GOVERNMENT QUALITY AND THE ECONOMIC RETURNS OF TRANSPORT INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT IN EUROPEAN REGIONS

Transport infrastructure investment is a cornerstone of growth‐promoting strategies. However, the link between infrastructure investment and economic performance remains unclear. This may be a consequence of overlooking the role of government institutions. This paper assesses the connection between regional quality of government and the returns of different types of road infrastructure in the regions of the European Union. The results unveil the influence of regional quality of government on the economic returns of transport infrastructure. In weak institutional contexts, investment in motorways—the preferred option by governments—yields significantly lower returns than the more humble secondary road. Government institutions also affect the returns of transport maintenance investment.     

INCOME INEQUALITY,ECONOMIC GROWTH,AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF INCOME GAINS: EVIDENCE FROM THE U.S. STATES*

ABSTRACT This paper first investigates a relationship between economic growth and income inequality using U.S. states data, a state cost‐of‐living deflator, and nonlinearity. It then explores the distribution of income gains among different income groups. We find that the impact of inequality on growth is nonlinear. Lowering inequality or increasing it substantially reduces growth; thus stable inequality may be good for growth. Economic growth affects incomes of the poor, the middle‐income group, and the rich similarly with the elasticity of one. Education and labor market policies become important in promoting growth and improving income gains of the poor.     

SPATIAL PATTERNS OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE SOVIET UNION

Analysis of spatial patterns of attained educational levels is helpful in understanding the cultural geography of an area, perhaps especially in the Soviet Union, with its many ethnic groups and stated aim of providing equality of education regardless of ethnicity or sex. The proportion of the population that had completed a higher education was mapped at oblast level from 1970 census data. High rates are found in certain urban areas, Estonia and Latvia, Georgia, and certain sparsely populated areas of the Far North, Siberia, and the Far East. There are regional patterns of disparity between male and female rates of completed higher education and between rural and urban rates, despite Soviet attempts to reduce these inequalities. The distribution of Soviet higher educational institutions conforms generally to the distribution of population, although access to higher education opportunities appears to be geographically limited in some regions. (Maps by Joann L. Krupa, George Mason University.)     

MEASURES OF INCOME INEQUALITY AND SOCIAL POLARIZATION IN CANADIAN METROPOLITAN AREAS

Rising inequality and polarization of employment earnings have been clearly documented in Canada and most other developed economies in the 1990s. Following a critical discussion of the use of the Cini coefficient as a measure of inequality in geography, the level of inequality and social polarization of household incomes at the census tract level is assessed for Canada's 22 largest Census Metropolitan Areas. The distribution of household income among metropolitan census tracts is generally becoming more unequal. In addition, the proportion of households in middle-income census tracts is declining in most metropolitan centres, lending further support to arguments that Canada's middle class is in decline .
L'augmentation des intégalité et la polarisation des revenus d'emploi a été clairement documentee au Canada et dans la plupart des autres pays industrialises durant les annees 90. Á la suite d'une discussion critique sur l'utilisation du coefficient Gini comme mesure d'inégalite en geographie, on evalue le niveau d'inegalitéet la polarisation sociale des revenus menagers au niveau du secteur de recensement pour les 22 plus grandes regions metropolitaines de recensement au Canada. La distribution du revenu des menages parmi les secteurs de recensement metropolitains devient en général plus idgale. De plus, le fait que la proportion des menages parmi les secteurs de recensement d revenus moyens est d la baisse dans la plupart des regions métropolitaines soutient l'idee que la classe moyenne est en diminution.     

REGIONAL ASPECTS OF DUST STORMS IN STEPPE REGIONS OF THE EAST EUROPEAN AND WEST SIBERIAN PLAINS

Two broad regions of the USSR most susceptible to dust storms, the southern East European Plain in the European USSR and the West Siberian Plain and adjacent areas of northern Kazakhstan, are contrasted according to a number of indicators of dust storm frequency and intensity. More specifically, the two regions, although roughly similar according to overall frequency of dust storms, were found to differ in terms of their interannual variability, years of peak activity, prevailing winds associated with dust storms, seasonal frequency, duration and erosive force of individual storms, and synoptic processes contributing to dust storm formation (translated by Jay K. Mitchell, PlanEcon, Inc., Washington, DC 20005).     

STOMACHING CHANGE: FINNS,FOOD, AND BOUNDARIES IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

The relationship between boundaries, national identity, and food in the European Union is examined empirically in relation to social trust, banal nationalism, and scale. 212 articles published in 2002 in Finland's leading newspaper are examined as deep texts, addressing five juxtapositions: openness/closure; exports/imports; collectives/individuals; fear/opportunity; and defence/promotion. These articles, about food safety and changes in manufacturing and retail, reveal a concern over Finland's “national interest”; the fluidity of the sense of safety; a strong belief in the superiority of “Finnish ways”; and a need to defend “Finnishness” locally and nationally against globalization. The results show that perceptions of trustworthiness and shifting loyalties steer people's behaviour in a way that affects supranational, national, and regional entities. The study confirms the value of examining quotidian elements in the geographical study of boundaries and social trust. The results highlight the importance of considering the reproduction of nations in the geographical assessment of nationalism.     

TRENDS IN NEIGHBORHOOD INCOME INEQUALITY IN THE U.S.: 1980–2000*

ABSTRACT This paper reports evidence on the geographic pattern of income inequality, both within and between neighborhoods, across a sample of 359 U.S. metropolitan areas between 1980 and 2000. The results indicate that overall income inequality within a metro area tends to be driven by variation within neighborhoods, not between them, although we find that between‐neighborhood differences rose dramatically during the 1980s and subsided somewhat during the 1990s. While this trend is similar to what existing research has found, our findings reveal potentially important differences in the magnitudes of the changes depending on whether neighborhoods are defined by block groups or tracts.     

