Most recent papers:

• A Review of Volume 5 of the Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, Parts III and IV.
  Thomas Davidoff.
  Journal of Regional Science. October 05, 2017
  This paper reviews parts III and IV of the recent Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics. Many of the surveys within the Handbook relate to two phenomena of interest: the recent boom and bust cycle in U.S. housing markets, and the striking growth of home prices in a few global “Superstar Cities.” Real Estate and Urban economists have made progress in modeling these phenomena. There is considerable room for future research, however. There is no coherent story explaining U.S. home price movements in the 2000s that does not run afoul of important stylized facts. We also have not yet identified the relative importance of supply constraints and demand growth in the rise of Superstar City prices.

  October 05, 2017   doi: 10.1111/jors.12360   open full text
• The impact of bargaining delays under the threat of eminent domain.
  Javier E. Portillo.
  Journal of Regional Science. September 26, 2017
  Developers seeking to assemble complementary parcels of land will likely encounter strategic behavior by landowners. Using a property‐level data set from Florida's Department of Transportation covering the period January 2000 to July 2014, I test whether bargaining delays lead to higher final transaction prices. Given the nature of the data, I can compare properties within the same roadway project to estimate the effect of delayed negotiations. My empirical estimates indicate that bargaining delays lead to increased final transaction prices. The magnitude of this effect is approximately 7 percent for the average holdout, however, the effect is nonlinear and diminishes over time.

  September 26, 2017   doi: 10.1111/jors.12363   open full text
• Dynamic road pricing and the value of time and reliability.
  Daniel A. Brent, Austin Gross.
  Journal of Regional Science. September 26, 2017
  High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes that use dynamic pricing to manage congestion and generate revenue are increasingly popular. In this paper, we estimate the behavioral response of drivers to dynamic pricing in an HOT lane. The challenge in estimation lies in the simultaneity of price and demand: the structure of dynamic tolling ensures that prices increase as more drivers enter the HOT lane. Prior research has found that higher prices in HOT lanes increase usage. We find that after controlling for simultaneity HOT drivers instead respond to tolls in a manner consistent with economic theory. The average response to a 10 percent increase in the toll is a 1.6 percent reduction in usage. Drivers primarily value travel reliability over time savings, although there is heterogeneity in the relative values of time and reliability based on time of day and destination to or from work. The results highlight the importance of both controlling for simultaneity when estimating demand for dynamically priced toll roads and treating HOT lanes with dynamic prices as a differentiated product with bundled attributes.

  September 26, 2017   doi: 10.1111/jors.12362   open full text
• Elastic labor supply and agglomeration.
  Takanori Ago, Tadashi Morita, Takatoshi Tabuchi, Kazuhiro Yamamoto.
  Journal of Regional Science. September 15, 2017
  This study analyzes the interplay between the agglomeration of economic activities and interregional differences in working hours, which are typically longer in large cities, as they are normally more developed than small cities. For this purpose, we develop a two‐region model with endogenous labor supply. Although we assume a symmetric distribution of immobile workers, the symmetric equilibrium breaks in the sense that firms may agglomerate when trade costs are intermediate and labor supply is elastic. We also show that the price index is always lower, while labor supply, per capita income, real wages, and welfare are always higher in the more agglomerated region.

  September 15, 2017   doi: 10.1111/jors.12361   open full text
• A review of volume 5 of the Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics.
  Keith Head, Thierry Mayer, Gianmarco Ottaviano.
  Journal of Regional Science. August 10, 2017
  There is no abstract available for this paper.

  August 10, 2017   doi: 10.1111/jors.12356   open full text
• The effect of vacant building demolitions on crime under depopulation.
  Christina Plerhoples Stacy.
  Journal of Regional Science. August 10, 2017
  The costs of demolishing a vacant building are often justified on the grounds of crime reduction. I explore this claim by estimating the spatial and temporal effects of demolitions on reported crime in the city of Saginaw, Michigan. To do so, I estimate a model that uses within‐block group variation to compare crime after a demolition occurs to before the permit for that demolition was issued. Results indicate that demolitions reduce crime by about 8 percent on the block group in question and 5 percent on nearby block groups, with the largest impact concentrated one to two months after the demolition occurs.

  August 10, 2017   doi: 10.1111/jors.12350   open full text
• A real options approach to amenity valuation: The role of uncertainty and risk aversion.
  Andreas Mense.
  Journal of Regional Science. August 10, 2017
  Many empirical studies in the fields of urban and environmental economics rely on the hedonic pricing framework. This paper draws attention to two important elements that are not covered by this theory: uncertainty and relocation costs. It develops a theoretical model where agents face uncertainty, but may accumulate savings as a form of self‐insurance. It shows that uncertainty pushes up relocation costs due to the option value of waiting, while self‐insurance helps to reduce this lock‐in problem. Moreover, the model suggests that the implicit price of environmental quality increases with uncertainty even if agents are risk‐neutral.

  August 10, 2017   doi: 10.1111/jors.12355   open full text
• Industrial clusters, organized crime, and productivity growth in Italian SMEs.
  Roberto Ganau, Andrés Rodríguez‐Pose.
  Journal of Regional Science. August 10, 2017
  We examine whether organized crime affects firms’ performance (defined using Total Factor Productivity growth) both directly and indirectly, by downsizing the positive externalities arising from the geographic concentration of (intra‐ and inter‐industry) market‐related firms. The analysis uses a large sample of Italian small‐ and medium‐sized manufacturing firms over the period 2010–2013. The results highlight the negative direct effects of organized crime on firms’ productivity growth. Any positive effect derived from industrial clustering is thoroughly debilitated by a strong presence of organized crime, and the negative moderation effect of organized crime on productivity growth is greater for smaller than for larger firms.

  August 10, 2017   doi: 10.1111/jors.12354   open full text
• Spatial distribution of US employment in an urban efficiency wage setting.
  José Ignacio Giménez‐Nadal, José Alberto Molina, Jorge Velilla.
  Journal of Regional Science. August 10, 2017
  We analyze whether efficiency wages operate in urban labor markets, within the framework proposed by Ross and Zenou, in which shirking at work and leisure are assumed to be substitutes. We use unique data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) that allow us to analyze the relationships between leisure, shirking, commuting, employment, and earnings. We confirm that shirking and leisure are substitutes, and present an estimate of this relationship, representing the only empirical test of the relationship between a worker's time endowment and shirking at work. Our findings point to the existence of efficiency wages in labor markets.

  August 10, 2017   doi: 10.1111/jors.12351   open full text
• The spatial dimension of internal labor markets.
  Marisa Tavares, Anabela Carneiro, José Varejão.
  Journal of Regional Science. August 10, 2017
  We integrate into a unified framework the spatial and the employment dimensions of worker mobility, tracing workers across firms, across establishments, and across regions. Drawing upon the spatial dimension of internal labor markets in firms with multiple establishments in multiple locations, our results indicate that the contemporaneous wage premium to migration is around 3 percentage points. For the case of job switchers, we find that the return to regional migration is due to access to better jobs at the destination. We also document the existence of an urban premium for same‐employer migrants but for employer changes this premium is driven by selection.

  August 10, 2017   doi: 10.1111/jors.12353   open full text
• Sectoral diversification as insurance against economic instability.
  Jan Kluge.
  Journal of Regional Science. August 10, 2017
  This paper examines the extent to which sectoral diversification can act as an insurance mechanism against fluctuations in regional gross value‐added growth rates. Portfolio theory is applied to the growth‐instability properties of German districts. Furthermore, a comprehensive diversification measure is defined. Stochastic Frontier Analysis is deployed in order to estimate whether diversification allows regions to achieve more efficient growth‐instability combinations. The results confirm that diversification does generate such effects. Spatial interactions do also play a role: The effects are less pronounced for regions whose economic performance is mainly driven by the surrounding regions.

