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Despite economic growth since the recession, the gap between the richest and the poorest segments of the population remains one of the most pressing concerns of contemporary America. This paper uses IR-95/20, IR-80/20, and IR-65/35 ratios to measure the income divides between the richest and the poorest segments in the mid-to-large-sized metropolises of the U.S. Southeast, their variation across ethnicities, and their association with metropolitan level attributes such as diversity, segregation, socio-economic, and other built-environment, and labor characteristics. The income divide ratios serve as the dependent variables whereas principal components along with state-dummy variables serve as the explanatory variables in regressions analyses. The metropolises that are large, diverse, and better educated are the most income-divided whereas those with lower educated people are less divided. Metropolises with larger shares of their labor engaged in primary sectors of economy have higher income divides; this observation also holds true for African Americans and Hispanics. Metropolises that gained in intermixing during 2000-2014 are associated with a lower income divide and vice versa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1957 and 1990, nearly 100 nuclear reactors were constructed throughout the U.S., and nuclear power currently accounts for 20 percent of electricity production nationwide. Nuclear plants are often constructed in small communities for which they constitute a large source of employment and income. To date, 24 nuclear reactors have undergone decommissioning, and more are expected in the future, particularly as nuclear reactors age and face increasingly strict regulations. This paper examines the effects of nuclear decommissioning over time at the county-level on measures of employment, income, and population using difference-in-differences regression and propensity score matching. Panel data are obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau, and cover the years 1975-2014. The analysis finds that nuclear decommissioning is associated with positive and statistically significant increases in employment and per capita income over time. Results suggest that nuclear decommissioning may actually be a positive force in regional economic development, and concludes with limitations of the approach and implications for future research. As an emerging area of research, this paper is meant to build on previous work, as well as to provide a basis for further discussion and debate on the economic future of nuclear host communities and regional economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last year, a central issue in regional economic growth debate has been represented by the empirical analysis of Verdoorn's law related to the long-term dynamic relationship between the rate of growth in output and the productivity growth due to increasing returns. Several papers have tested Verdoorn's law on European countries as well as many other world economies. Recently, attempts have been made to provide foundations for a spatial version of the original law specification. The main contributions were dedicated to the inclusion of spatial dependence in the economic model. Surprisingly, in the literature on Verdoom's law the analysis of the spatial heterogeneity is not often considered. The aim of this paper is the regional analysis of the spatial dependence and heterogeneity in Verdoorn's law, identifying spatial regimes that can be interpreted as clusters of productivity growth in European regions at NUTS 2 level. To pursue this objective, an optimization algorithm for the identification of groups is used. This constitutes a modified version of Simulated Annealing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policymakers across the Southern U.S. have directed considerable attention to regional economic development plans, with mixed results. Questions remain over what types of industries, firms, and/or policies can drive long-range growth. Over the past two decades, researchers have started to focus on high-growth firms (HGFs) due to their potential innovation spillovers and job creation prospects, both of which drive further economic development. Employing databases from the Inc. 500, this study explores the dynamics of HGFs within Southern and comparative contexts. The first goal of this paper is to explore Southern HGF activity in comparison with the U.S. at-large. The second is to examine the geographical characteristics of HGFs within the South, which will include an exploration of locations, industrial mix, and the factors that could encourage HGF development and agglomeration. This paper will also analyze the longer-term ownership and acquisition patterns of HGFs across the South. Are such firms remaining embedded in the South or moving elsewhere through mergers or acquisitions? The paper concludes with a discussion of the impacts of HGFs on regional economic development and moreover, whether existing policies are conducive to these firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Using data on 48 contiguous U.S. states and a spatial econometric approach, this paper examines short‐ and long‐run effects of productive higher education and highway infrastructure spending financed by different revenue sources on state economic growth. Following the Lagrange Multiplier, Wald, and Likelihood Ratio tests, the data are found to be characterized by both spatial lag and spatial error processes, leading to the estimation of a dynamic spatial Durbin model. By decomposing results of the dynamic spatial Durbin model into short‐ and long‐run direct as well as indirect (spillover) effects, we show that accounting for spillover effects provides a more comprehensive approach to uncovering the effects of productive government spending on growth. We find that, regardless of the financing source, productive higher education and highway spending have statistically significant short‐ and long‐run direct as well as spillover effects on state income growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Targeting industry clusters for economic development has become popular despite the lack of empirical evidence about the spatial scales over which various clusters agglomerate. This paper identifies twenty manufacturing industry clusters from a principal components analysis of interindustry patterns of trade and measures the spatial employment concentration of each cluster's plants within a polycentric framework. Two to eight centers of employment concentration are detected within the Southern California region for each set of trade linkages. Our spatial half-life measure reveals that half of a cluster's employment in associated establishments is located within a typical range of eight to twelve kilometers (about 5–7.5 miles) to the nearest employment center or subcenter for the particular cluster. Furthermore, employment in seventeen of the twenty clusters is found to be more spatially concentrated than manufacturing employment as a whole, suggesting that geographic proximity is important to interindustry linkages in the Southern California economy. More important, the spatial concentration across industry clusters varies considerably within the metropolitan area, implying that economic development practitioners should consider local context and adapt industry cluster theories to the specific advantages and disadvantages of their immediate locality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building upon the companion paper in this issue, this essay analyses five case studies that can be taken as prototypes of the system-wide cultural district culture-led developmental model. The research targets five cities in Europe and the U.S.: Valencia, Austin, Newcastle/ Gateshead, Linz, and Denver. Each presents specific characteristics but also some deep, structural common traits. The case studies are compared and their future viability is evaluated in terms of the factors presented in the companion piece. