Accounting for the Change in Income Disparities between US Central Cities and their Suburbs from 1980 to 1990

Develops a method that uses cluster analysis to group central cities in the United States. Selection of the candidate cluster solutions; Median characteristics of the clusters; Stressed central cities; Healthy central cities

Interactions Between Economic Growth and Environmental Quality in U.S. Counties

Linkages among changes in employment, earnings per worker, and pollution per square mile are estimated for 3,036 U.S. counties for the period 1987 to 1995 using a three-equation disequilibrium adjustment model. Counties with higher shares of African-Americans experienced higher earnings growth rates over the period 1987-1995, as did counties with proportionally more females. Counties in states with higher shares of unionized workers had higher earnings growth rates but generated fewer new jobs. Firm size had a significant and negative effect on earnings growth while higher costs of living were associated with higher earnings growth. Also, metro counties and counties in the Northeastern U.S. experienced higher earnings growth than their non-metro counterparts and counties in other geographic regions. Statistically, faster job growth was found to accelerate the rate of earnings growth per worker. The authors conclude that counties concerned with job growth should recruit or attempt to spawn the creation of larger firms, recognizing that for some firms such a strategy may come at the cost of more rapid increases in pollution. Counties concerned with increasing the rate of growth in per worker earnings should instead focus on the creation of smaller firms. Copyright 2004 Gatton College of Business and Economics, University of Kentucky..

Investigating a Wage Curve for New Zealand

This paper examines evidence for a stable inverse relationship between the wages paid to workers and the unemployment rate across local labour markets in New Zealand, a phenomenon known as the wage curve. A variety of specifications of the wage curve are examined. Overall, weighted least squares estimates reveal a value of the unemployment elasticity of pay that is close to the international consensus estimate of— 0.1. Some support is also found for the concept of a positive long-run relationship between wages and unemployment existing alongside the wage curve. However, there is evidence of potential endogeneity of the unemployment rate, although data limitations severely restrict the availability of suitable instruments.

Local Labor Market Adjustment to Immigration: The Roles of Participation and the Short Run

While previous research has generally found that immigration raises unemployment for natives, effects are often more muted than expected. Anticipated out-migration responses have been similarly difficult to discern. However, these findings may be byproducts of the long-run nature of most inquiries, which furthermore do not account for changes in natives' labor force participation. In response, this study evaluates the impact of the arrival of low-skilled immigrants on low-skilled natives in urban areas over a five year period. Initial static results from the Census Basic Monthly Survey clearly indicate that immigrants have a significant negative impact on natives' labor force participation. Building upon these static panel results, characteristics of immigrants' destination choices are examined along with the ensuing adjustment process through dynamic analyses of local markets. Surges of immigrants significantly reduce the labor force participation of low-skilled natives, emphasizing this often neglected channel for labor market adjustment. Previous work may thus understate the true impact of immigrants on local labor markets by focusing on the longer term and ignoring adjustments through participation. Copyright 2004 Gatton College of Business and Economics, University of Kentucky..

LOCAL REGIMES: Does Globalization Challenge the "Growth Machine"?

This article explores the possible impacts that globalization might have upon the nature of local governments and the economic development policies that they adopt. We begin by outlining the theory of how "corporate regimes" dominate most urban centers, why they implement skewed economic development policies, and why globalization appears to be exacerbating these problems. Research on state-and-local economic development outside urban centers indicates that several types of business development exist and that they differ significantly in their implications for improving conditions in a community. This suggests that other types of corporate regimes are possible. The logic of globalization points toward the need to establish more progressive corporate regimes willing to implement some of the reforms advocated by critics of the "growth machine." Copyright 2001 by The Policy Studies Organization.

The dynamics of regional population and employment growth

The authors investigate what Muth labels as the "chicken and egg' or what others label it is "jobs follow people' versus "people follow jobs' debate by studying the dynamic relationships of changes in population and employment in the snowbelt, the sunbelt, and the nine census regions of the US. The vector autoregressive (VAR) modeling method is used for the annual time series data (1955-1988) on population and employment. The Granger causality tests show that, in the snowbelt region, population tends to precede employment, while in the sunbelt region, the opposite is true. The impulse response functions generated for the forecasting decade suggest that "jobs follow people' in the snowbelt and "people follow jobs' in the sunbelt. Similar findings in general hold for the census regions belong to the snowbelt and sunbelt. These findings raise doubts about the proposition of others that the growth process is either demand or supply-driven in all phases of regional growth. -Authorslink_to_subscribed_fulltex