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As recovery from the Great Recession continues, economic development scholars and practitioners are again focused on the pace and the sustainability of recovery, as well as on efforts to minimise the severity of future downturns. This paper contributes to the literature by exploring the relationship between industry diversity and economic resilience over time. Using fixed effects models with data from the Bureau of Labour Statistics and the Census Bureau, the paper examines the influence of industrial diversity and concentration on unemployment rate stability in Ohio counties between 1977 and 2011. Results indicate that while more concentrated counties had lower unemployment rates when times were good, counties with more diverse industry structures fared better during times of national or local employment shocks. The paper also finds that there is a relationship between concentration in particular industries and the ability to withstand a shock changes over the 35 years examined, thus highlighting the need to take care when interpreting findings over shorter periods and the need to consider the particular industry of dependence. While local policymakers have little ability to affect industrial concentration in the short run, the paper recommends that highly concentrated counties adopt policies that may help buffer their economies to effects of negative shocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper synthesises two models: Savitch and Kantor’s bargaining and the amenity led growth model. Using evidence from Oklahoma City’s recent revitalisation, the argument concludes that leadership serves as a pivotal link between the bargaining table and the construction of new amenities to attract productive labour and improve their bargaining position. The proposed unified model reprises the role for leadership to include providing amenities prerequisite for economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the viability of some basic predictions of the Mills—Muth model of city structure for modern cities using US data for the year 2000. The estimation strategy used to test the predictions is very similar to that of Jan Brueckner and David Fansler, who use 1970 data to find support for the model's basic comparative statics predictions—namely, that city area is increasing in population and income but decreasing in agricultural land value and commuting costs. This paper uses different measures for land values and commuting costs where possible and a measure of polycentricity to estimate a slightly modified empirical model. Despite the changing structure of cities, there is evidence that the Mills—Muth comparative statics predictions hold for modern US cities, that densely populated cities are more likely to have sub-centres and that market forces drive urban spatial structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past 20 years, California has made substantial investments in intra-metropolitan passenger rail infrastructure, expanding existing systems and building new ones. According to advocates of New Urbanism, such investment should encourage the growth of mixed-use transit-oriented development, defined as a high-density mix of residential and commercial uses within walking distance of rail stations. Little research to date has examined whether rail investment stimulates retail activity, which is a key component of mixed-use development. In this paper, I test whether the opening of new rail stations across California’s four largest metropolitan areas is associated with changes in retail employment near the stations. Results indicate that new rail stations were located in areas with previously high employment density, somewhat outside the city centres. New station openings are not significantly associated with differences in retail employment in three of the four MSAs, and negatively associated with retail in the Sacramento MSA. There is weak evidence that areas around new suburban stations serving commuter rail lines are more likely to gain retail employment, while centrally located, intra-city rail stations see decreases in retail activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applies the dynamic panel data generalized method of moments estimator to the data on commercial passenger air traffic at all primary airports in the United States to evaluate the impact of traffic volume and number of destinations served with non-stop flights on the key indicators of regional economic development. We find that number of destinations served with non-stop flights has a much clearer and more robust impact on level of employment, number of business establishments, and average wage in the region. Passenger traffic volume affects employment and average wage, but not number of establishments. At the sample median, connecting a metropolitan statistical area with an extra destination, keeping everything else constant, creates 98 jobs and facilitates the opening of four new business establishments that employ people. The corresponding numbers for the sample mean are 223 jobs and 15 businesses. The impact of air travel on regional economic development is influenced by competition on the respective airline markets. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Analysing census and industry data at the metro and neighbourhood levels, this paper seeks to identify the location characteristics associated with artistic clusters and determine how these characteristics vary across different places. We find that the arts cannot be taken overall as an urban panacea, but rather that their impact is place-specific and policy ought to reflect these nuances. However, our work also finds that, paradoxically, the arts’ role in developing metro economies is as highly underestimated as it is overgeneralised. While arts clusters exhibit unique industry, scale and place-specific attributes, we also find evidence that they cluster in ‘innovation districts’, suggesting they can play a larger role in economic development. To this end, our results raise important questions and point toward new approaches for arts-based urban development policy that look beyond a focus on the arts as amenities to consider the localised dynamics between the arts and other industries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Access to a large labour pool (labour pooling) leads to local economic concentrations through agglomeration economies. However, these concentrations may be self-limiting by reducing labour availability through competition over high-skill workers. This paper examines whether labour pooling and labour availability of workers with different incomes account for local job growth in the Atlanta metropolitan area between 2000 and 2006. Workers’ income is employed to account for the human capital of workers, including education and skills. It is found that the availability of high-income workers is the only positive significant factor for job growth and the spatial size of the effect is larger than the traffic analysis zone (neighbourhood scale). In contrast, no labour pooling indicators show a positive association with job growth. The finding casts doubt on labour pooling effects at the intraregional level and suggests avenues for further research on local-area agglomeration economies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper examines the potential role that airfreight transport in the US can play in stimulating local and regional economic development. The analysis examines trends in employment and income for metropolitan statistical areas that make use of airfreight services. The focus is on causality, and not on simple correlation, and uses econometric analysis rather than simpler economic multiplier approaches. Granger causality testing based on panel data covering 35 airport and 32 metropolitan statistical areas in the US from 1990 to 2009 indicates that airfreight transport was a positive driver for local economic development. The conclusions focus on the strengths but also the weaknesses of the methodology for assessing causality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the history and the political and economic dividends of manipulating urban crime data in the US. It demonstrates data manipulation as an historical and widely practised method of safety construction in cities and discusses why rape is a crime especially prone to statistical corruption. Insofar as hiding rape makes a city appear to be safer than it actually is, it is argued that the practice has taken on greater political and economic significance in this era of mobile capital and interurban competition. These themes are explored in a case study from Philadelphia and the many contradictions that it points to are discussed. Patriarchy, it is concluded, is a tool of economic development that puts all urban women at risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mechanisms shaping a shift in intrametropolitan self-employment remain poorly understood. In response, this study aims to examine shifts in both central-city and suburban self-employment by integrating the changing forces of intrametropolitan economy and population with their economic interdependence within an entire metropolitan area. Using a change-score model, data collected over two timeperiods (1980-90 and 1990-2000) are pooled. The analysis shows that a decline in intrametropolitan manufacturing employment, which can be understood as an aspect of local economic restructuring, leads to an increase in intrametropolitan self-employment. Also, the data suggest that a rise in metropolitan-level immigrant population contributes to the growth of central-city self-employment. Moreover, this paper demonstrates that a shift in central-city self-employment is affected by both central-city and suburban economic transformations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses four fundamental questions about the relationship between 'smart growth', a fiscally motivated anti-sprawl policy movement, and public finance. Do low-density, spatially extensive land use patterns cost more to support? If so, how large an influence does sprawl actually have? How does the influence differ among types of spending? And, how does it compare with the influence of other relevant factors? The analysis, which is based on the entire continental US and uses a series of spatial econometric models to evaluate one aggregate (total direct) and nine disaggregate (education, fire protection, housing and community development, libraries, parks and recreation, police protection, roadways, sewerage, and solid waste disposal) measures of spending, provides the most detailed evidence to date of how sprawl affects the vast sum of revenue that local governments spend every year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite growing recognition of the important role of cities in economic, political and environmental systems across the world, comparative, global-scale research on cities is severely limited. This paper examines the similarities and differences in urban form and growth that have occurred across 25 mid-sized cities from different geographical settings and levels of economic development. The results reveal four city types: low-growth cities with modest rates of infilling; high-growth cities with rapid, fragmented development; expansive-growth cities with extensive dispersion at low population densities; and frantic-growth cities with extraordinary land conversion rates at high population densities. Although all 25 cities are expanding, the results suggest that cities outside the US do not exhibit the dispersed spatial forms characteristic of American urban sprawl. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]