Employment Change in Occupations in Urban India: Implications for Wage Inequality

This article analyses employment and wage change patterns in India for a period spanning almost three decades, from 1983–84 to 2011–12. Using data from the National Sample Survey Organization, the study finds evidence of job polarization (employment growth in low‐ and high‐skill jobs and decline in middle‐skill jobs) in urban India during the 1990s and 2000s, and employment upgrading in the 1980s. Consistent with the literature on job polarization, the article finds a reduction in employment share in routine task intensive occupations. The author argues that this reduction is a result of both mechanization and technological upgrading within Indian industry. On the other hand, an increase in employment share in both low‐skill and high‐skill occupations is argued to be a result of growing self‐employment and informal sector employment in urban India. The wage change patterns are largely consistent with the employment change patterns. The analysis suggests that structural change in occupation is an important factor for understanding earnings inequality in India.     

An Integrated Network Equilibrium Model of Urban Location and Travel Choices

This paper develops a mixed, combined, and stochastic user-equilibrium model for urban location and travel choices with variable origin and destination costs. Different types of travelers will be considered explicitly, including: workers with fixed residences seeking jobs, workers with fixed job locations seeking residences, and workers with both fixed residences and jobs. The costs or benefits of residing or working in a zone are described by appropriate location functions. In order to reflect effects of activity congestion the location function includes variables such as the total number of persons residing in a zone and of persons working in a zone. We prove that the proposed model is equivalent to a convex optimization problem that can be solved by a convergent method of successive averages. A numerical example is presented to demonstrate the application of the model and algorithm.     

Disrupting Gentrification: From Barricades and Housing Occupations to an Insurgent Urban Subaltern History in a Southern City

Housing struggles are key to disrupting gentrification capital flows and dispossessions. Based on life histories, key informant interviews, and six years of engaged ethnography with slum activists in the Philippine capital, this paper explicates political geographies of insurgent housing practices, including community barricades and housing occupations, and marks a history of militant subaltern struggles for the right to the city. I contend that these highly-organised insurgent practices disrupt real estate capital pathways and nurture political subjectification where emancipatory spaces and socialities of care can be founded. Moreover, I intervene in the lack of attendance to the co-constitution of barricades and occupations to less visible forms of insurgent housing practices. As these are emplaced to other subaltern times and spaces, political knowledges and subjectivities developed against forced evictions and demolitions enhance anti-gentrification struggles. In tracing this militant urban history, I mark the incremental advance of subaltern housing struggles in a Southern economy highly reliant on real estate capital investments.     

Some Questions Relating to the Formation of Urban Population

In the absence of Soviet census data on processes of formation of urban population, the author analyzes the origins of industrial workers in four urban centers of Moscow Oblast. He finds that the extent of the labor-supply area depends on the availability of local labor, the character of the skills required, the traditional occupations and work skills of the population, and certain aspects of a planned economy, such as the compulsory assignment of graduates to specific jobs and areas.     

1955～1956年上海首次城市人口紧缩与粮食供应

1955~1956年,上海市经历了新中国成立以来首次大规模的城市人口疏散。为了应对日益严峻的城市人口压力,上海市动员了大批外来农民回原籍生产,并组织城市失业人口前往江西等地参加垦荒建设,期间共有50余万城市人口被疏散。从人口形势与粮食供给关系来看,城市粮食供应困难是导致这次城市人口疏散的重要原因。这一事件影响到此后的国家政策走向。     

The Creative Industries,Creative Occupations and Innovation in London

London is a global hub of the creative industries. These industries are seen as both innovative in themselves and an input in innovation processes in other sectors. Yet few studies have tested these relationships. This article investigates these issues using large-scale survey data for London. Using four measures of product and process innovation, we find no evidence that London's creative industries are more innovative than other sectors. Yet, individuals doing creative occupations in other sectors are a robust driver of product innovation in London's firms. The results suggest that occupations performed in London may be an important driver of product innovation in the city, and firms in other sectors may use creative occupations to develop new products in the capital. This finding is supportive of policies attempting to stimulate the creative industries by integrating creative occupations into firms across the whole economy.     

Provisioning an Early City: Spatial Equilibrium in the Agricultural Economy at Angkor,Cambodia

Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory - A dominant view in economic anthropology is that farmers must overcome decreasing marginal returns in the process of intensification. However, it is...     