  August 10, 2017   doi: 10.1111/jors.12349   open full text
• Innovation across cities.
  Kwok Tong Soo.
  Journal of Regional Science. August 09, 2017
  This paper examines the distribution of patenting activity across cities in the OECD, using a sample of 218 cities from 2000 to 2008. We obtain three main results. First, patenting activity is more concentrated than population and GDP. Second, patenting activity is less persistent than population and GDP, especially in the middle of the distribution. Third, in a parametric model, patenting does not exhibit mean‐reversion, and is positively associated with GDP and population density. Our results suggest that policymakers can influence the amount of innovative activity through the use of appropriate policies.

  August 09, 2017   doi: 10.1111/jors.12352   open full text
• Entry into working life: Internal migration and the job match quality of higher‐educated graduates.
  Viktor A. Venhorst, Frank Cörvers.
  Journal of Regional Science. May 16, 2017
  We estimate the impact of internal migration on job‐match quality for recent Dutch university and college graduates. We find positive yet modest wage returns. After controlling for the self‐selection of migrants with an IV approach, this effect is no longer significant for university graduates and all graduates from peripheral areas. We also find that, for our alternative job‐match measures, where there is evidence of migrant self‐selection, controlling for self‐selection strongly reduces the effect of internal migration on job‐match quality. In some cases, the returns on internal migration are found to be negative, which may signal forced migration.

  May 16, 2017   doi: 10.1111/jors.12347   open full text
• Secession of municipalities and economies of scale: Evidence from Brazil.
  Ricardo Carvalho de Andrade Lima, Raul da Mota Silveira Neto.
  Journal of Regional Science. May 16, 2017
  In the 1990s, there was a growing process of administrative decentralization that culminated in the creation of 1,016 new municipalities in Brazil. The aim of this paper is to verify the impact of the municipal secessions on the public expenditures and its association with economies of scale. Based on a Differences‐in‐Differences methodology, the obtained set of evidence indicates that those municipalities that underwent a secession process increased their per capita capital expenditures by 14.7 percent. In addition, we show evidence that strongly suggests that this increase in expenses can be explained by a reduction in economies of scale and rent‐seeking behavior.

  May 16, 2017   doi: 10.1111/jors.12348   open full text
• Market size, occupational self‐selection, sorting, and income inequality.
  Kristian Behrens, Dmitry Pokrovsky, Evgeny Zhelobodko.
  Journal of Regional Science. May 08, 2017
  We develop a monopolistic competition model with heterogeneous agents who self‐select into occupations (entrepreneurs and workers) depending on innate ability. The effect of market size on the equilibrium occupational structure crucially hinges on properties of the lower tier utility function—its scale elasticity and relative love‐for‐variety. When combined with the underlying ability distribution, the share of entrepreneurs and income inequality can increase or decrease with market size. When extended to allow for the endogenous sorting of mobile agents between cities, numerical examples suggest that sorting may increase inequality within and between cities.

  May 08, 2017   doi: 10.1111/jors.12342   open full text
• How does transportation shape intrametropolitan growth? An answer from the Regional Express Rail.
  Miquel‐Àngel Garcia‐López, Camille Hémet, Elisabet Viladecans‐Marsal.
  Journal of Regional Science. April 10, 2017
  This paper analyzes the influence of transportation infrastructure, and in particular of the Regional Express Rail (RER), on employment and population growth in the Paris metropolitan area between 1968 and 2010. In order to make proper causal inference, we rely on historical instruments and control for all other transportation modes that could be complement or substitute to the RER. Our results show that proximity to an RER station increases employment and population density and, in particular, employment and population growth. The latter effects are higher in municipalities located near RER stations and close to employment (sub)centers. They are also found to be particularly strong for jobs in the service sector, for factory workers, and for highly educated population. We find no impact of the RER expansion on employment growth during the first part of the period, while the effect on population growth appears earlier but declines over time.

  April 10, 2017   doi: 10.1111/jors.12338   open full text
• Human capital accumulation and long‐term income growth projections for European regions.
  Jesús Crespo Cuaresma, Gernot Doppelhofer, Florian Huber, Philipp Piribauer.
  Journal of Regional Science. April 10, 2017
  We propose an econometric framework to construct projections for per capita income growth and human capital for European regions. Using Bayesian methods, our approach accounts for model uncertainty in terms of the choice of explanatory variables, the nature of spatial spillovers, as well as the potential endogeneity between output growth and human capital accumulation. This method allows us to assess the potential contribution of future educational attainment to economic growth and income convergence among European regions over the next decades. Our findings suggest that income convergence dynamics and human capital act as important drivers of income growth for the decades to come.

  April 10, 2017   doi: 10.1111/jors.12339   open full text
• Why do people stay in or leave Fukushima?
  Shinya Horie, Shunsuke Managi.
  Journal of Regional Science. April 03, 2017
  From the originally constructed survey data from 2011 Fukushima incident, this paper empirically assessed the sources of failures in disaster risk mitigation in short run. Although residential relocation from the cites at risk is one of the effective risk reduction measures, the relocation incurs mobility costs of developing social capital such as communities or searching public services such as education and medical institutions. The estimation results showed that the residents in the disaster cites of 2011 Fukushima incident can tolerate higher risks of radiation exposure when they have attachment to the original residence or higher demands for the public services, and can stay in the cites at risks consequently. Because the tolerance level can depend on the information associated with the risks, the results imply that the authorities’ providing the correct information is one of the keys for the disaster risk reduction in short run.

  April 03, 2017   doi: 10.1111/jors.12341   open full text
• Renewable energy innovations and sustainability transition: How relevant are spatial spillovers?
  Florian Noseleit.
  Journal of Regional Science. April 03, 2017
  In the societal challenge to switch to renewable energy, innovation has become an ever‐increasing critical determinant. However, while sustainability transition is a global challenge, diffusion and adoption of innovation tends to be uneven in space and unequal access may cause substantial heterogeneity in energy transition. This research analyzes how domestic and foreign innovation activities in the renewable energy sector influence energy transition over time. Empirical testing shows that a country's domestic innovation activity impacts renewable electricity generation capacity sooner than foreign technological innovations. I document that there are substantial barriers to substitute foreign technologies for domestic innovation efforts in the short run but also observe that foreign technologies have a stronger impact after some years. These findings have implications for cross‐border coordination of governmental innovation support and complementary policy instruments that aim at increasing adoption speed across borders.

  April 03, 2017   doi: 10.1111/jors.12340   open full text
• Agglomeration economies and the location of foreign direct investment: A meta‐analysis.
  Jonathan Jones.
  Journal of Regional Science. April 03, 2017
  This paper undertakes a meta‐analysis of the effect of agglomeration economies on foreign direct investment (FDI) location. It finds strong differences in these economies arising from both measurement and study‐specific characteristics. Economies generated from domestic rather than foreign activity have the strongest effects on FDI, with the latter only significant if related to the home country of the investor. Support is also found for studies that identify different sources of agglomeration economies, although this is largely underexplored in the empirical literature. The average agglomeration economies estimate is not influenced by publication bias and indicates genuine effects for agglomeration economies on FDI location choice.

  April 03, 2017   doi: 10.1111/jors.12335   open full text
• Working women in the city and urban wage growth in the United States.
  Amanda L. Weinstein.
  Journal of Regional Science. April 03, 2017
  Although the female labor force participation rate of women has been steadily rising in the United States, there is substantial variation across cities. Previous cross‐county studies find that gender inequality in employment reduces economic efficiency hindering growth. This result is examined in a regional context, across metropolitan areas in the United States. Throughout multiple model formulations including instrumental variables approaches, higher initial female labor force participation rates are positively related to subsequent wage growth in metropolitan areas between 1980 and 2010. Specifically, every 10 percent increase in female labor force participation rates is associated with an increase in real wages of nearly 5 percent.

