REGIONAL FINANCIAL SEGMENTATION IN THE UNITED STATES*

ABSTRACT. Responding to continuing discussions in this Journal regarding the importance of regional money supply and credit, a simple reduced-form regional money supply model is posited and an investigation of real regional money supplies is performed for several states around the country. Hypothesis tests are performed regarding the question of regional financial market segmentation, concluding that segmentation still exists in the United States. The empirical results also imply that interregional trade, presumably via the consequent constraint on regional banks, has at least as much effect on regional money supplies as Federal Reserve policies. These results lend further support for the assertion that regionally available money matters at the local level, and that regional analysis should continue to include regional money and credit as explanatory variables. The implications for policy makers are that: 1) national monetary policy cannot cure regional ills if the problems are manifested in regional industry mixes; and 2) some proposed banking reforms now being debated in Congress, i.e, nationwide branch banking and, particularly, industrial ownership of banks, are suspect. A healthy caution is warranted without more tests of these reforms.     

MYTHS AND MEANINGS OF IMMIGRATION AND THE METROPOLIS

A number of trends in recent immigration to Canada are discussed: the scale of contemporary movement; the transformation of national origins over the past generation; the diversity of entry classes and the lack of any singular immigrant condition; the remarkable contraction of immigrant destinations to a few large cities; the contribution of immigration to population growth and housing demand in these metropolitan areas; and the distinctive geography of the various entry classes, with higher-status arrivals disproportionately located in Vancouver. The remainder of the paper considers and rejects two common myths in the discussion of immigration: first, the myth of an immigrant underclass, and second, the myth of an immigrant overclass. Using research from Vancouver associated with the Metropolis Project, the first myth is challenged from an analysis of Census data that emphasizes the social context of immigrant life and upward mobility; the second myth is shaken by a qualitative methodology that reveals the unexpectedly fragile experience of a number of business immigrants. Certaines tendances relatives à l'immigration récente au Canada sont examinées: l'envergure des déplacements actuels, les changements dans l'origine nationale des immigrants au cours de la dernière génération, la diversité des catégories d'immigrants admis et, par conséquent, l'absence d'une seule condition pour tous, le fait que les immigrants choisissent essentiellement de s'établir dans quelques grandes villes, la croissance de la population et la demande en logement attribuables aux immigrants dans ces régions métropolitaines, et les choix géographiques distincts des immigrants selon leur catégorie à l'admission, comme c'est le cas de Vancouver, qui accueille un nombre disproportionné d'arrivants de statut élevé. Dans le reste de l'article, les résultats d'études effectuées dans le cadre du Projet Métropole permettent d'examiner puis de réfuter deux mythes communément associés à l'immigration au Canada: l'existence d'un sous-prolétariat et celle d'une classe dominante d'immigrants urbains. D'abord, l'existence d'un sous-prolétariat est rejetée suite à l'analyse de données tirées du recensement concernant le contexte social entourant les immigrants et la mobilité sociale ascendante de la plupart des nouveaux arrivants. Ensuite, une méthode qualitative met en lumière une découverte surprenante: la fragilité de l'expérience de la prétendue classe dominante – les immigrants qui travaillent dans le monde des affaires.     

THE SOVIET METROPOLITAN HIERARCHY: REGIONALIZATION AND COMPARISON WITH THE UNITED STATES

The rapid growth of Soviet cities is converging toward a hierarchy similar to that of the United States. The numbers of aggregate populations of metropolitan centers by five size categories in the two countries are compared for growth and change from 1939 to 1976. Also, nine Soviet urban regions are identified, mapped, and correlated with comparable American groupings. Growth rates of Soviet metropolises are normalizing with less recent variation as compared to the 1939–59 period, a trend that parallels the one in the United States. Also, it appears that certain functions, such as administration and transportation, are stabilizing factors in urban growth. Governmental policies of investment in underdeveloped regions, balanced growth and diversification may be partially thwarted by five-year planning goals that have stimulated supragrowth in large cities of the South and East. However, it seems likely that increasing mobility, amenities and the expansion of consumer goods and services will produce a reversal of trends toward higher growth rates in the metropolitan centers of the West. Projections to the year 2000 suggest that Soviet metropolises will have a larger share of the national population and a more uniform growth pattern than those in the United States.