LOCATIONAL FACTORS IN THE DECLINING INDUSTRIAL COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE OF THE NEW YORK URBAN REGION*

This paper investigates the locational factors that contributed to the decline of the New York urban region's industries during 1972-1975. Based on the static concept of a specialization index, a dynamic comparative advantage index is constructed. A model is then formulated to test the hypothesis that regional competitive advantage (vis-à-vis the nation) is a function of relative disparities in the change of these locational factors. Regression results show that the region's competitive advantage is influenced positively by the differential rate of change in market size, by the differential profit rate before tax, and negatively by the differential rate of change in unit labor cost and in unit energy cost. The differential tax rate does not seem to affect the region's competitive advantage. Nevertheless, a progressive corporate income tax structure tends to neutralize the beneficial effects of the economies of agglomeration and the urban attraction of the region.     

EXIT AND VOICE: STRATEGIES FOR CHANGE IN BUREAUCRATIC-LEGISLATIVE POLICYMAKING

This paper uses the case of telecommunications deregulation to construct a model of interest group behavior in bureaucratic-legislative policymaking. The model posits three common policymaking arenas: closed, open, and the transformational period between the two. Three features of these policymaking arenas are explored: (1) changes in the numbers of interested actors, leading to (2) changes in the policy-making environment and to (3) the shifting strategic interests of actors. Borrowing the concepts of “voice” and “exit” from Hirschman (1970), alternative interest group strategies are found to occur in different policymaking environments, or arenas, which in turn depend in significant part on the numbers of interested actors involved. Voice works when interests are or appear to be relatively complementary. Exit is used when voice fails, that is, in permeable arenas of many actors with conflicting interests.     

Empire and ethnicity†

ABSTRACT. Historians and social scientists have typically assumed a conflictual or exploitative relationship between empire and ethnicity. On the one hand, empire might be seen (as perhaps Ernest Gellner saw it in Nations and Nationalism) as a superstructure of coercion to which a group of ethnic units were subject. On the other (according to an influential view), empire fabricated ethnicities (tribes or castes) to divide and rule. This article suggests that both of these views are too crude. In the British case at least (and in the modern history of empire, no generalisation that excludes the British case has much value), ‘imperial ethnicity’ was a much more subtle phenomenon. It existed ‘at home’ as one element in a more complex identity. It was a powerful force in British settler societies, where an indigenous identity could not be imagined. And, perhaps surprisingly, it was deeply attractive to some colonial elites in Asia and Africa – at least for a time.     

RESEARCH STRATEGIES FOR EVALUATING THE ADOPTION POTENTIAL OF ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES*

The completely novel nature of some energy technology innovations sometimes makes prospective economic analysis of adoption potential neither desirable nor feasible. Three noneconomic models evaluating adoption potential are examined for technological innovations whose diffusion potential is not yet known. Applications of the general models are suggested with specific references to development of solar total energy systems.