Elastic labor supply and agglomeration

This study analyzes the interplay between the agglomeration of economic activities and interregional differences in working hours, which are typically longer in large cities, as they are normally more developed than small cities. For this purpose, we develop a two‐region model with endogenous labor supply. Although we assume a symmetric distribution of immobile workers, the symmetric equilibrium breaks in the sense that firms may agglomerate when trade costs are intermediate and labor supply is elastic. We also show that the price index is always lower, while labor supply, per capita income, real wages, and welfare are always higher in the more agglomerated region.     

Working women in the city and urban wage growth in the United States

Although the female labor force participation rate of women has been steadily rising in the United States, there is substantial variation across cities. Previous cross‐county studies find that gender inequality in employment reduces economic efficiency hindering growth. This result is examined in a regional context, across metropolitan areas in the United States. Throughout multiple model formulations including instrumental variables approaches, higher initial female labor force participation rates are positively related to subsequent wage growth in metropolitan areas between 1980 and 2010. Specifically, every 10 percent increase in female labor force participation rates is associated with an increase in real wages of nearly 5 percent.     

THE SOURCES OF URBAN DEVELOPMENT: WAGES,HOUSING, AND AMENITY GAPS ACROSS AMERICAN CITIES*

ABSTRACT This paper asks whether worker utility levels—composed of wages, rents, and amenities—are being equalized among American cities. Using microdata on U.S. urban workers in 1980 and 2000, little evidence of equalization is found. Comparable workers earn higher real wages in large cities, where amenities are also concentrated. Moreover, population growth between 1980 and 2000 has not been significantly different in low‐ and high‐utility cities, suggesting that other forces are at work shaping the sorting processes that match workers and firms. We outline an alternative view of the drivers of change in the American urban system, and urban development more generally, by applying theory from economic geography.     

Differences in hi‐tech immigrant earnings and wages across Canadian cities

This paper examines the relative earnings and wages of immigrants working in the hi‐tech sector in Canada's cities. Between 1990 and 2000, a sizeable earnings advantage of immigrants over nonimmigrants employed in the hi‐tech sector evaporated, and this change was most noticeable in the largest cities. We use population census microdata to examine the geographical dimensions of this shift. After controlling for individual characteristics, we show that immigrants in the largest and tech‐intensive cities earn significantly less relative to nonimmigrants than those in midsized and smaller cities. We also present results comparing the hi‐tech immigrant wage and earnings gap for the five largest Canadian cities. The findings are consistent with the notion that geographic differences are an important component of the overall earnings gap between immigrants and nonimmigrants.     

Flood Disasters and Agricultural Wages in Bangladesh

This article examines the effects of abnormal floods on agricultural wages in Bangladesh. Drawing upon the district‐wise monthly real wage data for the period 1979–2000, it shows that wages decline sharply in the regions that are severely inundated for a long period of time. Wages may remain depressed in these regions even in the post‐flood months. However, wages increase in the flood months in the regions that remain submerged for short durations. The article examines the district‐wise crop yield data to explain these results in terms of the impact of flood on agricultural productivity, and therefore the demand for labour.     

Undocumented Immigration and Host‐Country Welfare: Competition Across Segmented Labor Markets*

Abstract. In this paper's model, undocumented workers are endogenously sorted into secondary labor markets. When further illegal immigration occurs, some new migrants follow their fellows into already migrant‐dominated jobs, lowering migrant wages and raising real incomes of host‐country labor and capital. Some submarkets switch from employing legal workers to employing migrants, lowering demand for and wages of legal workers. Undocumented immigration is Pareto‐improving when enforcement reserves primary‐sector jobs for legal workers. Pareto‐dominant policies target the number of migrant‐dominated submarkets, not the number of migrants. This appears consistent with U.S. enforcement practices. The effects of deportations, employer sanctions, and amnesties are explored.     

The Location Choice of Employment‐based Immigrants among U.S. Metro Areas*

Abstract. This paper examines the initial location choice of legal employment‐based immigrants to the United States using Immigration and Naturalization Service data on individual immigrants, as well as economic, demographic, and social data to characterize the 298 metropolitan areas we define as the universal choice set. Focusing on interactions between place characteristics and immigrant characteristics, we provide multinomial logit model estimates for the location choices of about 38,000 employment‐based immigrants to the United States in 1995, focusing on the top 10 source countries. We find that, as groups, immigrants from nearly all countries are attracted to large cities with superior climates, and to cities with relatively well‐educated adults and high wages. We also find evidence that employment‐based immigrants tend to choose cities where there are relatively few immigrants of nationalities other than their own. However, when we introduce interaction terms to account for the sociodemographic characteristics of the individual immigrants, we find that the estimated effects of location destination factors can reverse as one takes account of the age, gender, marital status, and previous occupation of the immigrants.     