Some Extensions of Mills's Method for Urban Population Density Gradient Estimation

This paper extends Milk's method for estimating urban population density gradients to general noncircular and asymmetrical urban forms, using Gauss-Legendre quadrature embedded in a Newton-Raphson root finding algorithm. We also examine the sensitivity of the Mills method to measurement errors in the assumptions. Several issues arising from the comparison of analytical, Mills type estimation procedures with statistical procedures are explored, particularly in light of recent work that questions the negative exponential formulation of urban density gradients. We note in particular the influence of secondary population centers as a source of estimation bias.     

Association between Population Density and The Market Areas of Towns

This paper examines the relationship between population density and town spacing in four kinds of environment. These are: (1) linear curves of demand, transport and production costs and an even population distribution; (2) nonlinear transport cost curves over space; (3) variable population density within hinterlands; and (4) variation of transport costs with population density. Previously, it has been shown that the criterion of free entry does not uniquely determine town spacing. The implications of four stronger criteria are therefore examined in this paper. These location criteria are: (a) the number of towns is maximized; (b) the number of towns in minimized, subject to all consumers' being served; (c) the towns are all owned by one profit-maximizing monopolist; and (d) the average of some consumer utility function is maximized. In cases (a), (c), and (d) spacing decreases with density; in (b) spacing is an increasing function of density. Actual data are presented on the spacing of towns in Iowa and shopping centers in Chicago which indicate that spacing and population density are not associated. These results are consistent with the notion that entry is free but are not consistent with the stronger constraints employed in this paper.     

论人口增长与自然资源环境的关系

人口增长对环境资源的压力,一是表现为对自然资源的过度开发和利用,造成自然生态系统的破坏;二是造成环境的污染。因此．人类在对自然资源的开发利用上就应该正确处理人口增长与自然资源的关系．从依赖于自然的“收入”向不耗竭其“资本”的方向转变,防止造成环境污染和生态环境恶化．以保持资源的永续利用和可持续发展。协调人口与资源、环境的关系,是中国经济社会发展的一项十分重要的艰巨任务,也是中国未来发展的必然选择。     

青海人口增长与生态资源关系研究

本文以个体生活资源基本需求为计算单位,探讨青海生态总资源的人口承载力,预测青海人口发展与生态资源的关系。根据本文给出的计算方式,青海耕地资源与人口数量关系将在5年后基本饱和,牧草地资源与牧业人口关系8年后达到饱和,森林资源与人口关系缺口较大,水资源与人口关系富足有余,但工业污水排放问题突出。面对这一现实,青海要进一步推行控制人口增长的计划生育政策;加大保持草场生态平衡的意识和力度;保护好现有森林,充分利用林业用地资源;保护好水资源。     

On the Implications of a Stationary Urban Population For the Size Distribution of Cities

The paper analyzes the limiting case for a modified Yule-Simon model of city growth. The aim of the paper is primarily to reintroduce geographers to the notion of a closed system of cities, i.e., a system of cities where the aggregate population is stationary in size. The Yule-Simon model, while successful in dealing with the observed properties of open systems, is seen to break down for closed systems. Moreover, incorporating Simon's assumptions regarding intercity migration into the model produces implausible results. Also, the traditional approach of employing entropy-maximizing procedures assumes a certain pattern of intercity migration. This pattern, while not inherently implausible, does present features which are questionable. The authors conclude that an adequate theory for closed systems has yet to be developed.     

对青海少数民族地区人口与经济协调发展的思考

本文以青海省为例,从狠抓经济发展,为少数民族人口持续发展提供可靠物质保障等六个方面系统阐述了促进青海少数民族人口与经济协调发展的对策措施。     

Cost Efficiency,Urban Patterns and Population Density When Providing Public Infrastructure: A Stochastic Frontier Approach

Relying on stochastic frontier analysis we propose a methodology to study the technological characteristics and cost efficiency levels related to the provision of public infrastructure for basic utilities. The methodology assumes a cost minimizing behaviour on the part of public officials when planning the construction of local infrastructure, which is represented by way of a flexible translog cost function. Introducing relevant definitions of scale economies, associated with larger numbers of inhabitants and dwellings, as well as economies of density, brought about by reductions in urban dispersion, we analytically determine the optimal population densities for which average cost is minimized. We illustrate our model with the water cycle sector, including water distribution, sewage collection and cleansing of wastewater, and considering data at the municipality level for the Spanish region of Castilla y León. The obtained results indicate potential cost savings in the form of decreasing average costs, as relevant scale and density economies are present, along with large inefficiency levels. Relevant policy guidelines favouring larger and denser urban sizes are drawn, as the observed cost excess is the result of a general suboptimal urban size in terms of population density, and the negative effects of dispersed settlement patterns.