EMPLOYMENT CYCLES AND PROCESS INNOVATION IN REGIONAL STRUCTURAL CHANGE*

Regional employment cycles, the demand for skilled and unskilled labor, and process innovations are analyzed in the context of an industry product cycle. Employment fluctuations caused by endogenous technological change lead to spatial decentralization of production facilities through capital relocation and spatial divisions of labor. A capital investment profile suggested by the product cycle scenario is related to employment cycles. A price system for output is outlined in terms of wages and profits over the product cycle.     

THE STRUCTURE OF METROPOLITAN FACTOR AND PRODUCT MARKETS*

ABSTRACT. In this study we use a translog profit function and iterate seemingly unrelated regressions to estimate a system of factor demand and output supply functions for metropolitan economies. Our sample includes all metropolitan areas defined by the Census in 1977 for the period 1962 to 1982. Estimation shows that all price elasticities are elastic and that the signs are as expected. These results hold true for virtually all model specifications. Our findings indicate that federal, state, and local tax policies have significant impacts on factor demand and output supply. Public investment plays a positive and significant, but small, role in increasing output and in complementing other factors, although this influence has declined over time. Additionally, capital provided by the private sector has a substantially larger impact on output and employment than does capital provided by the public sector.     

非正规就业视角下的制造业空间重构——基于2000、2010年地级及以上城市的实证研究

我国制造业的空间重构不仅表现为整体格局和职能强度的变化,更体现在内部构成要素的分化上。我国从事制造业的正规与非正规从业人员比例由2000年的41.7:58.3转变为2010年的29.3:70.7。两者的空间结构差异明显,非正规就业密度由沿海向内陆逐步递减,而正规就业在内陆省会城市存在明显高地。本文分析了制造业重构过程中的六类城市及其分布变化。研究表明,全球化进程和就业门槛显著促进了非正规就业增长;非正规就业也与经济发展存在共生关系,但与制度环境并无显著关联;此外廉价劳动力、市场可达性与规模经济对制造业的区位选择具有显著影响。     

Spillover Effects of Welfare Reforms in State Labor Markets

This paper estimates the effects of welfare reforms on a state's employment and wage rates. Welfare reforms include: pushing welfare recipients into the labor force, financial incentives to recipients for working, wage subsidies to employers of recipients, and community service jobs for recipients. The effects of these policies are analyzed using a newly estimated model of state labor markets. Simulations show that jobs found by welfare reform participants cause sizable displacement effects for nonparticipants. Displacement effects of labor supply policies are highest when a state's unemployment is high, whereas displacement effects of labor demand policies are highest when a state's unemployment is low.     

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.     

引进外资对中国工业化和经济结构变化的影响

本文从中国经济增长两个阶段的不同特点入手,分析了90年代中期以后中国大量引进外资的深层次原因。采用制造业增加值占GDP的比重作为衡量中国工业化进展程度的指标对整个90年代中国工业化的进程进行了实证分析,结果发现,中国的工业化从90年代中期以来实际上长期处于低速徘徊的阶段。大量引进外资导致中国工业化过程中存在两个明显的"替代效应",一是"外资替代效应",二是"弱质替代强质"现象。两个"替代效应"对中国工业化和经济结构变化的影响是极为深刻的。     

基于普查单位的北京市就业中心识别与功能定位

运用第二次经济普查单位地理编码数据分析了北京市就业密度变化特征,并对就业中心功能进行了分析。北京市就业中心整体上仍呈现单中心格局特征,多中心格局虽有显现但并不明显。本文共识别出中关村片区、金融街片区和CDB片区等三个就业中心片区和上地、首都机场、曙光街道等十二个就业次中心。依据专业行业就业人口数量指标、区位熵指标,就业人口占同行业比例指标,将北京市就业中心分为7种类型,即大型企业集聚型就业中心、临空经济集聚型就业中心、制造业集聚型就业中心、批发零售集聚型就业中心、商务商业集聚型就业中心、金融集聚型就业中心、科研教育集聚型就业中心。传统就业中心因集聚效益、集群效应和锁定效应使范围进一步扩大,密度显著提高,中心功能也日益复杂,细分行业分化明显。     

PUBLIC CAPITAL, REGIONAL OUTPUT, AND DEVELOPMENT: SOME EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE

ABSTRACT The goal of our paper is to provide direct estimates of the association between public capital and regional output. This is made possible by the construction of a data series which measures public capital at the state level.
The relation between public capital and other productive factors is tested using a translog production function. Our results show that labor and public capital are complementary inputs, and that public capital exhibited diminishing returns. We also consider restrictions on the translog formulation. Linear homogeneity is rejected in all cases, and the Cobb-Douglas specification is rejected for the manufacturing and all sectors categories.     

A QUARTERLY ECONOMETRIC MODEL OF FACTOR DEMANDS IN REGIONAL MANUFACTURING

This paper presents a model of demand for factor inputs in regional manufacturing industry. Demands for labor and capital are distinguished from demands for factor services using a generalization of the disequilibrium adjustment framework of Nadiri and Rosen. The generalization allows for a richer variety of responses to external shocks and involves the distinction between systematic and error dynamics.
The model is estimated for the period 1963:I-1980:I using data from the Cincinnati SMSA and appropriate econometric techniques. Substantial attention is paid to the dynamic response of the estimated equations.     

STATE, CLASS AND INTERNATIONAL CAPITAL 2: THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE BRASILIAN STEEL INDUSTRY

This paper examines the forces underlying the development and form of the Brasilian steel industry since the 1930s. Foreign direct investment has been limited by Brasilian nationalist policies and by higher costs of steel production, but large scale, integrated plants could not be built by private capital due to insufficient resources. Thus the Brasilian steel industry combines large scale state owned plants (financed by foreign capital) and smaller scale privately owned plants. The operations of the plants are coordinated to reduce market uncertainty, permit the steel sector to advocate its own expansion plans, and delimit the spheres of public and private capital while excluding foreign commodity and productive capital. Even so, in the 1980s the steel industry in Brasil has faced a crisis of declining local demand, prompting a rapid expansion of exports.     

Economic growth and restructuring in Canada's heartland and hinterland: From shift‐share to multifactor partitioning

The geography of the Canadian economy has long been dominated by heartland‐hinterland contrasts, with manufacturing identified as the dominant function of most heartland cities in analyses of the 1961 and 1971 census data. However, the proportion of employment in manufacturing has been declining in the heartland provinces of Ontario and Quebec over the past fifty years and some geographers argue that the heartland‐hinterland dimension of the regional economy is being overridden by city‐regions that are integrated into global networks of production and trade. The heartland‐hinterland trends are examined using multifactor partitioning (MFP), an advanced shift‐share methodology, for the period of 2001–2006. This is the first intercensal period in which Canadian business has faced the full impact of the removal of North American tariff protection and the increased globalization of the Canadian economy. The data covers employment by eighteen industry sectors for the seventy‐three economic regions defined by Statistics Canada. MFP measures the region and industry‐mix effects, which are interpreted as in the traditional shift‐share model (though they are derived more accurately) and, in addition, an interaction effect. The results demonstrate that the broad heartland‐hinterland differences in the distribution of population and employment growth are increasing not decreasing and that the hinterland is in fact falling further behind the heartland in employment growth. However the Calgary‐Edmonton corridor and the Lower Mainland of British Columbia are emerging as a western heartland. The population size of cities does affect their rates of employment growth, but so too does their location: the growth of heartland cities is outpacing those in the hinterland. The Appendix provides the equations for two‐variable multifactor partitioning.     

资源、环境约束与制造业增长模式转变

本文运用非参数的环境生产前沿方法,通过构建产出端既包括行业产出增长,又包括污染物排放的方向性环境技术效率评价模型,以规模以上制造业28个行业为研究对象,采用线性规划求解方法,研究资源环境约束下制造业的增长模式,探讨制造业增长模式转变的可行性。认为,中国制造业环境技术效率提高明显;考察期内,烟草制品业、皮革毛皮羽毛(绒)及其制品业、通信设备计算机及其他电子设备制造业三个行业环境技术均达到了效率前沿面;2003年成为制造业和轻、重工业环境技术效率发生变化的转折点。在现有技术下,转变制造业高能耗、高污染的粗放型增长模式,使制造业向"低投入-高产出-低排放"的集约型增长模式转变具有一定的可行性。     

The Effects of Regional Capital Subsidies on Productivity Growth: A Case Study of the Greek Food and Beverage Manufacturing Industry*

Abstract. Capital subsidies form a major instrument of industrial and regional policy for economically developed countries all over the world, including many European Union and Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries. Research findings have challenged the effectiveness of capital subsidies in assisting productivity growth. This paper treats capital subsidies as a new input and estimates a stochastic production frontier that is not bound by the restrictions imposed by approaches used in previous research works. It is shown that capital subsidies affect total factor productivity growth through technical change and not through scale efficiency, while the disadvantaged location of firms affects technical efficiency.     

The Political Economy of State Subsidies in Europe

In this article, I examine the reasons behind public aid to industry in 12 European countries during the period 199–93. 1 build a model based on societal demands for producer subsidies and the wiliingness and constraints of national governments to provide them. The main contribution of this study is the attention to the institutional context within which demand for and supply of public policy takes place. Institutions not only help shape actor preferences to extract "rents" but also fundamentally condition the level and distribution of subsidies.     

Geographic concentrations in Turkey's manufacturing industry: identifying regional highpoint clusters1

The theory of economic development based on industry clusters emphasizes the importance of co-location of firms or industries with potential to share technical information and knowledge transfer. The paper identifies industry cluster templates in Turkey using the 1996 Turkish input/output table. Engineering and textile clusters are the largest ones with respect to the number of establishments and employment. Majority of manufacturing clusters are located in ?stanbul, ?zmir, Ankara/K?r?kkale and Çukurova districts. The study points out the importance of newly developing centres near the periphery of Ankara and several production centres in Anatolia.     

REPLY TO SUBSIDIES, ADDITIONALITY AND FINANCIAL CONSTRAINTS

ABSTRACT. In Wren (1994) I find that industrial subsidies have significantly greater employment effects in small firms, and interpret this as arising from the poorer access that these firms have to private funds. Holden and Swales (1996) criticize this interpretation, arguing that financial constraints typically limit the effectiveness of subsidies. In this paper I show that their results arise from the particular properties of the homogeneous production function. More generally, I show that the effectiveness of assistance increases with the marginal cost of private funds and is greater in those firms facing financial constraints. As such, differential access to private funds can explain the greater effectiveness of assistance found in small firms.     

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.     

INTERREGIONAL KNOWLEDGE SPILLOVERS AND OCCUPATIONAL CHOICE IN A MODEL OF FREE TRADE AND ENDOGENOUS GROWTH*

ABSTRACT A two region model of horizontal innovation with free trade and occupational choice is used to examine the spatial patterns of innovation and manufacturing industry in interior and core‐periphery long‐run equilibria. The inclusion of skill heterogeneity among workers creates a tension between stabilizing productivity effects that coincide with reallocations of workers across industries, and destabilizing productivity effects that arise with localized stocks of knowledge capital. We find that while core‐periphery equilibria are always saddlepath stable, interior equilibria are saddlepath stable when knowledge spillovers exceed a threshold level but are unstable otherwise. In addition, incorporating skill heterogeneity into the model allows for interior equilibria with asymmetric shares for innovation and industry.     

The effects of public capital on private sector performance in Turkish regional manufacturing industries1

This article investigates the impact of public capital formation on private manufacturing sector performance in the seven geographical regions of Turkey and in aggregate. A vector autoregression (VAR) model has been employed to estimate long run accumulated elasticities of private sector variables with respect to public capital for the time period 1980–2000. The results show that public capital affects private output positively in aggregate and in all regions apart from the Black Sea and Mediterranean regions. The results also reveal that only in the Marmara region, the impact is positive both on input and output. The public capital crowds in private sector inputs in some regions.     

The determinants of county growth

The determinants of population and employment growth were explored from a broader interregional (as opposed to intraregional) perspective. Data for the 1970s, at the county level of disaggregation, were used to analyze the effects of economic, demographic, and climatic variables on population and employment growth in a simultaneous equation framework. The use of data from the more than 3000 US counties provides a considerably larger testing ground than those used in previous research. The point of departure was a conventional, general equilibrium model in which both households and producers are geographically mobile. The study's dependent variables refer to population, total, and manufacturing employment densities. Family income had a powerful effect in stimulating both population and employment density. A 10% increase in family income led to a 7.9% increase in total and a 9.2% increase in manufacturing employment densities. High family income must stand for high demand, and thus, firms are drawn to an area. High family income also drew households to an area. A 10% increase in family income led to a 5.5% increase in population density. High family income must represent "good" neighborhoods for households. High family income was positively correlated with population and employment density, but in other recent studies either a negative and significant relationship or an insignificant relationship were reported. Local taxes consist of the receipts of county government and those of municipalities, townships, school districts, and special districts within the county. The elasticities reported in Table 4 suggest that a 10% increase in such taxes resulted in about a 0.072% reduction in county population density during the decade. The Industrial Revenue Bonds (IRBs) and the percent of the labor force that is unionized are 2 potential policy instruments at the state level. The study results suggest that IRBs have not stimulated either manufacturing or total employment, and the coefficients were statistically insignificant in the structural equations. The elasticities imply that a 10% increase in percent union reduces total employment by 0.42% and manufacturing employment by 0.18%. The effect on population was tiny. Further, while not intended, the interstate highway program may have been a significant redistributor of population and employment but has not caused immigration of people and jobs from central cities.