CITIES,WAGES, AND THE URBAN HIERARCHY

In this paper, we estimate the size of the wage premium necessary to compensate for remoteness incurred by workers compared to the city size productivity effects. We construct five urban hierarchy tiers for cities in Chile based on their level of remoteness from the urban system. We then contrast the effect generated by these variables on worker wages. We report a positive gradient of wages the higher the size of the urban tier and a loss in wages that can reach 35 percent for more remote cities.     

Opportunities and competition in thick labor markets: Evidence from plant closures

Since Marshall (1890), it has been widely held in urban economic theory that cities insure workers against the risk of unemployment by offering a larger pool of potential jobs. Using a large administrative panel data set on workers displaced as a result of plant closures, we examine whether positive effects from a higher urban job density are offset by more intense competition between workers. When controlling for the sorting of workers between regions, we find robust evidence that the effect of job competition on unemployment duration exceeds that of job opportunities in absolute value. Our results put the idea of urban risk-sharing into perspective and provide an explanation for observed longer unemployment durations in cities.     

Consumer city

Urban economics has traditionally viewed cities as having advantagesin production and disadvantages in consumption. We argue thatthe role of urban density in facilitating consumption is extremelyimportant and understudied. As firms become more mobile, thesuccess of cities hinges more and more on cities' role as centresof consumption. Empirically, we find that high amenity citieshave grown faster than low amenity cities. Urban rents havegone up faster than urban wages, suggesting that the demandfor living in cities has risen for reasons beyond rising wages.The rise of reverse commuting suggests the same consumer cityphenomena.l     

高速铁路城市联系职能研究——基于京广高铁调研数据的实证

审视与评估现实中高速铁路的城市联系职能,是研究高铁发展与城市发展之间相互作用关系的基础。基于对京广高速铁路沿线14个城市进行的实地调研和近3000份调查问卷,分析了高铁旅客在城市间的流动方向及特征,发现高铁主要承担着中心城市与普通城市之间、中心城市与中心城市之间的客流联系。通过对不同城市间客流强度影响因素的计量分析,发现高铁旅客在省内城市间的流动强度普遍高于省外流动强度,去往中心城市的客流强度也大于去往普通城市的,且两个城市间的高铁旅客数量与两个城市的经济水平正相关。高铁加强了中心城市与普通城市之间的客流联系,但会带来中心城市进一步的极化发展还是使中心城市更好地带动普通城市的发展,是值得进一步探讨的问题。     

Selling surf and turf: throwntogetherness and real estate advertising on the suburbanising east Australian coastline

New residential development is transforming coastal places in Australia. This paper untangles perceptions of coastal change by analysing representations of nature and lifestyles in marketing new residential developments on the New South Wales (NSW) coastline. We focus specifically on master-planned estates (MPEs). In this context MPEs are primarily a consequence of housing affordability and supply dilemmas in capital cities. Their form and character is derided as ‘suburbanisation by the sea’: vandalism of ‘authentic’ coastal cultures. We draw on Massey’s theorisation of place as ‘event’ and a relational politics termed ‘throwntogetherness’ to understand the role of real estate advertising in blending coastal places and MPEs. Our insights are drawn from visits to 19 MPEs for sale on the NSW coast, and discourse analysis of 76 advertisements collected in situ (billboards, signs, banners and brochures). Advertising narratives for new MPEs both sustain and contradict the idea of coastal suburbanisation: portraying permanent settlement by young families as a culture shift and implicating ‘sea change’ configurations of coastal places to do so. This makes lifestyle expectations with coastal nature perplexing. In the throwntogetherness of contemporary coastlines, marked by landscape change and development pressures, real estate advertisements are pivotal in establishing, grounding and guiding change.     

SOMETIMES CLOSE IS GOOD ENOUGH: THE VALUE OF NEARBY ENVIRONMENTAL AMENITIES*

ABSTRACT An extensive empirical literature exists, showing that variations in region‐specific amenities can account for persistent differences in real wages across regions. However, this literature has considered only amenities in the same location as the household. This paper argues that environmental amenities at some distance from but accessible to urban areas may lead to negative compensating wage differentials. We use a general equilibrium framework and data from the 1995 Current Population Survey to calculate implicit amenity prices based on measures of distance to environmental amenities. Our results suggest that amenities outside the metropolitan area do generate compensating wage differentials, as workers are willing to accept lower wages to live in accessible proximity to “nice” places. This implies that these places provide a positive externality to those communities that find them accessible. The estimated effects are quantitatively important, suggesting that these externalities should be taken into account in policy making.     

