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The decade of the seventies thus far has witnessed a considerable amount of legislative attention directed at rural areas. Under the general heading or rural development no fewer than 48 bills were introduced in the first session of the 92nd Congress in the House of Representatives and 22 bills were introduced in the U.S. Senate. Few of these became law but the sheer numbers give some indication as to the political importance of the issues involved. The purpose of this paper is to focus on a portion of one of the most important pieces of rural development legislation, the Rural Development Act of 1972 (RDA-72). This article traces the legislative history and the philosophical assumptions of RDA-72 with particular regard to the provisions of rural industrialization in the U.S.

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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.

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.

Considerable attention has been devoted in the past to the methodological issues involved in the measurement and explanation of economic growth. Following the method pioneered by Denison and applied by him to the United States and Western Europe, comparative studies have been made of various other countries; that for Japan is of special interest. The present paper extends the analysis to the Soviet Union. In order to preserve comparability, the analysis follows the Denison methodology exactly, and compares the results with those for the United States, Northwest Europe, and Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Radical changes, up and down, have taken place in the estimates of growth in total factor productivity in the U.S. made by different economists, or by the same economists at different times. If such estimates provide ‘some sort of measure of our ignorance,’ as Abramovitz once put it, we seemed to be a lot less ignorant in 1927 (when Cobb and Douglas published their famous paper), or in 1967 (when Jorgenson and Griliches published theirs), than we were in the years between (when Schmookler, Abramovitz, Kendrick, and Denison completed their studies), or than we are today (when we have, or will soon have, revised estimates by Denison and by Kendrick, and new estimates by Christensen and Jorgenson). Viewed in this perspective, many questions may be raised about the significance of the current estimates that something like a third or more of the rate of increase in U.S. national output is ‘due’ to increase in productivity, as well as about the concepts, data, and methods that underlie the estimates. A list of particular subjects worth considering for research is given and each is briefly discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has become almost a cliché that measured growth in the U.S. is being overstated. The classic on the subject is by Mishan, who argues persuasively that the (uncounted) externalities from production in industrialized economies are overtaking the production which these economies are counting. But externalities are not the only problems in measuring economic activity and economic growth. Two other problems of equal importance, but more amenable to measurement, are the distinction between final and intermediate production, and the quantification of nonmarket productive behavior. In this paper, we concentrate on one aspect of the measurement of nonmarket behavior—the value of production at home by housewives. Specifically, we will present estimates of the value of home based nonmarket production by housewives. These estimates will then be used to supplement various national product aggregates in order to calculate more accurate growth rates for the U.S. economy. We find that the value of nonmarket production by married women during the 1960's has averaged approximately thirty percent of the GNP and close to 40 percent of the national income. The inclusion of the nonmarket work of housewives in GNP would reduce the measured rate of growth of real GNP per potential worker by about ten percent, the exact amount depending on how the value of nonmarket work is estimated. Our estimates indicate a reduction in the absolute rate of growth of almost 0.25 percent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

There are two hypotheses concerning how rapid growth affects women in rural communities: (1) women are more adversely affected than men, and (2) growth liberates women from their traditional sex roles. We used a specific subgroup of the female population-single, never- married females of marriageable age-to examine these two hypotheses. This paper focuses on how a male marriage-market squeeze caused by the influx of a large number of single, never-married males of marriageable age affects these females. The hypotheses, combined with proposals drawn from the demographic literature on marriage markets, are tested using data from counties in Montana and Utah impacted by energy development in the mid- and late 1970s. The measures used are changes in nuptiality rates and age patterns of first marriages. Our results do not allow us to fully accept or reject either hypothesis. Rather, changes in age patterns of marriage indicate that sorting out the local effects from the more pervasive social effects is problematic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the process of uneven development in the Deep South, focusing on the decade of 1970-1980. Measures developed from Census and County Business Pasterns data are used to examine several industrialization processes in all the counties of Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and Mississippi. These data reveal that changes in manufacturing establishments and employment are not uniform across the region, and low-wage industries continue to dominate the economy of the region. Further, the analysis documents the continuing significance of racial composition in these industrialization processes: plant and employment increases are more likely for predominantly white counties and losses more likely for counties having large black populations. Counties having high proportions of blacks and poor whites display the strongest attractions for low-wage industries. I also examine the effects of other labor-market characteristics upon the development process and suggest policy implications on the basis of these findings. [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]

