Search

This paper uses a &anger causality test adapted for use with cross-section time series data, to (1) test the relationship between lottery revenue and state economic growth (per capita income), and (2) address the importance of cross-border purchases in the relationship. Neither issue has been empirically tested previously. Previous evidence (Caudill, et al., 1995) suggests that states surrounded by lotteries are more likely than isolated states to introduce lotteries. But the empirical results here suggest that lotteries do not contribute to economic growth unless the state is isolated from other state lotteries. The importance of isolation suggests that cross-border purchases (exports) of lottery tickets have a significant impact on the effectiveness of lotteries as fiscal policies, and that "defensive" lotteries (those introduced to keep citizens from buying tickets from neighboring states) are ineffective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

R&D subsidisation is acknowledged as a major spurrer of the economic development of regions, but is seldom considered in the literature concerning regional diversification. Conversely, robust evidence has been gathered about the impact of relatedness on the ability of regions to explore new technological domains. The work employs patent data to assess the extent to which related and unrelated diversification processes in the United States, between 1981 and 2010, are influenced by the existing regional knowledge base and the magnitude of R&D public funds, providing evidence for both drivers by means of econometric estimations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the slowdown in productivity growth in the western industrialized economies during the periods 1973-74 and 1979. It discusses the changes in the world economy during the 1970s, including the dramatic rise in oil prices and the subsequent recessions and general stagnation of output. The article discusses the use industrial data to test hypotheses about patterns of the slowdown along the lines suggested by Baily (1982). The correlation between the size of the slowdown and capital intensity for manufacturing industries in the United States is explored.

Copyright of International Journal of Urban & Regional Research is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The concept of the informal sector first introduced in the early 1970s in studies of Africa, has recently gained currency as a tool for understanding the changes under way in the advanced industrial societies. Originally, the concept was used to describe the variety of third world business enterprises characterized by their small scale, ease of entry, labor intensiveness and the evasion of government regulation. The first waves of studies identified the informal sector as a leftover from precapitalist modes of production, subsequent work portrayed the informal sector as an increasingly integral aspect of industrializing third world economies. But the most recent evidence suggests that the informal sector is a first world phenomenon as well. Increasingly, social scientists draw attention to the growing proportion of persons working on their own account, the shift toward smaller firm size, the expanding scope of economic activities whose existence is concealed from the state, the revival of homework and the burgeoning of sweatshops. They conclude from this disparate set of phenomena that the informal sector is alive, well and growing in the postindustrial West. The paper takes a skeptical look at this new version of the informal sector idea by examining a case that is critical for the informal sector claims, the sweatshop phenomenon in New York's garment industry.

For most of the 1980s the New York City economy surged, carrying its expensive municipal government along with it. the fiscal crisis of the middle 1970s had become a nearly forgotten product of fiscal mismanagement and the death throes of the industrial economy. The city framed its budget according to accepted accounting principles and with its newly achieved satisfactory bond rating, it could once again market its general obligation bonds. New York's restructured economy, based in finance and advanced services, reaffirmed its enhanced status as global city. Then, just as rapidly as the boom began, it ended. The 1987 stock market crash constituted the first harbinger of decline, nevertheless New York's economy continued to grow for the next two years, albeit at a slower pace. By the end of 1989, however, almost all indicators had turned down and for the years 1990 and 19991 New York City showed declines in employment, a virtually total real-estate slump and a drastic shortfall in tax revenues as compared to anticipated receipts. The paper examines the causes and outcomes of the two post-1970 fiscal crises to indicate the links between New York's economic base, the financial condition of its government, its politics and the way in which these factors intertwine.

This paper explores social and spatial dimensions in the world car industry with a view to better understanding the variations in the ways transnational production systems are organized by companies in various industries in various parts of the world. Japanese corporations have forged the world's most competitive auto production system. The challenge from Japan has forced enterprises and governments in the developed capitalist societies to confront anew how they organize their own production systems and how it is that production systems become the mainsprings for economic development and change. Japanese companies will serve as the major, United States companies the minor, reference points in the comparison of transnational production systems in the world car industry. The Japanese automobile industry experienced massive growth after World War II. Toyota and Nissan went from insignificant companies in the 1940s to the world's, second and third largest car makers by the early 1980s. A key to the competitive international success of Japanese companies is the way they organize and tightly control their many layered production systems.

