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We analyze the impact of fiscal decentralization on U.S. county population, employment, and real income growth. Our findings suggest that government organization matters for local economic growth, but that the impacts vary by government unit and by economic indicator. We find that single-purpose governments per square mile have a positive impact on metropolitan population and employment growth, but no significant impact on nonmetropolitan counties. In contrast, the fragmentation of general-purpose governments per capita has a negative impact on employment and population growth in nonmetropolitan counties. Our results suggest that local government decentralization matters differently for metropolitan and nonmetropolitan counties.

This article analyzes determinants of growth across labor markets in the United States, using a production function approach based on four inputs: labor, manufacturing investment, human capital investment, and public capital investment. We find little role for public capital investment in growth, but that manufacturing investment spurred growth in nonmetropolitan areas, in contrast to metropolitan areas. We also find that human capital investment mattered more for metropolitan areas than for nonmetropolitan areas. Further, the presence of more colleges and universities, more household amenities, and lower tax rates are all found to have encouraged human capital accumulation in U.S. labor markets. Copyright 2008, Oxford University Press.

Written in a Platonic dialogue format, two long-time friends argue about the pros and cons of compulsory voting.

This research examines the trend in retail and services capture, as measured by location quotients, in counties throughout the South from 1969 to 1997. Analysis indicates that location quotients have been falling on average in nonmetropolitan and trade shed counties in the retail and services industries. However, location quotient values have not, in general, been converging to any particular value. Further, there is substantial mobility (both upward and down-ward) in county location quotients over time. Both findings suggest that there is potential for success with public policy programs designed to help local com-munities capture more local spending.

The federal Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) periodic release of updated metropolitan statistical area (MSA) definitions frequently garners significant attention from local economic development professionals and policymakers. The interest is grounded, in part, in the common belief that the designation of a region as a new MSA will spur its subsequent growth. The purpose of this paper is to test the hypothesis that the MSA designation influences local growth, using Office of Management and Budget (OMB) designations released since 1980 and data on per capita personal income, population, and employment. Based on results from several methods, including quasiexperimental matching, we find little evidence that the MSA designation has a significant impact on long-term employment or per capita income growth. However, we do find some evidence in favor of a short-run impact on aggregate employment growth and more significant impacts on population growth. We disaggregate employment and find significant short-run impacts on transportation and utilities; retail trade; and government. We find longer-term impacts on services and finance, insurance, and real estate employment growth

This paper extends the recent empirical literature on the relationship between local decentralization and growth using data from both metropolitan and non-metropolitan regions in the U.S. The analysis utilizes both metropolitan and non-metropolitan regions, and thus avoids the possible selection bias present in previous research. The results for non-metropolitan regions indicate a relatively weak or negative relationship between the local decentralization measures and local economic growth compared to a positive relationship suggested by a recent study on metropolitan regions. Results for the non-metro regions also suggest that there are different impacts across population and income than we observe for metropolitan regions.

We describe the system architecture and data template design for the Animal Diversity Web (http://www.animaldiversity.org), an online natural history resource serving three audiences: 1) the scientific community, 2) educators and learners, and 3) the general public. Our architecture supports highly scalable, flexible resource building by combining relational and object-oriented databases. Content resources are managed separately from identifiers that relate and display them. Websites targeting different audiences from the same database handle large volumes of traffic. Content contribution and legacy data are robust to changes in data models. XML and OWL versions of our data template set the stage for making ADW data accessible to other systems.

This paper examines how amenities, asset indicators, and fiscal factors influence the growth in factors of production from 1972 to 1999 in the 466 non-metropolitan labor market areas in the continental United States. In developing our model of non-metropolitan factor markets, we combine the emphasis of Brown et al. (2003) on the affect of taxes and public expenditure policy on labor and capital formation with the emphasis of Beeson et al. (2001) on the importance of climate and natural features on localized population growth. We develop our own measure of capital stock in non-metropolitan areas using data from the Census of Manufacturing for 1967, 1972, 1977, 1982, 1987, and 1992. Results indicate that local taxes discourage both employment growth and manufacturing capital formation, but that local public infrastructure investment and the level of local entrepreneurship encourages employment growth. Amenities such as a favorable climate and the presence of surface water encourage the growth of employment, and greater local wealth, as measured by dividend, interest, and rent income, encourages the formation of manufacturing capital stock. Results fail to support an “export base” approach for rural economies where greater manufacturing capital stock encourages greater employment in a region.

This article examines spatial aspects of distributional dynamics and finds that the distribution of US metropolitan incomes relative to their neighbours has diverged during the 1969-1999 period. Use of a spatial Markov approach shows that non-metropolitan neighbours of metropolitan regions have tended to converge during the period, with roughly equal rates of upward and downward mobility within the distribution. Non-metropolitan regions, not neighbouring metropolitan regions, show much less tendency to converge and reveal higher rates of downward rather than upward mobility. Results highlight regional differences in mobility coherence, with metropolitan areas in the West tending to outpace their non-metropolitan neighbours.

The loss of the exchange rate as an independent policy instrument implied by EMU has spurred calls for an insurance scheme as a buffer against temporary, asymmetric shocks to national income. We study the potential properties of such a system using historical data from the 12 EC economies. An insurance scheme with reasonable properties can be implemented on the basis of a fairly complex econometric formula. Simplifying the computation of the transfers severely worsens the performance of the system, however. Forcing the system to balance financially is not a critical constraint. The simulations show that stabilizing asymmetric shocks around a common trend may amplify the univariate variance of GDP for some member countries.

Three experiments were conducted on antipredator behaviors of newly metamorphosed green frogs (Rana clamitans) and northern leopard frogs (R. pipiens) in the presence of a common predator, the eastern garter snake (Thamnophis s. sirtalis). Both species engaged in distinctive antipredator behaviors, i.e., crouching and ceasing to move, in the presence of active snakes. These behaviors rendered frogs less likely to be captured. Green frogs were contacted by snakes more frequently than were leopard frogs, but capture rates of individuals that had been contacted were not different between species. Green frogs allowed snakes to approach more closely, and they jumped more frequently upon initial escape, than leopard frogs. Morphological measurements showed that there were no specific differences in snout-vent length, or in snout-vent length/leg length ratios, but that the average leap distance was greater for leopard frogs compared to green frogs. The results supported the hypothesis that leopard frogs use distance from the predator in terrestrial habitats more effectively than do green frogs to avoid predation, which agreed generally with some descriptive field results reported elsewhere.

In this, the 17th Foundation Annual Lecture, George Hammond asserts that the skills of public relations practitioners have never been more valuable than they are in this era of specialization. Yet, he says, these skills remain underutilized and poorly understood. To remedy this, Mr. Hammond says, public relations people must be tireless in their efforts to render service in “the best interests of the majority” and must understand how their goals are related to social movements.