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.     

COMPARATIVE GEOGRAPHY OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES AND THE USSR: AN INITIAL INVESTIGATION

Several aspects of the distribution of institutions of higher education and their graduates are compared for the Soviet Union and the United States. The concentration of institutions and students is found to be greater in the USSR. Differences in regional enrollment rates relative to the location of institutions and students may be partly explained by differences in the curriculum structure of American and Soviet institutions of higher education and the greater degree of local control over higher education in the United States. A direct relationship exists in both countries between the percentage of graduates in a region and percentage urban and per capita income. Regional inequality in the percentage of graduates in urban versus rural areas is much greater in the USSR while regional inequality in the percentage of male and female graduates was only somewhat greater in the United States. Level of urbanization, migration of students and graduates, economic opportunity and economic structure are seen as important factors helping explain regional variation in the distribution of graduates.     

CHANGES IN THE NATURE OF URBAN SPATIAL STRUCTURE IN THE UNITED STATES, 1890–2000*

ABSTRACT This paper documents the long‐run trends in the average densities and density gradients of urban areas in the United States. The data show that between 1890 and 2000 the average densities of cities and metropolitan areas rose and fell but that the density gradients of urban areas generally declined monotonically over time. While it is beyond the scope of this paper to estimate the causes of these changes, this paper argues that a complete understanding of the changes in the nature of US urban spatial structures is likely to go beyond the standard explanations based on the monocentric city model such as decreases in transportation costs and increases in household incomes.     

THE SHORT-RUN AND LONG-RUN FACTOR-MARKET CONSEQUENCES OF IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES*

ABSTRACT. This paper applies the production-theory approach to assess the impact on domestic wages and employment of immigration to the United States. Inputs are disaggregated between recent immigrants, non-recent immigrants, native workers, and capital. Census cross-sectional data for 1980 and for 123 metropolitan areas are used. Empirical estimates are reported for alternative functional forms with special attention devoted to required curvature conditions which have frequently been violated in previous work. Elasticity estimates are reported for alternative settings, including for the short run where we view domestic factor prices as given and the long run where we treat them as flexible.     

COAL MINING AND THE RESOURCE CURSE IN THE EASTERN UNITED STATES

We measure the effect of resource‐sector dependence on long‐run income growth using the natural experiment of coal mining in 409 Appalachian counties selected for homogeneity. Using a panel data set (1970–2010), we find a one standard deviation increase in resource dependence is associated with 0.5–1 percentage point long‐run and a 0.2 percentage point short‐run decline in the annual growth rate of per capita personal income. We also measure the extent to which the resource curse operates through disincentives to education, and find significant effects, but this “education channel” explains less than 15 percent of the apparent curse.