  April 03, 2017   doi: 10.1111/jors.12336   open full text
• The impact of EU Objective 1 funds on regional development: Evidence from the U.K. and the prospect of Brexit.
  Marco Di Cataldo.
  Journal of Regional Science. March 09, 2017
  Brexit means that regions of the United Kingdom will lose access to the EU Cohesion Policy. Have EU funds been effective, and what might be the consequences of an interruption of EU financial support? This paper studies the impact of “Objective 1” funding—the highest form of EU aid—in Cornwall and South Yorkshire, two of the U.K.’s most subsidized regions. Counterfactual methodologies assessing their labor market and economic performance provide evidence of a positive effect of EU Objective 1 funds. When in 2006 South Yorkshire lost Objective 1 eligibility, this massively reduced its share of EU funds and the region was unable to sustain the gains obtained in previous years. This suggests that while Structural Funds may be effectively improving socio‐economic conditions of poorer regions, the performance of subsidized areas could be deeply affected by a reduction (or worse, an interruption) of EU aid.

  March 09, 2017   doi: 10.1111/jors.12337   open full text
• What Makes Cities More Productive? Evidence From Five Oecd Countries On The Role Of Urban Governance.
  Rudiger Ahrend, Emily Farchy, Ioannis Kaplanis, Alexander C. Lembcke.
  Journal of Regional Science. January 31, 2017
  In estimating agglomeration benefits across five OECD countries, this paper represents the first empirical analysis that contrasts cross‐country evidence on agglomeration benefits with the productivity impact of metropolitan governance structures, while taking into account the potential sorting of individuals across cities. The comparability of results in a multicountry setting is supported through the use of a new internationally harmonised definition of cities based on economic linkages rather than administrative boundaries. The analysis finds that cities with fragmented governance structures tend to have lower levels of productivity. The estimated elasticity for an increase in the number of local jurisdiction is 0.06, which is halved by the existence of a metropolitan governance body. The productivity effect is sizeable and at least as important as the agglomeration benefit found due to city size.

  January 31, 2017   doi: 10.1111/jors.12334   open full text
• Local Public Services Costs And The Geography Of Development: Evidence From Florida Counties*.
  Keith Ihlanfeldt, Kevin Willardsen.
  Journal of Regional Science. January 10, 2017
  Theory suggests that the spatial distribution of development within a local jurisdiction affects the costs of providing local public services. We use GINI coefficients to characterize these distributions at the county level and estimate the effects on real per capita expenditures from reductions in the spatial concentration of all buildings and nine alternative types of development. We also estimate the effect on expenditures from expansions in the developed area of a county. The results obtained from a panel of Florida counties confirm our theory and suggest that the geography of development within a county affects public services costs.

  January 10, 2017   doi: 10.1111/jors.12333   open full text
• Do Federal Deficits Motivate Regional Fiscal (Im)Balances? Evidence For The Spanish Case.
  Agustín Molina‐Parra, Diego Martínez‐López.
  Journal of Regional Science. December 27, 2016
  This paper studies the vertical and horizontal interactions between federal and regional governments in terms of public deficits. Recent studies commonly restraint budget slippages to the incentives created by the institutional arrangements within a country. Alternatively, we estimate here a fiscal reaction function for the Spanish regions over the period 1995–2010, paying special attention to the impact of the federal fiscal stance on regional fiscal imbalances. Our results indicate that higher public deficits for the central government encourage larger fiscal imbalances at the regional level. This vertical interaction is interpreted in the context of yardstick competition models. We also find a significant impact from fiscal decisions taken by governments at the same decision‐making tier in a specific region.

  December 27, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12328   open full text
• Returns To College Majors Across Large Metropolitan Areas.
  Brian J. Phelan, William Sander.
  Journal of Regional Science. December 27, 2016
  In this paper, we provide new evidence that earnings for various college majors differ across large metropolitan areas in the United States. We then set out to explain, at least in part, why these differences exist. We find that the intrinsic elements of geographic areas, such as common agglomeration effects and spatial differences in demand, are an important explanation for all majors. Further, we find that the endogenous sorting of individuals plays less of a role, particularly for domestic‐born college graduates. The sorting of lower‐paid, foreign‐born college graduates, however, increases the estimated dispersion in returns across geographic areas.

  December 27, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12329   open full text
• When And How Does Commuting To Cities Influence Rural Employment Growth?
  Niclas Lavesson.
  Journal of Regional Science. December 13, 2016
  This paper estimates the influence that rural‐to‐urban commuting has on rural employment growth, and whether the strength and spatial reach of this effect depend on commuters’ levels of education. A main finding is that rural‐to‐urban commuting has a robust positive impact on rural employment growth in services and retail. There is no significant difference in how far these effects reach into rural Sweden for commuters with different levels of education. These results suggest that a viable policy for local employment growth in rural areas with reasonable commuting times to urban centers is to improve the commuting to urban centers.

  December 13, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12324   open full text
• Panel Data Models With Spatially Dependent Nested Random Effects.
  Bernard Fingleton, Julie Gallo, Alain Pirotte.
  Journal of Regional Science. December 13, 2016
  This paper focuses on panel data models combining spatial dependence with a nested (hierarchical) structure. We use a generalized moments estimator to estimate the spatial autoregressive parameter and the variance components of the disturbance process. A spatial counterpart of the Cochrane‐Orcutt transformation leads to a feasible generalized least squares procedure to estimate the regression parameters. Monte Carlo simulations show that our estimators perform well in terms of root mean square error compared to the maximum likelihood estimator. The approach is applied to English house price data for districts nested within counties.

  December 13, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12327   open full text
• International Air Travel And Fdi Flows: Evidence From Barcelona.
  Xavier Fageda.
  Journal of Regional Science. December 05, 2016
  This paper provides a bridge between the literature examining the economic impact of air services and the literature analyzing the determinants of bilateral FDI flows. I estimate a gravity equation for the determinants of bilateral FDI flows between the Spanish region of Catalonia, home to the airport of Barcelona, and countries of all over the world for the period 2002–2015. I find evidence that the reduction in travel time due to the availability of nonstop flights scheduled with sufficient frequency increases the amount of FDI due to the enhanced transmission of information.

  December 05, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12325   open full text
• Housing Consumption Declines With Income In The Open‐City Model: Theory And Empirical Evidence.
  Yishen Liu.
  Journal of Regional Science. December 05, 2016
  This paper demonstrates that the standard urban model (SUM) has important, previously unknown, and rather counterintuitive predictions about the determinants of housing consumption in cities. For example, the SUM predicts that, as higher wages in the central business district prompt city growth, the housing space per household falls, that is, rising income is associated with falling housing consumption. Empirical testing using a specially constructed panel data set of U.S. cities, confirms this prediction. When city size, income, and housing price rise, housing space per household falls.

  December 05, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12326   open full text
• Location And Entrepreneurship: Insights From A Spatially‐Explicit Occupational Choice Model With An Application To Chile.
  Félix Modrego, Philip McCann, William E. Foster, M. Rose Olfert.
  Journal of Regional Science. December 05, 2016
  Occupational choice and heterogeneous managerial ability enter a spatial Dixit‐Stiglitz setting, linking location, wages and regional entrepreneurship rates. Market potential has a positive partial effect and wages a negative partial effect on the regional supply of entrepreneurs, both balancing in equilibrium with endogenous wages. Market potential increases profits, but also the opportunity cost of entrepreneurship. In the long‐run equilibrium with perfect mobility, the cut‐off level of ability determining selection into entrepreneurship will be the same across regions; moreover, regional differences in entrepreneurship rates depend only in differences in average fixed costs of firms. An empirical application is provided for Chile.