The aim of this paper is to show that the "Massachusetts miracle" is based on services sector job growth rather than on the manufacturing-based industrial policy to which it is usually attributed and to argue that in the new situation of very low levels of unemployment the priority is for an employment policy directed at the needs of low-paid service sector workers rather than further job creation. Authors start by providing a selective overview of Massachusetts industrial policy during politician Michael Dukakis' administrations. They then evaluate the Massachusetts miracle and attempt to delineate the contradictions between employment policy and industrial policy that are emerging in the full employment state. After considering at some length the political and ideological grounds for the manufacturing focus of state economic policy and the obstacles to services-based policy, they turn to the needs of the new workforce and a series of proposals that are currently. transforming the labor movement and policy agenda in Massachusetts.

This paper presents the results of an exploratory study of African Americans and underdevelopment in the Mississippi Delta. The primary focus is on race-specific factors and their associations with social and economic development in the Delta. Data were obtained from The Southern Growth Policy's Southern County-Level Data Files (U.S. Department of Agriculture 1985) and a content analysis of racial conflicts in Mississippi beginning with the 1950s through the 1980s. The results of the analysis show that racial conflicts and a high concentration of poor African Americans are associated with the lack of new technology industries in Mississippi's core Delta counties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using concepts developed to explain the emergence of public welfare in nation-states, this paper proposes a model for explaining welfare effort in communities. This strategy is premised on the assumption that social systems tend to exhibit similar processes whether they are small communities or entire nations. The model assigns prime importance to the influence of economic development as a cause of welfare effort. This relationship is intervened by considerations of urbanization, political environment, the level of government organization, and the presence of a dependent population. The model is tested with a sample of U.S. counties with data from secondary sources by factor and regression analysis. With few exceptions, the model is supported by the data. The implications of the findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the political implications of the use of public enterprises at the municipal level, using survey data from Illinois cities. The dependent variables include the number of enterprises cities have, the dependence of cities on income from enterprises, and the choice of which enterprises to provide. The paper explores why some cities have enterprises to handle parking, garbage, and economic development. Conclusions are that cities experiencing fiscal stress avoid enterprises, and more-reformed cities use enterprises more frequently. Particular enterprises have their own political and financial characteristics and are more likely to be used by cities with matching political characteristics. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the historical record and time series properties of United States' industrial production for the period 1860 to 1991, utilizing unit root tests and measures of persistence. The results identify a segmented trend model which is used to assess the time-series simulation performance of four well-known models of economic growth: Solow (1957); Mankiw, Romer and Weil (MRW, 1992); Barro and Sala i Martin (BSM, 1992); and Rebelo (1991). Both the MRW and BSM models dominate the Solow model in accounting for twentieth century industrial growth, high-lighting the importance of human capital, and the paper suggests a new measure related to higher education. However, the Rebelo model explains the post-1973 slowdown more successfully than either of the 'augmented-Solow' approaches. The paper concludes with a discussion of the impact of shocks on US industrial growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1975 the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID), the principal administrative agent for American bilateral development assistance, mandated a social analysis component to the project preparation and approval process.' Although 'social soundness analysis' is now a required dimension of project identification and design its presumed positive effects are not yet apparent on the output side. Post project impact evaluations reveal that there continue to be negative social effects from AID's development efforts, regardless of project type. In the process by which projects are identified, framed, approved, and ultimately implemented, important signals identified by pre-project social analysis get displaced. This occurs because anticipating social impact is only one of several goals or functions served by pre-project design analysis. This essay interprets the role of social analysis in the dynamics of project preparation, identifying structures and procedures which attenuate its influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a historically contingent understanding of patterns of uneven economic development in the U.S. South. We conceptualize spatial variation in economic development and its consequences for inequality to be embedded in both local and international dynamics. The character of local economic development, it is argued, reflects the organizational base and heterogeneity of local elites, the divisions and relative power of nonelites, and the embeddedness of the local political economy in national and world systems of politics and production. These ideas are developed and made historically and spatially specific through an analysis of uneven development in one Southern state, North Carolina. Our findings suggest that