The article features a comment of the tax base sharing plan in metropolitan areas in the U.S. In the article of Andrew Reschovsky, he evaluated that the Twin Cities had lower their inequities and has the potential to furnish an efficient pattern of land use. This commentary is designed to describe shortfalls of the Reschovsky paper regarding the treatment of equity and benefits of the areas' tax base sharing plans. Two arguments were presented: First, independent fiscal behavior allows an implicit market for business locations; Second, the tax base sharing will unlikely improve undersupply of open space which answers to community interest.

Recent studies of state assumption of the CDBG-Small Cities program have been limited by two factors. First, they have been single-state case studies or confined to a small number of states. Second, they have adopted a narrow context for examining the likely impacts of community development following state assumption. This paper attempts to expand policy information based upon earlier work by studying a larger cross-section of states and considering the issues of redistribution and decentralization from a broader context. We find some significant policy changes from previous HUD program management but suggest that such may be due to the CDBG economic development amendment and an increase in multipurpose projects in the states. Unlike Morgan and England's (1984) recent article in PAR, we suggest that decentralization may not necessarily lead to decreasing redistributive community development policies in the states. Rather, redistribution may be incorporated within the enlarging proportion of multipurpose projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increases in expected inflation or real growth in net rental income to land have been proposed as alternative explanations of the dramatic real growth in U.S. farmland prices in the 1970s. In this paper the effect of inflation is shown to be theoretically ambiguous. An empirical analysis, using U.S. and international farmland prices, suggests that most of the real land price growth can be explained by real growth in net rental income to land. Increases in expected inflation have had a negative effect on real land prices, but the effect of inflation has been comparatively small. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to measure the impact of investment in education on U.S. economic growth. Education is treated as an investment in human capital, since benefits accrue to an educated individual over a lifetime of activities. One of the most important benefits is higher income from labor market participation. This is the key to understanding the link between investment in education and economic growth. Our most important finding is that investment in human and nonhuman capital accounts for an overwhelming proportion of the growth of the U.S. economy during the postwar period. Educational investment will continue to predominate in the investment requirements for more rapid growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the convergence between the economists living in the Midwest and those living in the East and West Coasts of the U.S. who have separate approaches in macroeconomics in view of the paper of economist Bennett McCallum focusing on the new classical macroeconomics as of June 1989. Approach of the Midwest economists on the role of imperfect competition in price setting; Views of the East and West Coasts economists on economic growth; Impact of the convergence on several issues about macroeconomics.

This paper attempts to marshal available, albeit imperfect, evidence on the relationship between water availability and economic growth in the United States over the 1950-1960 decade. Since water resource investments are currently being planned on a very large scale as tools for promoting regional economic development (e.g. Appalachia and the Southwest) and since past water resource developments have frequently been defended in terms of their favorable impact on regional development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the paper was to provide an objective and systematic appraisal of the capacity of black-owned commercial banks to finance economic development in the black community. This appeared to be a vital task at the time since these institutions were being formed at an accelerated rate with that specific aim in mind. On the basis of the evidence analyzed (virtually all of which was newly generated information available only through Federal bank supervisory agencies), I concluded that black banks were not viable instruments of economic development. However, I also concluded that they could perform some minor services of benefit to their local areas, and they could serve as symbols of black achievement. As an alternative source of financing, I proposed a domestic version of the existing Edge Corporations. These are subsidiaries of U.S. commercial banks formed for the purpose of conducting foreign financial activities. Among the latter, they can have varying amounts of equity investments in non-financial enterprises abroad. It was this feature which I thought offered promise as a means of expanding the availability of risk-bearing funds in black communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper offers some reflections on the convergence of productivity in the United States and Europe, which essentially stopped in the 1990s. It argues that the barriers preventing further convergence in the early 1990s were removed subsequently. But since then trends in productivity growth have been importantly affected by the advent of the New Economy, which poses further challenges for Europe. Without additional reform of European labor markets, financial markets, and university systems, we may be on the eve of another era of persistent divergence. [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.'

