Search

Abstract: Economic base (or export‐base) theory (EBT) is often presented as a Keynesian‐inspired theory that only accounts for demand‐side factors. However, the recent integration of supply‐side factors into economic base models (EBMs) can contribute to renewing applications of this type of model in regional economics. This paper proposes a literature review focused on new EBMs that explicitly take into account supply effects and includes both North American and European studies. It first explains why integrating supply‐side factors is relevant for EBMs. Second, the paper shows how to integrate these supply‐side factors into the various types of models, focusing on two production factors: land and its amenities and labor. Third, the paper discusses the conditions for integrating such supply‐side factors into EBMs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Local economic development policies worldwide perceive business incubation as an effective measure to promote regional growth through the support of young and innovative ventures. The common assumption is that incubation promotes firm growth, in particular after these firms graduated from their incubator organisations. However, knowledge regarding the performance of incubated ventures after they have (successfully) completed their incubation is almost non-existent. This article investigates the long-term development of 324 graduate firms from five German business incubators (incubated between 1990 and 2006). The present study does not suffer from a survivor bias, meaning that performance data of non-surviving firms is also included. Using employment and sales measures as performance indicators, this study contradicts existing results with regard to long-term graduate performance. Findings of this paper do not support the presumption of sustainable and strong firm growth beyond incubation. [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]

The majority of the literature on fiscal decentralization has tended to stress that the greater capacity of decentralized governments to tailor policies to local preferences and to be innovative in the provision of policies and public services, the greater the potential for economic efficiency and growth. There is, however, little empirical evidence to substantiate this claim. In this paper we examine, using a panel data approach with dynamic effects, the relationship between the level of fiscal decentralization and economic growth rates across 16 Central and Eastern European countries over the 1990–2004 period. Our findings suggest that, contrary to the majority view, there is a significant negative relationship between two out of three fiscal decentralization indicators included in the analysis and economic growth. However, the use of different time lags allows us to nuance this negative view and show that long-term effects vary depending on the type of decentralization undertaken in each of the countries considered. While expenditure at and transfers to sub-national tiers of government are negatively correlated with economic growth, taxes assigned at the sub-national level evolve from having a significantly negative to a significantly positive correlation with the national growth rate. This supports the view that sub-national governments with their own revenue source respond better to local demands and promote greater economic efficiency [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]

The objective of this article is to present a new way to incorporate the sectoral dimension within the components of regional growth provided by the traditional shift–share analysis. The new methodology elaborates the way that the dynamics of a specific sector in a region are influenced by the performance of other sectors, the latter decomposed between national, structural, and differential effects. To illustrate this extension of the shift–share method, an application is provided using data for the Spanish region of Extremadura for the period 1990–2004. The results highlight how these new components can shed new insights into the analysis of sectoral and regional economic growth processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canadian poverty rates have persisted at disappointingly high levels despite almost 15 years of continuous economic growth. The problem is exacerbated by some communities and neighborhoods having exceedingly high poverty, including very high rates for vulnerable demographic groups, such as aboriginals and recent immigrants. We investigate low-income rates (poverty rates) for 2,400 Canadian “communities” over the 1981–2001 period. By focusing on communities, we fill a void in the related Canadian literature, which tends to focus on individuals, case studies, or more aggregate measures, such as provinces. Our approach allows us to assess the role of place-based policies. Particular attention is given to communities with differing shares of aboriginal Canadians and recent immigrants. One novel feature is our analysis of both “short-term” and “long-term” causes of differential community poverty rates. The results suggest that community low-income rates are more affected by initial economic conditions in the short term, with certain demographic factors becoming relatively more important in the long run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]