contemporary patterns of uneven development and the resulting income deprivations and inequality reflect conditional interactions between elite economic projects and racial divisions within the working class. We find that outside investment seems to reproduce rather than disrupt local patterns of inequality and poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the sources of economic growth in Japan and in compare the results with those in the U. S. and Europe as studied by E. F. Denison. The method used by Denison is followed as far as possible. The character of this paper is of fact finding, and the interpretation of results or the originality of methodology is not dealt with here. The results may be summarized as follows. (1) Japan's growth rate is two times that of Europe and three times that of the United States. (2) The contributions of labor, capital, and the residual to economic growth are all higher for Japan than for the U. S. or Europe. (3) Factors which account for the higher contribution of labor to economic growth are (a) the higher rate of increase in employment, (b) less shortening of working hours, and (c) improved age and sex composition. (4) Factors which account for the higher contribution of capital to economic growth are a higher rate of increase in capital input and the high elasticity of production with respect in capital. (5) Other notable points include: (a) the contribution of education is lower for Japan; (b) the capital-labor ratio in Japan increased remarkably; (c) capital's share of national income is higher; and (d) 60% of Japan's economic growth is accounted for by the residual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a part of a larger study of economic growth in Canada, following the methods developed by Edward Denison in his book The Sources of Economic Growth in the United States and the publication Why Growth Rates Differ. The new material in this paper relates to Canada and the Canadian/U.S. comparison, while the material on Northwest Europe is drawn from the Brookings study. The present paper sets out the results to date on the differences in real output per employed person between Canada and the United States for one year, 1960. At this stage in our research the results indicate that the level of real output per employed person in Canada was about 20 per cent lower than in the United States in that year. On the basis of historical output data, it would appear that this margin of difference in Canadian/U.S. product levels has persisted throughout the present century. The central part of this paper examines the significance of differences in factor inputs in Canada and the United States and their contribution to the difference in income. The level of inputs per employed person in Canada accounts for only about 2 percentage points of the income difference between Canada and the United States. These results indicate that the overwhelming part of the difference in output per employed person between the two countries reflects the differences in output in relation to total factor inputs, rather than the magnitude of other factor inputs used in combination with labour. This result is consistent with earlier studies by Denison and others which have indicated the crucial importance of output in relation to total factor inputs, both in output growth over time and intercountry comparisons of output level. The body of the paper can give only brief attention to the numerous conceptual and statistical questions that arise in such a wide-ranging study, and the authors do not pretend to have tackled, let alone resolved, all of the wide range of problems related to this study. Nor do they claim any high degree of precision for the results, especially in the light of the statistical limitations of the basic data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I use data on U.S. manufacturing establishments to study the spatial reallocation of resources that takes place within surviving firms as they open and close establishments in different regions. To motivate the empirical analysis, I extend existing models of industry dynamics to include production‐location decisions within firms. Consistent with the theory, the empirical results show that only a fraction of firms make the same product in multiple regions, that multiregional firms are larger and more productive on average compared to single‐region firms, and that “region switching” is pervasive among multiregional firms and correlated with changes in firm and firm‐region characteristics. (JEL L2, F12, F23) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Privatization of state government services is commonplace, but our understanding of its effects is limited by data availability. We study the relationship between American state government contracting and public sector wages. Governments have used public sector employment to support a variety of goals, including social equity and economic development, but privatization, as a new public management (NPM) reform, may shift the focus. Our empirical analysis shows that state privatization of service delivery is associated with decreases in the public sector wage premium, but that these effects are not driven by gender, race, or low‐levels of educational attainment. The fidelity of the implementation to NPM values conditions these effects. We also find that contracting service delivery is associated with a lower public sector wage premium for middle‐class workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a commentary on an article by Derick W. Brinkerhoff, published elsewhere in the issue, titled "The State and International Development Management: Shifting Tides, Changing Boundaries, and Future Directions." It presents a practitioner's perspective on theoretical points raised by Brinkerhoff regarding the field of development management. Issues addressed include increasing the involvement of aid workers with fragile states and the policies of the United States Agency for International Development.

