A Surgeon’s Duty

Dr. Albert Gaillard Hall described a scenario in where he was tricked by his soldiers; “At our rendezvous, on three successive mornings, men reported sick, complaining of backache and headache, and with a very heavily coated tongue, but without other symptoms. Thinking it might prove an oncoming fever, I excused the first and second lots, and then saw that they were ‘old-soldiering the surgeon.’ Long afterwards one of the men explained the trick. The camp was surrounded by rose-bushes in bloom, and a liberal chewing of rose-leaves a little before sick call produced the effect I saw on the tongue. This is but an illustration of innumerable devices to mislead the surgeon and get excused from duty or to escape the battlefield.” [excerpt

Beautiful city

Proponents of the City Beautiful movement advocated for sizable public investments in monumental spaces, street beautification, and classical architecture. Today, economists and policymakers see the provision of consumer leisure amenities as a way to attract people and jobs to cities. But past studies have provided only indirect evidence of the importance of leisure amenities for urban growth and development. In this article, Jerry Carlino uses a new data set on the number of leisure tourist visits to metropolitan areas to examine the correlation between leisure consumption opportunities and population and employment growth in metropolitan areas during the 1990s. His study suggests that leisure amenities are important for an area's growth, even after controlling for other characteristics, such as climate or proximity to a coast.Urban economics ; Cities and towns ; Leisure

The economic role of cities in the 21st century

Jerry Carlino focuses on the economic activities that make firms in cities more productive and that make cities more attractive to urban households. Carlino finds that although agglomeration economies will continue to play a large role in the life of 21st century cities, modern cities must offer a wide choice of amenities to attract the type of high-skill workers needed in the new urban economy.Urban economics

Knowledge spillovers: cities' role in the new economy.

Jerry Carlino points out that cities, no longer centers of manufacturing, now serve as centers of creativity and innovation. The resulting “knowledge spillovers” are important components of today's economic growth.Cities and towns ; Patents

From centralization to deconcentration: people and jobs spread out.

During the first half of the 20th century, people and jobs in the United States moved from rural to urban areas. After World War II, the U.S. saw other important shifts, including deconcentration - the movement of people and jobs from large, dense MSAs to small, less dense ones. This article looks at various aspects of deconcentration to see just how fast growth has been in less dense MSAs, whether trends for population and employment are the same, and whether the experience of MSAs in the frostbelt and sunbelt has been the same.Employment (Economic theory) ; Metropolitan areas - Statistics

Trends in metropolitan employment growth

In the early part of this century, both employment and population tended to concentrate in large metropolitan areas such as New York. Over the past 40 years, however, jobs and people have spread out as both firms and workers have sought the lower costs of smaller, less congested places. In fact, Jerry Carlino argues that "congestion costs"--traffic, pollution, and a higher cost of living--are a major factor in the relatively slower growth of large metropolitan areas in the second half of the century.Employment (Economic theory) ; Metropolitan areas - Statistics

The great moderation in economic volatility: a view from the states

Since the middle of the 1980s, economic growth in the U.S. has become much more stable than it was in the preceding three decades, and the magnitude of the decline is substantial. What accounts for the decline in volatility, and why is the decline important for policymakers? In “The Great Moderation in Economic Volatility: A View from the States,” Jerry Carlino discusses these questions and makes the case that using state-level rather than just national data offers a much larger testing ground for analyzing the decline in economic volatility.Economic stabilization

Employment deconcentration: a new perspective on America's postwar urban evolution.

In this study the authors show that during the postwar era, the United States experienced a decline in the share of urban employment accounted for by the relatively dense metropolitan areas and a corresponding rise in the share of relatively less dense ones. This trend, which the authors call employment deconcentration, is distinct from the other well-known regional trend, namely, the postwar movement of jobs and people from the frostbelt to the sunbelt. The authors also show that deconcentration has been accompanied by a similar trend within metropolitan areas, wherein employment share of the denser sections of MSAs has declined and that of the less dense sections risen. The authors provide a general equilibrium model with density-driven congestion costs to suggest an explanation for employment deconcentration.Employment (Economic theory) ; Cities and towns

Regional income fluctuations: common trends and common cycles

This paper investigates trend and cycle dynamics in per capita income for the major U.S. regions during the 1956-95 period. Cointegration and serial correlation common features information are used in jointly decomposing the series into trend and cycle components. The authors find considerable differences in the volatility of regional cycles. Controlling for differences in volatility, the authors find a great deal of comovement in the cyclical response for all regions but the Far West. Possible sources underlying differences in regional cycles are explored, such as the share of a region's income accounted for by manufacturing, defense spending as a proportion of a region's income, oil price shocks, and the stance of monetary policy. Somewhat surprisingly, the authors find that the share of manufacturing in a region seems to account for little of the variation in regional cycles relative to national cycles, but manufacturing share differentially affects trend growth for four of the seven regions studied.Income

Postwar trends in metropolitan employment growth: decentralization and deconcentration

A key finding to emerge from this study is that the widely studied suburbanization or decentralization of employment and population is only part of the story of postwar urban evolution. Another important part of the story is a postwar trend of relatively faster growth of jobs and people in the smaller and less-dense MSAs (deconcentration). The authors find that postwar growth in employment (and to a lesser extent population) has favored metropolitan areas with smaller levels of employment (population) density. These trends are shared by major regions of the country and by manufacturing and non-manufacturing employment. The fact that employment growth has favored MSAs with smaller levels of employment (or lower levels of employment density) indicates that economic processes favoring convergent (as opposed to parallel) metropolitan growth played an important role in the postwar era.Employment (Economic theory) ; Metropolitan areas - Statistics ; Population