我国沿海港口港城关系协同发展与驱动机制研究

近年来,随着我国港口资源整合、港区功能调整和港口城市的转型升级,沿海港口与所在城市的关系发展面临新的变化和挑战。本文以我国沿海港口为例,结合定量分析与定性讨论,聚焦我国沿海港口港城关系问题,剖析港城关系的演变及驱动机制。研究发现：我国大部分沿海港口已进入极度协调发展阶段,但发展趋势逐渐放缓,区域分化特征显著,港城协同度差距呈现再扩大的发展趋势。在研究期间,我国城市驱动型港口城市数量显著增加,港口驱动型和港城互驱型港口城市数量减少。建议通过政府政策引导、港产城融合发展和港口转型升级等方式,不断提升我国沿海地区港城关系整体协调发展水平,为新时期我国沿海港口与所在城市的高质量发展提供重要支撑。     

AGGLOMERATION EFFECTS IN COLOMBIA

I estimate an elasticity of wages with respect to city population of about 5 percent for Colombian cities. This finding is robust to a number of econometric concerns. The second main finding is a negative effect of market access on wages. Third main finding regards stronger agglomeration effects in the informal sector. In turn, this explains a range of other negative findings, including only weak evidence in favor of human capital externalities, no evidence of a complementarity between cities and skills, and an absence of learning effects. I do not find measurable effects of roads or amenities on wages either.     

福建省城镇流动人口的空间分异格局——基于六普数据的分析

文章基于第六次人口普查数据,运用数理统计、空间自相关和GIS等方法,分析了福建省城镇流动人口的空间分异格局。研究发现,福建省城镇流动人口在沿海多而密集、以区外流动为主,开放性和活跃性明显,而在内陆则少而稀疏、以区内流动为主,封闭性和粘滞性突出,但沿海和内陆均存在内部异质性;大城市流动人口密集且来源地广泛、对人口城镇化影响大,中等城市流动人口规模较小,小城镇对区内流动人口有一定吸纳能力。文章还探讨了城镇流动人口空间分异特征的驱动机制、对区域社会经济发展和城镇化的影响,并提出相关政策建议。     

中国城市职能结构的特征研究

本文利用1999年的城市数据库和纳尔逊分类方法分析了我国城市职能的基本特征,对各行业的就业频率分布曲线进行了分析,并比较了不同城市规模、不同地域城市职能差异,认为我国城市工业职能较强,就业比重较大;城市工业专业分工程度较低;我国城市职能随城市规模变化出现一定变化规律,建筑业比重随城市规模的增大而减小,科教文卫等服务业随着规模的增大而增大;我国城市职能结构表现在空间上的差异是东部城市工业职能较强,西部城市行政、科教等服务业就业比重较高。     

The changing geography of the Canadian manufacturing sector in metropolitan and rural regions, 1976–1997

This paper documents the changing geography of the Canadian manufacturing sector over a 22‐year period (1976–1997). It does so by looking at the shifts in employment and differences in production worker wages across different levels of the rural/urban hierarchy—central cities, adjacent suburbs, medium and small cities and rural areas. The analysis demonstrates that the most dramatic shifts in manufacturing employment were from the central cities of large metropolitan regions to their suburbs. Paralleling trends in the United States, rural regions of Canada have increased their share of manufacturing employment. Rising rural employment shares were due to declining employment shares of small cities and, to a lesser degree, large urban regions. Increasing rural employment was particularly prominent in Quebec, where employment shifted away from the Montreal region. The changing fortunes of rural and urban areas were not the result of across‐the‐board shifts in manufacturing employment, but were the net outcome of differing locational patterns across industries. In contrast to the situation in the United States, wages in Canada do not consistently decline, moving down the rural/urban hierarchy from the largest cities to the most rural parts of the country. Only after controlling for the types of manufacturing industries found in rural and urban regions is it apparent that wages decline with the size of place .     

‘We’re moving out’: Youth Out‐Migration Intentions in Coastal Non‐Metropolitan New South Wales

This article discusses youth out‐migration on the non‐metropolitan New South Wales Eastern Seaboard. High levels of in‐migration and counter‐urbanisation, typical of many coastal non‐metropolitan towns in NSW, mask the out‐migration of youth. There are relatively few 15–24 year olds in the coastal communities of non‐metropolitan New South Wales, because many youths out‐migrate to larger centres, for a range of reasons. Out‐migration also demarcates a life transition away from school life, adolescence and the parental home. This paper draws from research with senior high school students in one coastal town – Coffs Harbour – where such trends have been particularly apparent. It examines the propensity for youth out‐migration and discusses how young people articulate their migration intentions. Young people's perceptions of their current and future prospects feature prominently in their discourses about intended migration, although this research also demonstrates that the life courses of regional youth are unorthodox and diverse in nature.     

Quantitative Studies of National Socialism: A Quantum: Conference Report

The authors present and compare new time series for calculating the real value of Swiss prices over the past five centuries. They analyze three different modes of price deflation using wages, consumer price indices (CPIs), and the gross domestic product (GDP), and assess the merits and limitations of each approach. The authors then examine how time series that cover long periods of time are made using Switzerland as a case study and introduce an original CPI for the years 1501-2006. The authors conclude by contrasting the different time series and proposing rough guidelines about their use.