  December 05, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12323   open full text
• Coal Mining And The Resource Curse In The Eastern United States.
  Stratford Douglas, Anne Walker.
  Journal of Regional Science. November 01, 2016
  We measure the effect of resource‐sector dependence on long‐run income growth using the natural experiment of coal mining in 409 Appalachian counties selected for homogeneity. Using a panel data set (1970–2010), we find a one standard deviation increase in resource dependence is associated with 0.5–1 percentage point long‐run and a 0.2 percentage point short‐run decline in the annual growth rate of per capita personal income. We also measure the extent to which the resource curse operates through disincentives to education, and find significant effects, but this “education channel” explains less than 15 percent of the apparent curse.

  November 01, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12310   open full text
• Regional Technological Dynamism And Noncompete Clauses: Evidence From A Natural Experiment.
  Thor Berger, Carl Benedikt Frey.
  Journal of Regional Science. October 24, 2016
  In this paper, we examine the causal impact of enforceable covenants not to compete (CNCs) on labor market matching and the technological dynamism of regions. Exploiting the fact that the Michigan Antitrust Reform Act (MARA) of 1985 inadvertently repealed Michigan' s prohibition on CNC enforcement, we show that technical professionals in Michigan became increasingly likely to switch industry relative to similar workers in other U.S. states after prohibition. Workers switching industries after the introduction of MARA also earned lower wages, implying that they shifted into technical fields where their skills from previous employment were less productive. Estimates further show that the technological dynamism of Michigan declined in tandem, as fewer workers shifted into new types of jobs associated with recent technological advances. These findings are consistent with the view that skilled professionals that are subject to CNCs are more likely to leave their field of work postemployment to avoid lawsuits.

  October 24, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12305   open full text
• Testing For Spatial Equilibrium Using Happiness Data.
  Frank Goetzke, Samia Islam.
  Journal of Regional Science. October 24, 2016
  Happiness data are rarely used in regional and urban analysis, but it is a prime data set for testing the assumption of spatial equilibrium, the key assumption in the field of urban economics. In this paper, we explore the relationship between regional happiness and one‐year lagged change in population growth rates for the nine census regions in the United States using data on reported well‐being from National Opinion Research Center's annual General Social Survey. We observe that, while there is evidence of spatial disequilibrium during recessions and in the long run, happier regions generally experience higher population growth rates indicating a movement (or tendency) toward spatial equilibrium.

  October 24, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12311   open full text
• Local Public Service Provision And Spatial Inequality In Chinese Cities: The Role Of Residential Income Sorting And Land‐Use Conditions.
  Weizeng Sun, Yuming Fu, Siqi Zheng.
  Journal of Regional Science. October 21, 2016
  Spatial inequality refers to unequal access to local public services between high‐ and low‐income households in relation to their residential locations. We examine two hypotheses regarding the role of income sorting and land‐use conditions in shaping spatial inequality in Chinese cities, where residents have little direct influence on local public service provision. First, in the presence of resource indivisibility, travel cost, and location‐based rationing, scarcity of public‐service resources in a city makes access to public services more uneven across neighborhoods, thus exacerbating income sorting and spatial inequality in the city. Second, the exacerbating effect of resource scarcity is mitigated by land‐use conditions that limit income sorting. Estimates of willingness to pay by households of different income levels for public‐service resources across cities corroborate both the exacerbating effect of resource scarcity and the mitigating effect of inclusive land‐use conditions.

  October 21, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12307   open full text
• Agglomeration, Urban Wage Premiums, And College Majors.
  Shimeng Liu.
  Journal of Regional Science. October 20, 2016
  The aim of this paper is to examine the manner and extent to which worker skill type affects agglomeration economies that contribute to productivity in cities. I use college majors to proxy for skill types among workers with a bachelor's degree. Workers with college training in information‐oriented and technical fields (e.g., STEM areas such as engineering, physical sciences, and economics) are associated with economically important within‐field agglomeration economies and also generate sizeable spillovers for workers in other fields. In contrast, within‐field and across‐field spillovers for workers with college training in the arts and humanities are much smaller and often nonexistent. While previous research suggests proximity to college‐educated workers enhances productivity, these findings suggest that not all college‐educated workers are alike. Instead, positive spillover effects appear to derive mostly from proximity to workers with college training in information‐oriented and technical fields.

  October 20, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12309   open full text
• Place‐Based Attributes And Spatial Expenditure Behavior In Tourism.
  Cristina Bernini, Maria Francesca Cracolici, Peter Nijkamp.
  Journal of Regional Science. October 17, 2016
  In recent discussions on local sustainable development, notions like “local for local” and “home bias” have often played a role. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether preferences for specific place‐based attributes might constrain or support tourism participation and tourism destination choice of distinct socioeconomic groups of visitors. To test this proposition, a large data set from the Italian Households Budget Survey for the period 1997–2007 has been used and, by means of the double‐hurdle model, tourism participation and expenditure are modeled over the life‐cycle of tourists. These data are next merged with location‐specific attributes including natural amenities and infrastructural and regional‐economic context variables. Our results show that location‐specific or place‐based characteristics affect intra‐ and interregional tourism differently, as well as destination choices. Regional differences between residents in two different macroareas in Italy (North and Center‐South) are investigated. Location‐specific characteristics may be either push or constraint factors for tourism participation. For families living in the North, participation in the tourism market is supported by the tourist characteristics of their home region. For families living in the central and southern regions however, economic conditions of the area where they reside appear to be more significant.

  October 17, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12308   open full text
• Harris And Wilson (1978) Model Revisited: The Spatial Period‐Doubling Cascade In An Urban Retail Model.
  Minoru Osawa, Takashi Akamatsu, Yuki Takayama.
  Journal of Regional Science. September 28, 2016
  Harris and Wilson (1978)'s retail location model is a pioneering work that utilizes the combination of the “fast” and “slow” dynamics to describe the space economy. This paper elucidates the model's previously unknown comparative static (bifurcation) properties in a many‐location setting beyond two. We show that the spatial structure's evolutionary path in line with decreasing transport costs exhibits a remarkable property, namely, a “spatial period‐doubling cascade.” Furthermore, we reveal strong linkages between the model and “new economic geography” models in terms of their model structures and bifurcation properties, offering a new theoretical perspective for understanding agglomeration behaviors in multilocation settings.

  September 28, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12306   open full text
• The Shifting Demand For Housing By American Renters And Its Impact On Household Budgets: 1940–2010*.
  Denise DiPasquale, Michael P. Murray.
  Journal of Regional Science. September 22, 2016
  From 1940 to 1960 across 20 large U.S. cities, rental housing's price fell, renters’ incomes rose, rent's share in household budgets fell, and, as expected, renters’ real housing consumption increased. From 1970 to 2010, rental housing's price increased, renters’ incomes decreased, but, unexpectedly, renters’ real housing consumption increased. We find neither demographics nor housing supply factors account for the anomalous post‐1970 increase in renters’ housing consumption. We conclude that after 1970 there was a nationwide increase in renters’ preferences for housing consumption. With incomes falling, renters increased housing consumption by decreasing consumption of other necessities including food, clothing, and transportation.

  September 22, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12298   open full text
• The Impact Of Chinese Import Competition On The Local Structure Of Employment And Wages: Evidence From France.
  Clément Malgouyres.
  Journal of Regional Science. September 16, 2016
  The rapid rise of Chinese exports over the past two decades has raised concerns about manufacturing jobs and wage inequality in high‐income countries. spillovers beyond the manufacturing sector are an important issue given the large size of the nontraded sector in modern economies as well as the imperfect spatial mobility of households. In this paper, I estimate the impact of Chinese import competition onto the structure of employment and wages of local labor markets in France, with an emphasis on spillovers effects beyond manufacturing and the degree of local wage inequality. Local employment and total labor income in both manufacturing and nonmanufacturing are negatively affected by rising exposure to imports. Import competition from China polarized the local structure of employment in the manufacturing sector. The wage distribution is uniformly negatively affected in manufacturing while the nontraded sector experiences wage polarization, i.e., a rise in upper‐tail inequality and a decline in bottom‐tail inequality. While overall wage inequality is on average not affected, I show that it increased in response to trade shocks in areas where the minimum wage is only weakly binding.