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The largest corporations in the world are increasingly adopting international corporate responsibility ( CR) reporting standards from organizations such as the Global Reporting Initiative to meet stakeholder expectations for reliable and comparable social and environmental performance data. At the same time, significant geographic variations in reporting rates remain. The goal of this paper is to explain the diffusion of international CR reporting standards within the Americas. Reporting rates cannot be explained fully by a country's population size or level of economic development. Based on a unique statistical analysis of the relative impact of institutional environments, corporate resources and strategic orientation, stakeholder pressures, and transnational trade and learning networks, this research concludes that the diffusion of CR reporting throughout the Americas to date has been fueled by a rather narrow set of corporations with the capacities necessary to implement CR reporting and the strategic orientation to benefit from it. Moreover, corporations' internal capacities and the external demands for CR reporting have been enhanced in select countries by national and transnational CR advocacy and training organizations. This has led to an uneven development of CR reporting thus far, and this unevenness is expected to continue even as overall reporting rates increase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present a critical assessment of recent economic development policy directions centered on the concept of regional innovation clusters. We begin by investigating the rationale underlying the Obama administration's promotion of regional innovation clusters (RICs) and their introduction to the policy arena in its Strategy for American Innovation. The connections among RICs and existing research and policies in industry and occupational clusters, regional innovation systems and regional economic development are identified and analyzed to highlight those most critical challenges to conceptualizing and theorizing RICs. While we applaud the long overdue focus of economic development policies on sub-national regions, we identify several major conceptual shortcomings and programmatic difficulties associated with RICs as a centerpiece for economic development strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Population, employment, and income changes in a region comprised of eighteen nonmetropolitan counties of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York are described using Bureau of Economic Analysis data covering 1970 to 2000. Changes at the county level are examined as net differences using pooled cross-section time series analysis. The specific focus of the empirical analysis is the effect that environmental amenities have in population and economic change. Empirical results indicate that a county's relative endowment of environmental amenities has positive economic change effects, but only when the county is relatively accessible as well. Further, the environmental amenity effects vary in their temporal consistency, even when accessibility is taken into account. In general, however, the reported results support the proposition that even relatively moderate environmental amenities can hold positive effects for economic change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Announces developments concerning economic development and social change in the United States as of January 1984. Inclusion of the American Association of Housing Educators' call for papers for its 1984 annual meeting to be held in Washington D.C.; Articles in the summer 1983 issue of the 'Journal of the American Planning Association.'

Policy makers who wish to spur economic development in rural forests face challenges that include population decline and poverty. Protected land and natural amenities enhance the quality of life and prospects for economic development, but there is limited research on how different types of protected land or natural amenities affect the rural forest economy. We use county level variables for protected areas differentiated by access and extractive use, and natural amenities differentiated by climate, water area, and topography to explain spatial variation in labor and built space markets. Results show that temperate summers and water area increase wages and housing prices and explain more than 30 percent of the spatial differences in wages, housing price, employment density, built space percent, human capital, and local road density. Protected area decreases wages, but, if open access, increase housing prices and human capital and explain more than 20 percent of the spatial differences in human capital, built space percent, and local road density. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the exception of Austin, metropolitan regions in Texas are not commonly included in research and analysis concerning creative economies-attention is largely focused on either the traditional capitals of creative production, New York and Los Angeles, or emerging, secondary regions such as Austin and Seattle, Washington. This article utilizes an industrial approach to examine the creative economies of the four most populous metropolitan regions of Texas-Austin, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Houston, and San Antonio-and detail their scale, scope, and change between 2005 and 2015. Results help establish the creative economies of the Dallas-Ft. Worth, Houston, and San Antonio metropolitan regions in the existing stream of creative research and discussion, offer further perspective on the dynamics and strength of the Austin region's creative economy, and provide insight into how regional creative economies emerge in rapidly urbanizing regions during the digital era. Additionally, special attention is paid to how these four creative economies transformed during the recessionary period from 2007 to 2009. Results of that attention build on prior research which points to the recession having a varied influence on creative economies depending on trends in the broader regional economies that house them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the