While there is a wealth of information about the extent to which people across the world disapprove of homosexuality, we know a lot less about the lenses through which they view same-sex relations. The aim of this study is to understand better how homosexuality is framed in the public press, and how religion and economic development may combine to shape this discourse. Through an analysis of almost 400 newspaper articles, this study compares how homosexuality is framed in Uganda, South Africa, and the United States. Because these nations have high levels of religious belief, but differ in their level of economic development and democracy, we can assess how these factors interact to shape portrayals. Drawing on work from cultural sociology and the sociology of religion, this study shows that the United States is much more likely than Uganda to frame homosexuality as a civil rights issue and use entertainers as claimsmakers. Conversely, articles from Uganda are more likely than those from the United States or South Africa to frame homosexuality as a religious issue and draw on religious claimsmakers. Likewise, Uganda is much more likely than South Africa to discuss homosexuality in the context of Western influences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT I examine the effect of sectoral change on U.S. state unemployment during the Great Recession. Of the 4.1 percentage point increase in mean state unemployment between 2007 and 2009, increased structural change explains 0.6-1.18 percentage points, and increased estimated effects of structural change 0.8-2.7 percentage points. Despite the role of housing in the recession, neither construction nor any other one sector can account for the results. Although the pace and role of structural change had returned to normal levels after the Great Recession, their effects persisted, raising mean state unemployment by 0.9-2.3 percentage points in 2011. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT We reveal evidence that the US aggregate bank dividends exercise a causal impact on the US real GDP growth during the period from the introduction of the Prompt Corrective Action framework in 1992 until the outburst of the subprime mortgage market crisis in 2007. Over this period, the positive signalling effects of bank dividends outperform the negative effect of dividends on default risk. During the pre-Prompt Corrective Action and the recent post-2007 periods, bank dividends do not affect GDP growth. This regime-dependent relation is due to an asymmetric role of bank default risk. These findings are of interest to bank regulators in reassessing the role of bank dividends within Basel III and carry important policy implications as bank dividends constitute an important tool available to policy makers for strengthening real activity. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Berichte zur Wissenschafts-Geschichte is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Humanitarian and development agencies have confronted growing insecurity in some of the regions in which they work over the course of the past decade. Consequently, aid agencies are changing their approach to security issues. Compared to aid agencies from other countries, especially the United Kingdom and the United States, German aid agencies have been relatively slow to adopt security measures. In addition, the security measures they have selected differ from one agency to another, even in comparable security contexts. The literature on organisational learning helps to explain these differences. The findings show that external and internal organisational factors influence an aid agency's choice of a particular security measure. The different responses of German aid agencies to the changing security environment demonstrate that security measures are not only influenced by an organisation's identity but also can be a way for them to demonstrate their identity and thereby distinguish themselves from other actors that deliver aid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Existing empirical evidence suggests that the Uncovered Interest Rate Parity condition may not hold due to an exchange risk premium. For a panel dataset of eleven emerging European economies we decompose this exchange risk premium into an idiosyncratic (country-specific) element and a common factor using a principal components approach. We present evidence of stationary idiosyncratic and common factors. This result leads to the conclusion of a stationary risk premium for these countries, which is consistent with previous studies often documenting a stationary premium in advanced countries. Furthermore, we report that the variation in the premium is largely attributable to a common factor influenced by economic developments in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author focuses on the lighting efficiency standards of the U.S. It mentions that these standards focus on energy costs, their environmental effects and consumer behavior. Breakthrough Institute's study focuses on low-cost efficiency measures for improving energy productivity and economic growth. It informs that American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) got agreed to tailor heating and cooling equipment standards for different climates.

This paper examines how the 2005 shift in Russian exchange rate policy from US dollar (USD) single-currency to USD-EUR (euro) bi-currency targeting has impacted domestic interest rates. The finding show that this policy shift has disconnected Russian interest rates from US dollar-denominated interest rates, while instead linking them to a synthetic interest rate composed of USD and EUR rates at the same proportion as that of these two currencies in the currency basket against which the ruble's exchange rate is set. The Russian experience shows that while the adoption of bi-currency targeting may help ensure that domestic interest rates are less dependent on the monetary cycle of a single country, these rates are instead likely to reflect financial developments in all countries whose currencies are included in the currency basket. This insight is likely to be relevant for other countries that pursue basket-targeting policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last 2 decades, Europe's economy experienced a productivity slowdown whereas the United States (US) economy exhibited a marked acceleration. The result is that since the early 1990s the relative productivity levels between the two regions have continuously diverged, leading to a transatlantic productivity gap. Much of the explanation for this is the strong performance of the US in the so-called 'new economy' or 'knowledge economy' and in particular the underinvestment in R&D, and as a result, productivity and innovation has been at the forefront in the European Policy agenda. However, various explanations for the US-European Union transatlantic productivity gap suggest that the picture is rather more complex than simply the effects on, or the result of, particular technology-driven sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on addressing the employment situation in the U.S. following the recent global rescission of 2008-2009. Both the former President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama Administrations enacted several programs designed to stimulate the economy and employment growth. However, initial analysis of some of the stimuli programs have found that the efforts had a fairly limited impact on job creation and unemployment, and any impact at a significant per-job cost. It is stated that direct job creation policies can be effective in the current environment.

Although standard theories suggest that patent protection helps stimulate innovative activities, some new theories argue the opposite. Empirical studies do not generate conclusive results either. This paper investigates empirically the impacts of foreign patent reforms on innovation in the US, using data on successful patent applications in the US over 33 years and major IPR reforms in 21 countries, in addition to the patent reforms in the US and the TRIPS Agreement of the WTO. We find that the TRIPS Agreement has had significant impacts on innovation in the US, which highlights the importance of international cooperation in patent protection. However, the effects of strengthening patent protection by individual countries are not statistically significant. This result seems to imply that the US market is already sufficiently large/profitable to provide innovation incentives in the US and therefore further strengthening foreign patent protection simply increases the US innovators' rent, but not their innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors reflect on the institutional framework of the economy of the U.S. and East Asia. They argue that in the setting of domestic political infighting over the reform for health care, the economic policy of U.S. President Barack Obama's administration could reflect tactical and not strategic conditions. A summary of the papers presented at the Eighth Asian Economic Policy Review Conference is also provided.

The article offers information on the study regarding the effect of recent tax changes on taxable income in the U.S. The elasticity of taxable income to the net-of-tax share has been estimated using a random sample of taxpayers taken from the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 and the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 tax changes. It is found that the elasticity of taxable income to the year 2008's net-of-tax share lies between 0.3 and 0.4 overall. The elasticity of a broader measure of income falls between 0.1 and 0.2 overall.

The sources of aggregate productivity growth are explored using detailed data for four-digit US manufacturing industries during 1958–96 and a decomposition formula that allows us to quantify the contribution of structural change. Labour productivity as well as total factor productivity are considered with either value-added or employment shares serving as aggregation weights. It is shown that structural change generally works in favour of industries with increasing productivity. This effect is particularly strong in the years since 1990, in high-tech industries and in durable goods producing industries. The impact of the computer revolution can be clearly identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A central issue in the debate regarding the relevance of social capital is whether the decline in social embeddedness that has attended modernization over the last 40 years in the United States is as harmful as Putnam, among others, claim it to be. Critics of Putnam's thesis argue that various arms-length institutions fulfil the roles performed by social capital thereby mitigating the negative impact of its recent decline. We develop a framework that provides insight into when such institutions may be adequate and when they might not. We find that if market (economic) and non-market (social) interactions differ in their payoffs but are interlinked through the modernization of the economy, the optimal level of modernization in market interactions will be higher than that in non-market interactions. Further, market supporting institutions are likely to increase the divergence between economic and social interactions since analogs for market institutions that constrain opportunistic behavior are usually nonexistent in social contexts. In this sense, economic progress may be accompanied by social regress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article identifies the independent effect of Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s (WMS) retail stores on changes in social capital in the U.S. in the 1990's. A conceptual model of the processes leading to changes in social capital is proposed. Researchers hypothesize that big-box corporations depress social capital stocks in local communities. This intensifies the adverse effects of losing local philanthropic capacity, reinvestment of surpluses and community-specific knowledge or capital. It is found that social capital stocks are lower in communities in which new WMS stores were built and in communities that already had a WMS at the beginning of the 1990's.

We discuss a method to estimate the confidence bounds for average economic growth, which is robust to misspecification of the unit root property of a given time series. We derive asymptotic theory for the consequences of such misspecification. Our empirical method amounts to an implementation of the subsampling procedure advocated in Romano and Wolf. Simulation evidence supports the theory and it also indicates the practical relevance of the subsampling method. We use quarterly postwar US industrial production for illustration and we show that non-robust approaches rather lead to different conclusions on average economic growth than our robust approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using industry data for the United States and the United Kingdom, we provide new evidence on the impact of information and communications technology (ICT) capital on real output growth. The traditional industry panel data analysis fails to find a positive contribution. We argue that this is due to heterogeneity across industries, particularly in the time dimension. Pooling the data for the two countries and using a dynamic panel data estimation method yield a positive and significant effect of ICT on output growth. Individual country estimates suggest a strong impact in the United States, while results are less conclusive in the United Kingdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Underlying factors in the growth of agriculture as a sector and of rural incomes in developing countries are investigated, using data from 85 countries during 1960–2001. Hypotheses about growth are derived from both the general growth literature and the empirical literature on past agricultural growth in the United States and other industrial countries. The growth of agriculture as a sector is surprisingly independent of the growth of income per capita for those who work in that sector. Neither is necessary nor sufficient for the other. Agricultural economics is in many circumstances not the key discipline in understanding the economics of rural income and poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Published QUARTERLY in the interest of constructive synthesis in the social sciences, under grants from the FrancisNeilsonFund and the RobertSchalkenbachFoundation.Founded in 1941Volume 64 April, 2005 Number 2 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Kyklos is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

