THE SOCIAL BENEFITS OF URBAN CULTURAL AMENITIES*

ABSTRACT. This paper uses a two-stage hedonic wage approach to derive the benefits from improvement of five cultural amenities. It is argued that the hedonic approach permits valuation of both private and local public aspects of cultural goods since access to the amenity is an essential input in the production of the final service flow. Empirical estimates of willingness to pay suggest price and income elasticities are approximately unity. Lower-bound estimates of marginal benefits for a representative city range from $0.85 million for an additional theater to $57.9 million for an additional zoo facility.     

The Spatial Structuring of Central Places

The spatial structuring of “classical” central place systems is the primary concern of this research. Emphasizing the development of such systems from basic spatial relations between centers and hinterland locations (rather than as a result of an underlying geometry of regions), this paper takes an optimization approach to the siting of central places in a single-good system. The objective function is shown to be one that maximizes both market coverage of demand and market overlap. Access to this objective is given through the natural slack covering model.     

Fitting Constrained Poisson Regression Models to Interurban Migration Flows

This paper demonstrates the effects of fitting singly and doubly constrained spatial interaction models using the Poisson regression approach. A large data set containing migration flows between labor market areas in Great Britain in 1970–71 is used. The results of fitting unconstrained, singly constrained, and doubly constrained models are compared with respect to goodness of fit and the interpretability of parameter estimates. The addition of other explanatory variables to the model is also explored.     

ANALYSIS OF THEORETICAL,METHODOLOGICAL AND EMPIRICAL RESEARCH IN THE JOURNAL OF REGIONAL SCIENCE*

ABSTRACT. This paper examines the impacts of JRS articles in the areas of theory, methods and empirical analysis, as represented by subsequent citations reported in the Social Sciences Citation Index. A model relating the mix of theoretical, methodological and empirical research published in the JRS to subsequent citations is estimated. The time distribution of theoretical and empirical citations also indicates that the knowledge diffusion process in these two areas may be segmented.     

WIPING THE BLOOD OFF ABORIGINALITY: THE POLITICS OF ABORIGINAL EMBODIMENT IN CONTEMPORARY INTELLECTUAL DEBATE

I had to meet the white man's eyes. An unfamiliar weight burdened me. In the white world the man of colour encounters difficulties in the development of his bodily schemes … I was battered down by tom-toms, cannibalism, intellectual deficiency, fetishism, racial defects … I took myself off far from my own presence … What else could it be for me but an amputation, an excision, a haemorrhage that splattered my whole body with black blood? (Fanon 1968)     

ECONOMETRIC MODELING OF INTERREGIONAL LABOR MARKET LINKAGES*

ABSTRACT. This paper presents a statistical procedure for empirically establishing linkages between regional economies. Using Granger's definition of causality and the final prediction error technique for lag-length specification suggested by Hsiao, a linked, multiregional employment model is developed. The forecast performance of the linked model is compared to models which do not include interregional linkages. It is shown that forecast error is reduced by taking into account employment interrelationships between regions.