relationship between casinos and economic growth in the U.S. Using county-level data on the 48 contiguous states from 2003 to 2012, we estimate the effect of casinos on per capita income growth and job creation. Our research procedures include examining the relationship using level-to-level panel data, and 3-year and 10-year differenced data. An instrumental variable approach is also considered to account for potential endogeneity of the casino variable. Although, the instruments are both relevant and exogenous, test results found insufficient evidence of endogeneity in our panel data models. In addition, we estimate a spatial error model (SEM) to account for the unobserved spatial characteristics that may affect economic growth in the counties but are not captured by our conventional econometric models. Our results show that casinos had a positive effect on per capita income; casino expansions exerted a small, positive effect on both per capita income growth and job growth. However, the effect of casino expansions on 10-year per capita income growth dissipated when we controlled for the spatial autocorrelation in our model. Nevertheless, the SEMs results also suggest that casino expansions continued to have a positive effect on the 2003-2012 job growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the role of universities in the economic development of American metropolitan regions during the Great Recession (2007-2009) and the growth period prior to it (2001-2007). It develops a supply-side conceptual framework on the role of universities in technology-led regional economic development. Specifically, this framework highlights three 'university products' that can be explicitly defined and measured: educational services, business services, and new knowledge or technology. The empirical test of this conceptual framework finds that the presence of universities is positively associated with regional economic performance during the Great Recession, mainly via the educational services product. Findings indicate that regions with a higher level of university science, technology, engineering, and mathematics graduates are more resilient to the economic recession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research will be more relevant to state and local economic development policy if this research focuses on research gaps. One gap is better estimates of how local labor demand policies affect local jobs. A second gap is better understanding of how labor supply policies affect overall local labor market outcomes, adjusting for spillovers and displacement. A third gap is better understanding of how effects of local employment shocks vary with local labor market conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

U. S. states and localities often engage in economic development policies using incentives and abatements for specific firms or industries. Yet, there is very little empirical evidence suggesting that such policies are successful. Why, then, do governments engage in these policies? In order to answer this question, we employ a model that considers not only geographic and economic factors, but also, in a novel application, local political conditions. A unique survey of U. S. county governments forms the basis for our empirical assessment of both traditional economic development policies and new-wave policies. Using probit, Poisson, negative binomial, and spatial econometric models, we find evidence that the use of incentives is inversely related to local economic conditions. Furthermore, we find Republican counties are more apt to use incentives, though counties dominated by one political party are less likely to use them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Employing a unique index of Tax and Expenditure Limitation (TEL) restrictiveness, we estimate a family of economic growth models using a panel of the 50 U.S. states for the period 1969 to 2005. Our central goal is to assess the relationship between TEL restrictiveness and economic growth. Results suggest that stronger TELs imposed on state governments have a dampening effect on state economic growth and TELs imposed on local governments have a weak negative impact on growth. The results do not support the argument that legislatures can use tax and expenditure limits as a mechanism to promote economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Because support for entrepreneurship is often a core part of economic development strategies, we investigate whether it is important for growth in lagging, rural U.S. regions by focusing on Appalachia. While entrepreneurship has the advantage of being endogenous and 'home grown,' previous research suggests that remote rural regions may lack the agglomeration economies to benefit greatly from entrepreneurship. Using county-level data, we explore the relationship between entrepreneurship and economic growth, employing self-employment and small business data as proxies for entrepreneurship. We look at the results for the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) region, using its immediate Appalachian neighbors outside the ARC region as a control group. Moreover, we also account for self-sorting by proprietors to locate in expanding regions. Despite strong barriers to growth in Appalachia, our empirical results suggest that self-employment is positively associated with employment and income growth, and that efforts to promote entrepreneurial capacity may be among the few economic development strategies with positive payoffs in remote regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores rural U.S. crime patterns with a focus on social capital. We use a triangulation of three core theories of crime including social disorganization, anomie/strain, and rational choice theories to develop a formal theory and an empirical framework. The role of four unique measures of social capital is explored in understanding patterns of rural crime using nonmetropolitan U.S. county data. The empirical results generally support the theoretical predictions and conclude that rural communities that pursue economic growth and development must be prepared to address the resulting upward pressures on crime. The results on social capital and crime provide numerous policy insights for rural communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the current economic status of the areas surrounding major U.S. container ports. We define a “port district” as the geographic area within a 7.5-mile radius of a port. Our sample includes the 10 largest container ports in the U.S. We find that when we compare port districts to their surrounding metropolitan areas, household unemployment and poverty rates are significantly higher in port districts. Thus, the same ports that serve as “economic engines” for the region and nation may be the cause of economic decline and deterioration in the immediate areas that surround them. This presents a challenge for policy makers who want to preserve the benefits of international trade while facing increasing opposition to port expansion by local communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]