  September 16, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12303   open full text
• Factor Accumulation, Externalities, And Absorptive Capacity In Regional Growth: Evidence From Europe.
  Juan Jung, Enrique López‐Bazo.
  Journal of Regional Science. September 14, 2016
  This paper proposes a model that incorporates capital accumulation and spatial spillovers across economies, while allowing for regional differences in absorptive capacity. This model is estimated using a sample of EU regions, over a period including the enlargement of the single‐market area in the middle of the first decade of the 21st century. Results confirm the relevance of local absorptive capacity that is directly linked with the process of making the most of externalities. Capital deepening reduced the role of capital in explaining the regional productivity gap, but was not enough to help lagging regions to equal the return to human capital investments reached by most advanced regions.

  September 14, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12304   open full text
• Local Food, Urbanization, And Transport‐Related Greenhouse Gas Emissions.
  Stéphane Cara, Anne Fournier, Carl Gaigné.
  Journal of Regional Science. September 13, 2016
  We argue that “buying local” does not necessarily reduce transport‐related greenhouse gas emissions, even if production technologies and yields are homogeneous in space. We develop a partial‐equilibrium model of rural‐urban systems where the spatial distribution of food production within and between regions is endogenous. We exhibit cases where locating some food production in the least‐urbanized regions results in lower emissions and higher welfare than if all regions are self‐sufficient. The optimal spatial allocation of food production does not exclude the possibility that some regions should be self‐sufficient, provided that their urban population sizes are neither too large nor too small.

  September 13, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12299   open full text
• Destruction And Reallocation Of Skills Following Large Company Closures.
  Jacob Rubæk Holm, Christian Richter Østergaard, Thomas Roslyng Olesen.
  Journal of Regional Science. September 13, 2016
  This paper analyzes what happens to redundant skills and workers when large companies close down and whether their skills are destroyed or reallocated. The analysis is based on a combination of qualitative and quantitative data of the closure of four companies. Getting a job in a skill‐related industry or moving to a spinoff firm leads to skill reallocation. Thus, the result depends on regional idiosyncrasies such as industry structure and urbanization. If local policy makers and the owners exert a coordinated effort, it is possible to create success stories of less skill destruction in urban as well as peripheral regions.

  September 13, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12302   open full text
• THE IMPACT OF LOCAL WAGE REGULATION ON EMPLOYMENT: A BORDER ANALYSIS FROM ITALY IN THE 1950s*.
  Guido Blasio, Samuele Poy.
  Journal of Regional Science. August 22, 2016
  This paper measures the impact of wage zones—compulsory wage differentials at the province level—on Italy's local labor markets during the 1950s. Using spatial regression techniques, it finds that for the industrial sectors covered under wage zones there was an increase in employment when one crossed the border from a high‐wage province into a low‐wage one; the effect diminished, however, as the distance from the boundary increased. The paper also illustrates that the impact on the overall (nonfarm) private sector, which includes both covered and uncovered sectors, was negligible.

  August 22, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12301   open full text
• Spatial Discontinuity For The Impact Assessment Of The Eu Regional Policy: The Case Of Italian Objective 1 Regions*.
  Mara Giua.
  Journal of Regional Science. August 16, 2016
  The economic impact of the Regional Policy of the European Union is still controversial. This paper exploits administrative boundaries as spatial discontinuity to estimate the causal effect of this policy on the Italian Objective 1 regions’ employment. The analysis, developed both in a border strategy framework (municipalities contiguous to the policy‐change boundary) and with more traditional RDD models balanced by spatial forcing variables (centroids’ distance and coordinates), shows that the EU Regional Policy produced a positive impact on employment levels, without any displacement of economic activities away from nontreated regions and a concentration of the impact in key economic sectors.

  August 16, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12300   open full text
• Historical Legacy And Policy Effectiveness: The Long‐Term Influence Of Preunification Borders In Italy.
  Giovanna d'Adda, Guido Blasio.
  Journal of Regional Science. July 13, 2016
  This paper investigates the interplay between cultural traditions and policy effectiveness. It explores the differential impact of a large development program (Cassa per il Mezzogiorno), implemented for four decades, starting in the 1950s, to stimulate convergence between Italy's south and the more developed north, on municipalities with different histories. Namely, we consider a sample of municipalities located on either side of the historical border of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, whose legacy is considered, from Putnam onwards, to be a prime‐facie cause of Southern Italy's underdevelopment. Having been part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies is associated with a negative impact of development policies, but only when the allocation of development funds through the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno suffered from low quality of governance and was driven by political considerations rather than by efficiency ones.

  July 13, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12283   open full text
• The Dynamics Of Subcenter Formation: Midtown Manhattan, 1861–1906.
  Jason Barr, Troy Tassier.
  Journal of Regional Science. July 08, 2016
  Midtown Manhattan is the largest business district in the country. Yet only a few miles to the south is another district centered at Wall Street. This paper aims to investigate when and why midtown emerged as a separate business district. We have created a new data set from historical New York City directories that provide the employment location, residence, and job type for several thousand residents in the late‐19th and early‐20th centuries. We supplement this data with additional records from historical business directories. The evidence suggests that early midtown firms appeared there in order to be closer to local residential customers who had been moving north on the island throughout the 19th century. Once several industries appeared in midtown, it triggered a spatial equilibrium readjustment in the 1880s, which then promoted the rise of skyscrapers in midtown around the turn of the 20th century. This process occurred several years before the opening of Grand Central Station in 1913.

  July 08, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12288   open full text
• Zoning A Cross‐Border City.
  Juan Carlos Bárcena‐Ruiz, F. Javier Casado‐Izaga.
  Journal of Regional Science. June 24, 2016
  This paper investigates zoning in a cross‐border linear city that consists of two bordering towns. In each town, a local regulator has a say in the location of the local firm. We find that local regulators may use zoning strategically. The incentive to gain consumers from the other town, or not to lose local consumers, may push regulators to approve only locations for firms close enough to the frontier. When zoning is costly an asymmetric equilibrium may emerge: only one regulator resorts to zoning. In the case of towns of different sizes, the regulator of the larger town is the only one that zones in an asymmetric equilibrium.

  June 24, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12287   open full text
• The Impact Of Commuting Time On Youth's School Performance.
  Robson Tigre, Breno Sampaio, Tatiane Menezes.
  Journal of Regional Science. June 23, 2016
  Using Brazilian data, we estimate the impact of commuting duration on students' performance using distance to closest schools as an instrumental variable. In addition, we also use identification through heteroskedasticity, which does not rely on exclusion restrictions, and estimate bounds for the treatment effect in case there is remaining bias from unobservables. We find strong and consistent evidence that duration of commuting has a negative causal effect on academic achievement. Moreover, the relatively small heterogeneity across quantiles of test score makes us believe that public transportation policies targeted at students can promote education not only for those less well‐off.

  June 23, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12289   open full text
• Do Capital Tax Incentives Attract New Businesses? Evidence Across Industries From The New Markets Tax Credit.
  Kaitlyn Harger, Amanda Ross.
  Journal of Regional Science. June 21, 2016
  In this paper, we examine how government policy affects the sorting of industries across jurisdictions using the New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) program. When estimating the impact of the tax credit on business activity, there are likely to be unobservable local characteristics that are correlated with business location decisions that would cause OLS estimates to be biased. To control for this endogenous selection, we use a plausibly exogenous eligibility cutoff and compare census tracts that are just eligible for the NMTC program to those that are just ineligible. Using data from the Dun and Bradstreet MarketPlace Files, we find that eligibility for the NMTC program caused industries to sort across eligible and noneligible tracts. In particular, we find that there is an increase in retail employment, both among new businesses and existing businesses, and an increase in manufacturing employment at existing businesses in tracts that were eligible for the program. However, we find negative effects on employment at new firms in the wholesale and transportation industries, and decreases in the number of new firms in FIRE and services. Policy makers should be cognizant of these results, as the implications of the sorting across industries on local areas must be considered to design effective policy.