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]

Abstract. I use U.S. manufacturing industry data to estimate a system of three equations implied by a model of R&D-induced growth in steady state. These equations relate R&D intensity to patenting, patenting to technological progress, and technological progress to economic growth. In each case, I find evidence of positive impact. Thus, I reject the null hypothesis that growth is not induced by R&D in favour of the Schumpeterian endogenous growth framework without scale effects. I also find strong support for technological spillovers from aggregate research intensity to industry-level innovation success. JEL Classification: O40, O30. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effects of state economic development incentives on the growth of 366 Ohio manufacturing and nonmanufacturing establishments that launched major expansions between 1993 and 1995. Growth is measured as the actual employment change that occurred in these establishments and as the employment growth announced when expansions were launched. Empirical findings indicate that incentives have very little (or even a negative) effect on actual growth and they have a substantial positive effect on announced growth. Findings also suggest that establishments that received incentives overestimated their announced employment targets more than establishments that did not receive incentives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diffusion theory and political economy are the two most common ways by which rural sociologists have explained the widespread use of agricultural innovations. In this paper, we argue, borrowing from science studies and using the empirical case of soybeans in Brazil, that the use of agricultural innovations is better understood as the result of the construction of networks of people and things. Thirty years ago soybean production in Brazil was insignificant. However, at that time a soybean network began to be formed. Initial actors were, among others, (1) soybean varieties produced in the United States, (2) wheat farmers located in the south of Brazil, and (3) soil in need of nitrogen, an expensive input for the new wheat varieties. State policies were no doubt important in consolidating that network. However, other persons, institutions and things were also necessary, including science and technology, the creation and/or expansion of farmers' organizations such as cooperatives, and the solution to the problem of photoperiod sensitivity in soybeans. We follow the soybean from its introduction in Brazil to its present status as an important crop. The overall context within which the soybean network began is also described. We conclude that the actor network approach is more congruent with the history of soybeans in Brazil than diffusion theory or political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on a study which examined the role of exports in aggregate economic growth in the United States (U.S.) using band spectral regression. Methodology; Analysis on the bivariate relationship in the U.S. between real exports and real output; Details on the empirical model used in the study; Conclusions.

The article focuses on Buffalo in New York City as a typical example of many other declining industrial centres. Although still a major manufacturing centre in New York Buffalo has suffered a sustained decline in industrial employment over the last decade. The article suggests that for Buffalo this process of decline has led to a fairly entrenched relationship between economic growth and social distribution namely that most kinds of economic growth lead to a worsening of distribution. This relationship is rather stable to other ongoing changes in the economy such as the long run trend from manufacturing to service activities. It also does not appear to be affected greatly by economic policies as diverse as the promotion of new economic activity versus support for older sectors. The first section of the article highlights the key income flows in the Buffalo economy followed by general discussion of the internal structure of the economy that shows the relationship between growth and social distribution.

Railroads in general, and those of the United States in particular, have been the subject of considerable controversy and debate for many years. At least four groups of economists have shown special interest in the economic and social role played by this often troubled industry. Economic historians have debated for many years the extent of the railways' contribution to economic progress. The purpose of the present paper is two-fold: first, authors apply to the railroads the tools of modern risk analysis, using for this purpose a comparatively neglected data set-the long-term series of holding period rates of return on railroad shares-in order to derive an operational measure of secular stagnation. Clearly, the U.S. railroads constitute a propitious subject for such an experiment. Second, the risk analysis will be used to gain additional insights into the industry's transition from growth to stagnation. The various stages of the industry's development are examined against the background of the data on rates of return.