This study evaluates the relationship between the spatial distribution of broadband providers and the presence of knowledge intensive firm clusters in US counties. Results highlight this relationship is heterogeneous and localized. In some places, broadband appears to be an essential link that enables knowledge firms to strategically locate in lower cost counties and in close proximity to major knowledge centres. In other places, the availability of broadband Internet connections are unable the negative externalities associated with locations in more remote areas of the country. From a policy perspective, this suggests that broadband should be viewed as a key component, but not the only component, of comprehensive local economic development plans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both large-scale immigration and rapid expansion of the railroad network played major roles in the economic development of the United States during the second half of the 19th century. Although the romance of the settlement of the West has received much attention in the literature, the northeast remained the industrial powerhouse of the continent, attracting large numbers of immigrants to work in its mines, factories and mills, despite the growing ascendancy of Chicago. However, new research using the complete count US 1880 census dataset demonstrates that until the latter part of the period, the US railroad industry and its associated employment opportunities were also heavily concentrated in the northeast region. This paper examines the interrelationships between processes of immigration and railroad development, in terms of the movement of people and the availability of employment opportunities, and presents evidence that different ethnic groups participated in the railroad industry to markedly varying degrees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new economic geography (NEG) has become a mainstay of regional science in the last two decades, as signified by the awarding of Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize. Yet, most American regional scientists and urban/regional economists do not use NEG in determining regional growth patterns. Instead, they rely on factors such as natural amenity migration, whose roots lie back to the work of Philip Graves in the mid 1970s. Conversely, two of the world's leading economic geographers – Allen Scott and Michael Storper – have strongly argued that job availability not household amenities have determined US regional dynamics. Given the disparity of views over the largest developed economy in the world, we hold a competition to determine which of these leading contenders accurately predict US interregional growth dynamics over the last 40–60 years. The runaway winner of the duel is natural amenity led growth with the crown going to Graves. Implications are drawn for both empirical research and EU economic integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban sprawl has evolved into an exceptionally complex public policy problem in the United States over the course of recent decades. One factor that has made it particularly difficult to deal with is its relationship to the fragmented structure of the American system of land use governance. Acting on behalf of their residents, local governments enact land use regulations to secure lifestyle preferences for low density, suburban living environments while at the same time ensuring a high quality of public service provision. This article examines the effect of this process on metropolitan spatial structure through a series of econometric models designed to test the following hypothesis: that fragmentation promotes sprawl by increasing the proportion of growth that occurs at the unincorporated urban fringe. The estimation results reveal substantive evidence that municipal fragmentation and several related factors - including special districts, infrastructure investments, and white flight processes - have a significant and enduring effect on the growth of outlying areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyses the impact of regulatory legislation, specifically the Nunn- McCurdy Act, by the United States Congress on major military acquisition programmes. Nunn- McCurdy's stated objective is to curtail cost growth in weapon system acquisitions. To achieve this end, the legislation threatens cancellation of military acquisition programmes that breach specified cost growth thresholds. This effort collects and analyses a unique data set spanning the lifetime of the Nunn- McCurdy legislation to reveal the threat of termination is rarely enforced. Secondary effects, in the form of programme restructuring are found to be prevalent, but not in those areas that most adversely affect the programme. Thus, Nunn- McCurdy does not provide a strong incentive for acquisition programmes to change processes or procedures. As a result, the legislation is ineffectual in achieving its objective, and cost growth in major US military acquisition programmes remains problematic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]