  June 21, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12286   open full text
• Skills, The Gender Wage Gap, And Cities.
  Marigee Bacolod.
  Journal of Regional Science. June 21, 2016
  This paper links gender wage gaps with the urban wage premium. First, the study documents gender wage gaps are narrower in larger U.S. metropolitan areas in 2000 and 2010. Skill agglomerations are then considered to explain this. Specifically, if men and women employ heterogeneous skills, and these skills have differential productivities across city sizes, agglomerative forces may differentially reward men and women. Occupational data show that women are concentrated in jobs relatively more intensive in interactive and cognitive skills, while men are comparatively in physical skill‐intensive jobs. Decomposing the gender wage gap shows that explanatory factors (education, skills, and location) predict women would outearn men. Instead, agglomerative skill returns account for majority of the gap. These estimates suggest that even as women employ skills rewarded in agglomeration economies, they benefit less from agglomerations than men, resulting in the observed gap.

  June 21, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12285   open full text
• Wheels Of Fortune: Subway Expansion And Property Values In Beijing.
  Shanjun Li, Jun Yang, Ping Qin, Shun Chonabayashi.
  Journal of Regional Science. June 21, 2016
  China is experiencing rapid urbanization. Its capital city, Beijing, experienced a 53 percent increase in population from 2001 to 2013. To address traffic congestion and air pollution, two of the most pressing urban challenges, Beijing has been investing heavily in transportation infrastructure. In particular, the subway system added 15 new subway lines with a total length of 410 km of over the 12‐year period. We quantify the capitalization of large‐scale subway construction into property values in a first‐differenced hedonic price framework while controlling for confounding factors and reverse causality. Our analysis finds a positive and significant impact of subway proximity on property values: a reduction in the distance to a subway station by 1 km increases the value of properties within 3 km of the station by 15 percent, and by 3.4 percent for properties within 3–5 km. Our analysis shows that the increase in property values can more than cover the capital cost of subway construction.

  June 21, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12284   open full text
• Stable Economic Agglomeration Patterns In Two Dimensions: Beyond The Scope Of Central Place Theory.
  Kiyohiro Ikeda, Kazuo Murota, Yuki Takayama.
  Journal of Regional Science. June 21, 2016
  This paper elucidates which agglomeration patterns exist in two‐dimensional economic space and how such patterns appear stably. Hexagonal lattices, that with and that without a boundary, are advanced, respectively, as practical and theoretical spatial platforms of economic activities. Agglomeration patterns on these lattices include hexagons in central place theory, but also encompass megalopolis and racetrack‐shaped decentralization. As the transport cost decreases, stable economic agglomeration undergoes the formation of the smallest hexagon and transition to patterns with larger market areas, often undergoing downtown decay but finally leading to a megalopolis. Formulas for break points are provided in an economic geography model.

  June 21, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12290   open full text
• The Impact Of Remittances On Regional Consumption And Investment.
  Marian Manic.
  Journal of Regional Science. June 10, 2016
  This paper examines the effects of international remittances on regional economic development using spatial data from an original household survey carried out in the Republic of Moldova. I analyze remittance flows with a model that estimates regional (urban and rural) budget shares of consumption and investment expenditure categories for rural and urban households. An important contribution of the paper is that it analyzes the effect of remittances in the regions where spending takes place, which is not necessarily the same as the region where the households originating this spending reside. Using the multinomial logit approach, I control for potential selectivity and endogeneity biases of remittances. The results show that remittances lead to significantly increasing marginal productive investments in urban regions at the expense of rural regions. The fundamental finding of the study is that remittances influence the flight of productive capital out of rural areas into urban regions (a pattern similar to the crowding‐out effect of the Dutch Disease). The analysis carried out in this paper can be applied to other temporary income transfers and exogenous spending injected in the region that affect households' regional expenditure patterns.

  June 10, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12282   open full text
• Accounting For Local Spatial Heterogeneities In Housing Market Studies.
  Liv Osland, Ingrid Sandvig Thorsen, Inge Thorsen.
  Journal of Regional Science. June 05, 2016
  We adopt a novel method to deal with omitted spatial heterogeneities in hedonic house price analysis. A Gaussian variant of the conditional autoregressive (CAR) model is used to study the impact of spatial effects. In a general linear modeling framework, we include zone‐specific random effects that are allowed to interact spatially with neighboring zones. The results demonstrate that this estimator accounts for missing spatial information, producing more reliable results on estimated spatially related coefficients. The CAR model is benchmarked against a fixed effects model. Socioeconomic neighborhood characteristics are found to have only modest impact on spatial variation in housing prices.

  June 05, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12281   open full text
• Can New Light Rail Reduce Personal Vehicle Carbon Emissions? A Before‐After, Experimental‐Control Evaluation In Los Angeles.
  Marlon G. Boarnet, Xize Wang, Douglas Houston.
  Journal of Regional Science. May 26, 2016
  This paper uses a before‐after, experimental‐control group method to evaluate the impacts of the newly opened Expo light rail transit line in Los Angeles on personal vehicle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. We applied the California Air Resources Board's EMFAC 2011 emission model to estimate the amount of daily average CO2 emissions from personal vehicle travel for 160 households across two waves, before and after the light rail opened. The 160 households were part of an experimental–control group research design. Approximately half of the households live within a half‐mile of new Expo light rail stations (the experimental group) and the balance of the sampled households live beyond a half‐mile from Expo light rail stations (the control group). Households tracked odometer mileage for all household vehicles for seven days in two sample waves, before the Expo Line opened (fall, 2011) and after the Expo Line opened (fall, 2012). Our analysis indicates that opening the Expo Line had a statistically significant impact on average daily CO2 emissions from motor vehicles. We found that the CO2 emission of households who reside within a half‐mile of an Expo Line station was 27.17 percent smaller than those living more than a half‐mile from a station after the opening of the light rail, while no significant difference exists before the opening. A difference‐in‐difference model suggests that the opening of the Expo Line is associated with 3,145 g less of household vehicle CO2 emissions per day as a treatment effect. A sensitivity analysis indicates that the emission reduction effect is also present when the experimental group of households is redefined to be those living within a kilometer from the new light rail stations.

  May 26, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12275   open full text
• Extending A Smooth Parameter Model To Firm Location Analyses: The Case Of Natural Gas Establishments In The United States.
  Jason P. Brown, Dayton M. Lambert.
  Journal of Regional Science. May 26, 2016
  This paper extends recent developments in regional growth modeling that use spatial regime switching functions to a count regression model of firm location events. The smooth parameter count model (SPCM) allows for a parsimonious parameterization of locally varying coefficients while simultaneously attending to excess‐zero count events. An empirical application examines natural gas establishment growth between 2005 and 2010. The smooth parameter model appears to outperform a standard zero‐inflated count model. The SPCM may be extended to the location analysis of other industries with the identification of transition variables related to the supply or demand oriented cost structure of the sector.

  May 26, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12280   open full text
• Regional Growth, Innovation, And Latent Nonlinear Effects.
  Marcos Sanso‐Navarro, María Vera‐Cabello.
  Journal of Regional Science. May 24, 2016
  This paper studies the link between knowledge, innovation, and growth in European regions using nonparametric methods. Our findings suggest that knowledge inputs and the share of innovative firms have a heterogeneous and nonlinear relationship with growth. This evidence has been exploited to examine the consequences of alternative policies using a counterfactual estimation setup, the results of which imply that increasing the formal knowledge base may be optimal in most regions. Less knowledge and innovation intensive regions will also benefit from a higher innovation potential and from a trustworthy and entrepreneurial economic environment.

  May 24, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12279   open full text
• Traffic Congestion, Polycentricity, And Intraurban Firm Location Choices: A Nested Logit Model For The Los Angeles Metropolitan Area.
  Yuting Hou.
  Journal of Regional Science. May 22, 2016
  This study empirically investigates traffic congestion effects on agglomeration through the lens of firm location decisions. A discrete choice model is applied to examine new establishments’ location choices within the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Employment centers are defined as the choice set to explore the nature and role of intraurban agglomerations. The results show that metro‐wide congestion negatively affects the location choices of firms in the high‐order office‐related activities, while local congestion have positive impacts on those firms’ location decisions. In contrast, firms in production‐related activities are positively influenced by regional congestion but are negatively affected by local congestion levels.

  May 22, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12267   open full text
• Counterfactual Spatial Distributions.
  Paul E. Carrillo, Jonathan L. Rothbaum.
  Journal of Regional Science. May 17, 2016
  Recent contributions provide researchers with a useful toolbox to estimate counterfactual distributions of scalar random variables. These techniques have been widely applied in the literature. Typically, the dependent variable of interest has been a scalar and little consideration has been given to spatial factors. In this paper we propose a simple method to construct the counterfactual distribution of the location of a variable across space. We apply the spatial counterfactual technique to assess how much changes in individual characteristics of Hispanics in the Washington DC area account for changes in the distribution of their residential location choices.

  May 17, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12277   open full text
• Examining The Uneven Distribution Of Household Travel Carbon Emissions Within And Across Neighborhoods: The Case Of Beijing.
  Zuopeng Xiao, James H. Lenzer, Yanwei Chai.
  Journal of Regional Science. May 16, 2016
  Although a growing number of studies have scrutinized population‐based variations in travel carbon emissions, few have examined these variations and uneven composition at the neighborhood level. Based on a 2007 Beijing household daily travel/activity survey, this paper attempts to calculate household daily travel carbon emissions and delineate the heterogeneous distribution within and across different neighborhoods. Using multilevel regression models, this paper confirms that socioeconomic variables (especially car availability) are the dominant contributing factors to household travel carbon emissions. Increasing the population density, land use mix and access to metro stations decreases emissions; whereas, household travel emissions increase along with the residential distance to the city center. Moreover, these effects vary across neighborhoods. Consequently, besides behavioral change policies aimed at high emitters, land use instruments should be targeted to different neighborhoods. The observed heterogeneous distributions call for a new governance framework to develop more effective and equitable urban transport policies.

  May 16, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12278   open full text
• Railway Development And Air Patronage In China, 1993–2012: Implications For Low‐Carbon Transport.
  Linna Li, Becky P.Y. Loo.
  Journal of Regional Science. May 16, 2016
  This study examines the interrelationship between railway development and air patronage in China from 1993 to 2012 by type of railway development and city pair distance. Two types of railway development are considered: railway extension and an increase in railway speed. Results of the panel data regression analysis show that railway development is associated with a reduction on air transport. However, the association between railway extension and air patronage is only significant for short‐ and medium‐haul city pairs but not for long‐haul ones, whereas the association between railway acceleration and air patronage is only significant for short‐haul city pairs. Nevertheless, the potential effect of railway development on the reduction of carbon emissions in China through a modal shift is relatively sizeable, with an approximately 6.9 percent net reduction (2.83 million tons) of the total carbon emissions from air and rail transport in 2010.

  May 16, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12276   open full text
• The Effects Of Local Government Amalgamation On Public Spending, Taxation, And Service Levels: Evidence From 15 Years Of Municipal Consolidation.
  Maarten A. Allers, J. Bieuwe Geertsema.
  Journal of Regional Science. May 12, 2016
  We study how municipal amalgamation affects local government spending, taxation, and service provision in the Netherlands. Employing different models, different control groups, and a number of robustness tests, we find no significant effect on aggregate spending or taxation, although spending on administration is reduced. We explore whether this finding might hide amalgamation effects working in opposite directions for different types of municipalities (e.g., small versus large, or homogeneous versus heterogeneous), cancelling each other out. This does not seem to be the case. We also investigate whether amalgamation leads to better public services instead of lower spending, but find no evidence.

  May 12, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12268   open full text
• Cities, Wages, And The Urban Hierarchy.
  Juan Soto, Dusan Paredes.
  Journal of Regional Science. May 06, 2016
  In this paper, we estimate the size of the wage premium necessary to compensate for remoteness incurred by workers compared to the city size productivity effects. We construct five urban hierarchy tiers for cities in Chile based on their level of remoteness from the urban system. We then contrast the effect generated by these variables on worker wages. We report a positive gradient of wages the higher the size of the urban tier and a loss in wages that can reach 35 percent for more remote cities.

  May 06, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12269   open full text
• Pollution Mobility, Productivity Disparity, And The Spatial Distribution Of Polluting And Nonpolluting Firms.
  JunJie Wu, Jeffrey J. Reimer.
  Journal of Regional Science. May 06, 2016
  This paper first develops a model to characterize the equilibrium distribution of polluting and nonpolluting firms and then turns to the larger question of whether the equilibrium distribution is socially optimal. We find that the equilibrium distribution of polluting firms differs from the social optimum when they generate a large amount of stationary pollution and have much higher or lower productivity than clean firms. In these cases, conventional pollution control approaches generally do not bring about an optimal distribution. Consideration of transport costs along with productivity and pollution changes some of the classic results of the new economic geography literature.

  May 06, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12266   open full text
• A New Approach To Modeling The Impact Of Disruptive Events.
  Jan Oosterhaven, Maaike C. Bouwmeester.
  Journal of Regional Science. March 23, 2016
  This paper develops a new methodology to predict the interregional and interindustry impacts of disruptive events. We model the reactions of economic agents by minimizing the information gain between the pre‐ and postevent pattern of economic transactions. The resulting nonlinear program reproduces, as it should, the pre‐event market equilibrium. The methodology is tested further by means of a comparison of this base scenario with two regional production shock scenarios and two interregional trade shock scenarios. The outcomes show a plausible combination of partially compensating demand, supply, and spatial substitution effects, which justifies the further development, testing, and application of this new approach.

  March 23, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12262   open full text
• Government Quality And The Economic Returns Of Transport Infrastructure Investment In European Regions.
  Riccardo Crescenzi, Marco Di Cataldo, Andrés Rodríguez‐Pose.
  Journal of Regional Science. March 17, 2016
  Transport infrastructure investment is a cornerstone of growth‐promoting strategies. However, the link between infrastructure investment and economic performance remains unclear. This may be a consequence of overlooking the role of government institutions. This paper assesses the connection between regional quality of government and the returns of different types of road infrastructure in the regions of the European Union. The results unveil the influence of regional quality of government on the economic returns of transport infrastructure. In weak institutional contexts, investment in motorways—the preferred option by governments—yields significantly lower returns than the more humble secondary road. Government institutions also affect the returns of transport maintenance investment.

  March 17, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12264   open full text
• Do State Business Climate Indicators Explain Relative Economic Growth At State Borders?
  Georgeanne M. Artz, Kevin D. Duncan, Arthur P. Hall, Peter F. Orazem.
  Journal of Regional Science. March 16, 2016
  This study submits 11 business climate indexes to tests of their ability to predict relative economic performance on either side of state borders. Our results show that most business climate indexes have no ability to predict relative economic growth regardless of how growth is measured. Some are negatively correlated with relative growth. Many are better at reporting past growth than at predicting the future. In the end, the most predictive business climate index is the Grant Thornton Index which was discontinued in 1989.

  March 16, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12261   open full text
• Regional Variations In Labor Demand Elasticity: Evidence From U.S. Counties.
  Abhradeep Maiti, Debarshi Indra.
  Journal of Regional Science. March 04, 2016
  We use a large panel dataset covering the period 1988–2010 to estimate county specific own‐wage elasticity of labor demand in the U.S. for four highly aggregated industries: construction, finance/insurance/real‐estate/service, manufacturing, and retail trade. Our estimation of a random parameter panel data model yields significant evidence of spatial variations in wage elasticity of labor demand. We relate the spatial variation in elasticity to differences in county characteristics like industry specialization, industry competition, levels of natural amenity and urbanization. Using a regression discontinuity approach we also find that probusiness states have higher labor demand elasticity.

  March 04, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12265   open full text
• Happy In The Hood? The Impact Of Residential Segregation On Self‐Reported Happiness.
  Chris M. Herbst, Joanna Lucio.
  Journal of Regional Science. February 24, 2016
  Previous research consistently finds that racially based residential segregation is associated with poor economic, health, and social outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between residential segregation and self‐reported happiness. Using panel data from the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH), we begin by estimating ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions of happiness on a measure of MSA‐level segregation, controlling for a rich set of individual, neighborhood, regional, and state characteristics. The OLS results suggest that increased segregation is associated with a reduction in happiness among blacks. To deal more appropriately with the potential endogeneity of location choice, we extend the methodology to fully exploit the panel structure of the NSFH and incorporate individual fixed effects into the happiness equation. Contrary to the OLS results, our fixed effects estimates imply that blacks are happier in more segregated metropolitan areas. The paper discusses the implications of these results within the context of current integration policies.

  February 24, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12263   open full text
• The Locational Dynamics Of Manufacturing In China's Counties: Influence Of Expressway Investment.
  Hangtian Xu, Hao Zhou, Liang Liang.
  Journal of Regional Science. February 19, 2016
  This study investigates the impact of expressway investment in China's counties. By identifying expressway accessibility through toll station locations, we estimate the manufacturing distribution along expressways for 2001–2005. We find that expressway accessibility promotes manufacturing employment for inland counties by around 41 percent; however, for coastal counties that already have high road density and dense manufacturing layouts, the returns from new expressways are small. Furthermore, counties close to large cities benefit more from expressway accessibility than do counties that are far from them. The gap first increases in the period of expressway construction and then decreases as expressway effects are smoothed.

  February 19, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12252   open full text
• The Impact Of Relative Deprivation On Return Intentions Among Potential Migrants And Commuters.
  Peter Huber, Klaus Nowotny.
  Journal of Regional Science. February 17, 2016
  We empirically analyze the impact of relative deprivation on the intended duration of stay of potential cross‐border commuters and migrants. A theoretical model lends support to the hypothesis that deprivation affects the intended duration of stay of migrants in a U‐shaped fashion, but does not affect potential commuters. Empirical evidence from one of the most densely populated border regions of the EU confirms both these hypotheses. These results are robust over different estimation methods and apply both when measuring deprivation relative to friends and acquaintances as well as relative to the population residing in a region.

  February 17, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12251   open full text
• Is Crime Bad For Business? Crime And Commercial Property Values In New York City.
  Michael C. Lens, Rachel Meltzer.
  Journal of Regional Science. February 17, 2016
  To test how crime affects economic activity, we use point‐specific data on crime, commercial property sales and assessed values from New York City, relying on an instrumental variables strategy. We find that crime reduces commercial property values, and the magnitude of the effect depends on the type and geography of crime. Elasticities range from −0.1 to −0.5. We find stronger evidence for negative violent crime effects in neighborhoods with lower incomes and higher shares of minority residents. Thus, disadvantaged neighborhoods are doubly harmed by crime—they have higher crime rates and those crimes have stronger effects on economic activity.

  February 17, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12254   open full text
• Conservation Land Amenities And Regional Economies: A Postmatching Difference‐In‐Differences Analysis Of The Northwest Forest Plan.
  Yong Chen, David J. Lewis, Bruce Weber.
  Journal of Regional Science. February 17, 2016
  The 1994 Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) resulted in the protection of over 11 million acres of public forestland in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. This paper quantifies the amenity effect arising from protected NWFP lands on long‐run community economic growth. Using community fixed effects and postmatching panel regression to control for many sources of bias, we find highly localized and positive amenity impacts on the growth in median income, population, and property values for small communities close to protected NWFP land, as compared to communities far from the NWFP. We find no effect on medium‐sized communities.

  February 17, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12253   open full text
• The Day After The Disaster: Forced Migration And Income Loss After Hurricanes Katrina And Rita.
  Seong Yun, Brigitte S. Waldorf.
  Journal of Regional Science. February 17, 2016
  A model of post‐disaster migration responses and income consequences poses that damage severity and individual resilience affect moving decisions. Forced moves are linked to little resilience relative to damage incurred and post‐move income reductions. The empirical analysis analyzes households affected by hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Using American Community Survey data, unobserved heterogeneous income damages are framed as treatment, with the moving decision being the treatment decision. An endogenous switching regression addresses self‐selection issues. The results suggest that movers encountered double victimization: (1) they were forced to move and their income declined; (2) low‐income households were more severely affected than the average.

  February 17, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12250   open full text
• Leaders, Followers, And Asymmetric Local Tax Policy Diffusion.
  Gregory S. Burge, Cynthia L. Rogers.
  Journal of Regional Science. January 12, 2016
  Complementing recent theoretical models of tax competition with endogenous leadership, we empirically model local policy diffusion as a dynamic asymmetric process. Using a setting where local option sales taxes rapidly transitioned from nonexistence to ubiquity, we construct a policy leadership index to classify jurisdictions as leaders or followers. Using models that control for vertical tax competition effects, we show how asymmetric leader–follower dynamics characterize horizontal tax competition over the three decades that follow. A placebo test further supports our main conclusions. This methodological approach could be adapted to other settings where policies exhibit both extensive and intensive margins.

  January 12, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jors.12242   open full text
• The Effect Of Youth Poverty Rates And Migration On Adult Wages.
  Thomas A. Knapp, Nancy E. White.
  Journal of Regional Science. December 29, 2015
  We created a migration and earnings history from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to analyze the effects of youth county poverty rates on the adult earnings of white male migrants. We estimate a log wage equation that includes human capital measures, migration types, county poverty rates, and a rural–poverty rate interaction variable. Growing up in a rural county has a negative impact on adult wages independent of youth county poverty rates, but the rural effect is significantly greater for those who grew up in high poverty counties. Youth county poverty rates indirectly affect wages through the returns to migration.

  December 29, 2015   doi: 10.1111/jors.12241   open full text
• Commuting Time And Household Responsibilities: Evidence Using Propensity Score Matching.
  J. Ignacio Gimenez‐Nadal, José Alberto Molina.
  Journal of Regional Science. December 15, 2015
  We examine the relationship between individual commuting behavior and household responsibilities, with a focus on gender differences in that relationship. Using the Dutch Time Use Survey for the years 2000 and 2005, we analyze the relationship between commuting time, home production, and childcare. To deal with reverse causality, we use Propenstity Score Matching techniques to obtain imputed data for individuals. We find that the effect of home production on commuting time for women is more than double that for men, while childcare time has an effect on women's commuting behavior only. Our results shedding light on the Household Responsibility Hypothesis.

  December 15, 2015   doi: 10.1111/jors.12243   open full text
• The Puzzle Of Job Search And Housing Tenure: A Reconciliation Of Theory And Empirical Evidence.
  Andrea Morescalchi.
  Journal of Regional Science. December 15, 2015
  Oswald's thesis posits that homeowners should have longer unemployment spells than renters due to restricted mobility, but repeatedly the reverse is found. I contribute to solve this puzzle analyzing both job search intensity and unemployment duration. First, I show that homeowner's mobility constraints have a negative impact on search. Theoretically, it is shown in a search model with moving costs. Using U.K. Labour Force Survey (LFS) data, it is confirmed when considering outright owners, while leveraged owners have the highest search. Second, I find evidence that homeowners select search methods associated with shorter unemployment spells, suggesting that they search more efficiently.

  December 15, 2015   doi: 10.1111/jors.12240   open full text
• