined. The implications of our generalization are quite relevant. In particular, we obtain the following novel results: (1) two additional nonsymmetric interior steady states emerge for some intermediate values of trade costs. These steady‐states are stable if the industrial and the traditional goods are either good or very poor substitutes, while they are unstable for intermediate (yet lower than one) values of the intersectoral elasticity of substitution. In the latter case, the model displays three interior steady states—the symmetric and the core‐periphery allocations—which are stable at the same time; (2) agglomeration processes may always take place, whatever the degree of market integration, provided that the traditional and the industrial goods are sufficiently good substitutes; (3) the regional rate of growth is affected by the interregional allocation of economic activities even in the absence of localized spillovers, so that geography always matters for growth and (4) the regional rate of growth is affected by the degree of market openness: in particular, depending on whether the traditional and the industrial goods are good or poor substitutes, economic integration may be, respectively, growth‐enhancing or growth‐detrimental.     

A TEXTILE WEB

The 1830s has been singled out as the decade in which the Swedish consumer market really started to expand. In the same period, cotton textile production expanded in the Gothenburg area. A small group of immigrant Jewish families played an important role in this development. The impact of Jewish merchants on the growth of the consumer goods market is consistent with international research. Their entrepreneurial activities and renewal of textile production and trade have been emphasized. This has, however, not been paid much attention to in the Swedish research. This article discusses what impact the Jewish immigrants had on the increase of the textile market in Gothenburg and its surroundings. Through a couple of case studies and examples, we want to elucidate the significance of Jewish textile production and trade: Jewish calico printers started up mass production of fashionable fabrics in the 1820s. Furthermore, Jewish merchants spread their goods to customers in the countryside in cooperation with Swedish pedlars. The authors also discuss different reasons why the Jews played such a significant role during this particular period: The role of the legislation, the Jewish textile tradition, access to capital, networks, effective distribution, a growing consumer demand, and the geographical context.     

The direction of migration: a dynamic general equilibrium model

A two-sector dynamic general equilibrium model is developed "to investigate the direction of migration in response to differing demographic and consumption demand behavior, as well as variations in production conditions." The model, which involves a rural sector and an urban sector, incorporates "returns to scale and the natural rate of sectoral population growth as important determinants of the direction of migration, in addition to price and income elasticities, and the sectoral technical change rate with which...previous studies dealt."     

城市和区域产业发展分析的增长商测度

区域产业分析的常用测度之一是区位商,该测度用于一个地理单元（如北京市）中某种行业在全部行业中的比重与特定区域（如全中国）的同种行业比重做比较。然而,区位商是一个静态概念,不能反映一种行业的相对增长幅度或者变化速度。基于数学中"商"的概念和理论地理学中测度构造的一般方法,本文定义了一个行业增长商测度,用于比较一个子区域中某种行业的增长幅度与特定地理区域中同一行业增长幅度,数值越大表明一个子区域的某种行业相对于特定区域的同种行业的增速越快、增幅越大。进一步地,定义了一个区域增长商,用于比较某种行业的相对增幅与全部行业的平均增幅,数值越大表明某种行业在全部行业中的增速越快。采用信阳实例说明了增长商分析的应用方法。作为参照,定义、对比并讨论了区位熵和增长熵测度。增长商是一个动态的测度,简明易懂,在区域产业分析中可以与区位商功能互补,在未来的主导产业选择中可能发挥一定作用。     

What is Waste that We Should Account for it? A Look Inside Queensland's Ecological Rucksack

While most Australians are conscious of the amount of waste that they place in garbage bins, relatively few would be aware of the waste that is generated in the course of producing the goods and services that they consume. This ‘embodied waste’ makes up a large part of the ‘ecological rucksack’ of those goods and services. This study develops a waste account for Queensland, using the ecological rucksack framework to illustrate patterns of waste production in the Australian economy. It classifies wastes both by type and broad sector of production. The study finds that the Queensland economy generated more than four billion tonnes of waste during the 2006–2007 financial year. The largest waste streams are produced at the resource extraction and distribution stages, and are predominantly materials that are disposed of without being used or are lost through inefficient use. The majority of the waste is produced upstream of the point of consumption and a large part is associated with materials produced for export.     

Evidence on economies of scale in local public service provision: A meta-analysis

The standard theory of optimal jurisdictional size hinges on the existence of economies of scale in the provision of local public goods and services. However, despite its relevance for forced local amalgamation programs and related policies, the empirical evidence on the existence of such economies of scale remains elusive. The main goal of this paper is to produce an updated and comprehensive quantitative review of the existence of economies of scale in the provision of local public goods using a meta-analysis approach to systematize the wide range of empirical approaches and modeling frameworks found in the previous literature. Our analysis confirms the presence of moderately increasing to constant returns to scale in the provision of local services with no reduction in the average costs of production in the delivery of most local public services beyond a certain, modest jurisdictional size, which many studies have estimated at 10,000 residents. Also, the potential for economies of scale differs at least across three traditional services: education, water and sanitation, and garbage collection, being highest for education and lowest for garbage collection. Our analysis also offers guidelines for future empirical research in this area. Physical output and production cost data should be used, together with translog specifications for the modeling of cost functions. Last, we find evidence that the determinants of output cost elasticity include bidirectional publication bias and population density but do not include the presence or absence of modern “lean” production technologies or the (perceived) capital intensity of the sector, contrary to conventional wisdom. These findings have significant policy implications for countries considering jurisdictional consolidation programs.     

广州批发市场的销售物流网络空间研究——基于基本—非基本经济活动视角

经济基础理论是解释城市增长的经典理论之一,但实地数据的缺乏使得相关实证研究效果不佳。结合实地调查数据,从基本—非基本经济活动的视角对广州市批发市场的销售物流网络空间进行研究,得出基本经济活动与非基本经济活动的比率高达4.27,反映出城市经济活动外向性的特点;基本经济活动网络总体上形成了以广州为中心,珠三角和省外城市为重要支点的星型流动格局;非基本经济活动网络呈现出城市中部强、南北弱的货流格局。最后,采用R型和Q型因子分析方法,对销售物流网络进行流场识别,深入刻画网络的空间特征。结果显示销售物流网络中形成了一个综合活动场、五个基本活动场以及两个非基本活动场。     

Functional Relations in Distribution Channels and Location Patterns of the Dutch Wholesale Sector

Wholesale firms play an important role in the distribution of goods. They stimulate the flow of goods towards the final consumer by means of their intermediate position between the manufacturing sector and the retail sector in the distribution channel. This paper will focus on the question whether there is a link between the position of wholesale businesses in the distribution channel and their spatial choice of location. Can the position of the wholesale sector in the distribution channel be regarded as an influential location factor or not? As such, the location factor to elaborate is the location with regard to the suppliers and buyers of wholesale firms. First, the change of the spatial pattern over the long term is set out by means of a series of maps. Second, an inquiry has been set out in order to obtain an insight to the position of wholesale firms in the distribution channel. The major findings are that the sectors of repair shops, retail, manufacturing industry and building industry have the most business contacts with wholesale firms. Most business contacts are on a national level. The position of the wholesale sector in the distribution channel alone does not explain the choice of location. But the paper shows that the position is closely linked to other factors, such as accessibility, short distances and centrality.     

Gender and Household Economic Strategies in Rural Appalachia

In recent decades, many Appalachian households have experienced declining incomes due to the loss of traditional male jobs in the mining and manufacturing sectors. One response to this decline has been an increase in female employment in formal sector activities. Another response is homework, or the home-based production of goods and services for sale in the formal and informal sectors. In rural Appalachia, where formal jobs are often unavailable or inadequate to support a household, many women are engaging in homework as an economic strategy. Consequently, economic restructuring cannot be fully understood without analyzing household strategies and gender relations. This paper examines the intersection of gender, households, and economic restructuring as it relates to women's homework and employment shifts in rural Appalachia. Research for this paper entailed qualitative interviews with 50 West Virginia women who are engaged in the home-based production of goods and services. The study analyzes the variety of homework activities done by rural women, their contribution to household incomes, and the effect of these activities on gender relations and divisions of labor in the home. The research forwarded in this study advances a conceptual understanding of household economic strategies and has some practical applications for women and economic development in underdeveloped regions .     

珠江三角洲镇域乡镇工业发展及其地方经济影响研究——以顺德市北窑镇为例

本文以珠江三洲为研究区域,以顺德市北窑镇为实例,就乡镇工业发展对一个镇域地方经济产生的影响进行了研究。认为在一些乡镇工业部门的发展过程中,可以作为一个"增长极",通过前后项生产联系有效地带动地方农业和第三产业的增长,从而形成地方的多种经济活动空间集聚体。因此,地方政府在选择其经济增长极时需对其与其它经济部门的前后项生产联系作周密的考察。     

The Impact of Neutral and Nonneutral Productivity Growth on Creative Capital in a Trading Regional Economy. 区域经济贸易中中性和非中性生产力增长对创新资本的影响

We analyze a two‐sector model of a trading creative regional economy (TCRE) of the sort studied by Florida. Our analysis focuses on two cases. The first case concerns the impact of faster neutral, whereas the second case concerns the impact of faster nonneutral, productivity growth in the tradable sector on the employment of creative people in each of a TCRE's two sectors. In both cases, the sign of the percentage change in the steady‐state use of creative capital in the nontradable sector is ambiguous. In other words, the potential departure of creative people from the tradable to the nontradable sector does not depend upon whether the faster productivity growth being studied is neutral or nonneutral. In addition, because the effects of faster productivity growth in the tradable sector are not necessarily innocuous, a potential role exists for activist policy designed to countermand the possibly negative effects of faster productivity growth on either the tradable or the nontradable sector. This finding of possible “uneven development” is consistent with Florida's view that TCREs can give rise to externalities such as uneven regional development.