NEIGHBORHOOD EFFECTS AND PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT IN THE INTERGENERATIONAL TRANSMISSION OF EDUCATION*

ABSTRACT We analyze the intergenerational transmission of education focusing on the interplay between family and neighborhood effects. We develop a theoretical model suggesting that both neighborhood quality and parental effort are of importance for the education attained by children. This model proposes a mechanism explaining why and how they are of importance, distinguishing between high‐ and low‐educated parents. We then bring this model to the data using a longitudinal dataset in Britain. The available information on social housing in big cities allows us to identify the role of neighborhood in educational outcomes. We find that the better the quality of the neighborhood, the higher is the parents' involvement in their children's education. A novel finding with respect to previous U.S. studies is that family is of importance for children with highly educated parents while it is the community that is crucial for the educational achievement of children from low‐educated families.     

A PATH ANALYTIC EXPLORATION OF INCOME CLUSTERING AND LOCAL INEQUALITY

This article explores relationships among income status, economic resources, service needs, and taxing policies for municipalities and schools in 39 metropolitan suburbs of the Milwaukee SMSA. The results indicate some modest support for those who are concerned about the impact of class and income clustering, as well as government fragmentation, on inequalities regarding local tax policy. Use of path analysis to explore some of the possible alternative linkages that account for patterns of fiscal inequality among suburban municipalities shows that fiscal disparities resulting from income clustering by jurisdiction is only partially attributable to resourse and need inequities. It might also be that income status, reflecting differing service preferences, operates directly to generate inter municipal fiscal disparities.     

MOLECULAR AND ISOTOPIC DEMONSTRATION OF THE PROCESSING OF AQUATIC PRODUCTS IN NORTHERN EUROPEAN PREHISTORIC POTTERY*

A number of charred surface residues, adhering to ceramic containers, were obtained from various coastal and inland sites in north‐west Europe dating from the sixth to the fourth millennium cal bc . In order to investigate the use of these vessels and in particular to identify any marine products, the residues were subjected to carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analysis. Variation in carbon isotope ratios between different samples indicated that some vessels may have been used to process marine products. This analysis was corroborated by specific identification of aquatic products following structural and isotopic characterization of lipids extracted from selected samples.     

MODELING SPATIAL AUTOCORRELATION IN SPATIAL INTERACTION DATA: AN APPLICATION TO PATENT CITATION DATA IN THE EUROPEAN UNION*

ABSTRACT Spatial interaction models of the gravity type are widely used to model origin–destination flows. They draw attention to three types of variables to explain variation in spatial interactions across geographic space: variables that characterize an origin region of a flow, variables that characterize a destination region of a flow, and finally variables that measure the separation between origin and destination regions. This paper outlines and compares two approaches, the spatial econometric and the eigenfunction‐based spatial filtering approach, to deal with the issue of spatial autocorrelation among flow residuals. An example using patent citation data that capture knowledge flows across 112 European regions serves to illustrate the application and the comparison of the two approaches.     

INEQUALITY IN CITIES*

ABSTRACT Much of the inequality literature has focused on national inequality, but local inequality is also important. Crime rates are higher in more unequal cities; people in unequal cities are more likely to say that they are unhappy. There is a negative association between local inequality and the growth of city‐level income and population, once we control for the initial distribution of skills. High levels of mobility across cities mean that city‐level inequality should not be studied with the same analytical tools used to understand national inequality, and policy approaches need to reflect the urban context. Urban inequality reflects the choices of more and less skilled people to live together in particular areas. City‐level skill inequality can explain about one‐third of the variation in city‐level income inequality, while skill inequality is itself explained by historical schooling patterns and immigration. Local income also reflects the substantial differences in the returns to skill across, which are related to local industrial patterns.     

LOCAL PUBLIC SERVICE PROVISION AND SPATIAL INEQUALITY IN CHINESE CITIES: THE ROLE OF RESIDENTIAL INCOME SORTING AND LAND‐USE CONDITIONS

Spatial inequality refers to unequal access to local public services between high‐ and low‐income households in relation to their residential locations. We examine two hypotheses regarding the role of income sorting and land‐use conditions in shaping spatial inequality in Chinese cities, where residents have little direct influence on local public service provision. First, in the presence of resource indivisibility, travel cost, and location‐based rationing, scarcity of public‐service resources in a city makes access to public services more uneven across neighborhoods, thus exacerbating income sorting and spatial inequality in the city. Second, the exacerbating effect of resource scarcity is mitigated by land‐use conditions that limit income sorting. Estimates of willingness to pay by households of different income levels for public‐service resources across cities corroborate both the exacerbating effect of resource scarcity and the mitigating effect of inclusive land‐use conditions.     

EXCLUDING THE POOR FROM LOW INCOME HOUSING PROGRAMS: THE ROLES OF STATE AGENCIES AND USAID IN JAMAICA*

This paper investigates why low-income housing agencies in Jamaica do not accomplish their self-imposed progressive mandates to assist large numbers of poor people. To expose what produces gaps between policy and practice, the analysis focuses on how housing programs are organized, both in Jamaica's two largest state agencies and in USAID. The crucial organizational features include the housing agencies' sources of funding, reliance on the private sector, and associated motives and interests. Among the three agencies, a set of inter-related forces block low income access to housing assistance: (1) most of the policy influences of international development agencies such as USAID, (2) the pervasiveness and increased penetration of market logic into low-income housing programs, (3) state agency bureaucratization and careerism, and (4) an elitist neglect of the housing needs of the poor. Prejudices against the poor based on the belief that they do not repay housing loans are not justified by empirical evidence, much less by the fact that the programs were explicitly created to improve their housing conditions.