CONVERGENCE AND THE U.S. STATES: A TIME-SERIES ANALYSIS*

ABSTRACT. After decades of apparent convergence, state and regional per capita earnings diverged between 1978 and 1988. A central tenet of the convergence hypothesis is that shocks to relative state and regional earnings, such as those of the 1978 to 1988 period, are transitory. We find evidence for convergence for the U.S. states and regions during the 1929 to 1990 period after allowing for a break in the rate at which the various states and regions were converging in 1946. An important finding of this research is that the US. states and regions achieved per capita earnings convergence by 1946.     

COMPUTER CARTOGRAPHY IN HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHICAL RESEARCH

The potential value of maps in historical geographical research has increased as a result of clearer understanding of the nature of maps and new developments in computer cartography. The computer has made possible the rapid transformation of appropriately organized sets of data into maps of many different types. The manipulation of such data sets replaces many time-consuming drafting operations of conventional cartography and adds new flexibility to mapping operations. Maps of the early colonial settlement of the Cape Colony demonstrate the flexibility and value of computer cartography in historical geographical research.
La valeur potentielle des cartes pour la recherche en géographie historique a connu un essor considérable suite à une meilleure connaissance de la nature des cartes et les développements récents dans la cartographie automatisée. L'ordinateur a rendu possible la transformation rapide des ensembles de données organisés d'une facon appropriée en cartes de divers types. La manipulation de tels ensembles de données remplace un grand nombre d'opérations manuelles de la cartographie traditionnelle qui ont demandé beaucoup de temps, et elle a ajouté une nouvelle flexibilité aux opérations de cartographie. Des cartes du peuplement au début de l'époque coloniale du Cap démontrent la flexibilité et la valeur de la cartographie automatisée pour la recherche en géographie historique.     

THE IDEALIST DISPUTE IN ANGLO-AMERICAN GEOGRAPHY: A COMMENT

Curry has raised some new and important issues concerning the value of the idealist philosophy in geography, and his paper makes a significant contribution to a clearer understanding of this approach. Although in his final judgment Curry comes down hard on my position, declaring it to be 'fundamentally misguided,' his actual view of idealism is more ambivalent and not nearly as clear-cut as the words 'fundamentally misguided' might suggest. This is revealed by his defence of the position in the earlier part of the paper and his mild treatment of Collingwood, on whose book The Idea of History much of my own position is based.¹ There are also parts of Curry's paper that would seem compatible with idealism as I understand it, and with some clarifications and modifications to both our positions a basis of broad agreement between us would appear to exist.     

External validity of hedonic price estimates: Heterogeneity in the price discount associated with having Black and Hispanic neighbors

We examined the hedonic price of neighborhood racial composition across a sample of 180 US housing markets and compared heterogeneity in results. Statistically significant estimated price elasticities calculated at the mean ranged from ?0.61 to 0.2 and ?0.26 to 0.21, for increases in Black and Hispanic neighborhood proportion, respectively. Hedonic price discounts for Black neighborhoods were greater when land supply was more inelastic, when the land value share of the housing cost was greater, and in the southern portion of the United States. Hedonic price discounts associated with Hispanic neighborhoods exhibited no patterns relative to geography or housing supply factors.     

The oldest human traces north of the Carpathians (Kończyce Wielkie 4, Poland)

In the area of the Kończyce Wielkie quarry (middle-southern Poland), the Quaternary deposits of different genesis crop out. The lower fluvial series is overtopped with the glacigenic sediments occurring below the Matuyama–Brunhes boundary. This ice-sheet advance is correlated with the Günz and with the oldest traces of glaciations in Western Europe. Culture materials were located within layer of fluvial sands with fine-grained gravels, below the boulder pavement and diamicton – interpreted as till. Raw materials inventory are local flint and hornstone, also foreign flint, hornstone, quartzite, opalite and gneissose granite. The inventory contained macrolithic and microlithic cores, flakes and tools. The tools are made from pebbles, flakes and microlithic-flakes.     

Escaping the Bind: Comparing Twenty-First Century US Counterinsurgency Doctrine and the French Response to the Algerian Revolution, 1955–1956

Faced with a growing Algerian insurgency in 1955, French Governor-General Jacques Soustelle turned to his ethnological training to convert soldiers into amateur social scientists, hoping to better know the people of Algeria and therefore ease pacification through cultural understanding. Soustelle failed to appreciate the sophistication of revolt in Algeria, a diverse array of movements that did not fit traditional European categories. Confronting similar problems in understanding the causes of Iraqi and Afghan resistance in the years following the invasions of 2001–2003, American military planners also turned to anthropology. Though not taken to the administrative extreme seen in Soustelle's Algeria, the United States Army instituted the Human Terrain System in order to better understand native populations involved in an active insurgency. American planners can learn from the French experience by developing a more nuanced approach to study that includes more advanced anthropological techniques without the baggage of the colonial system.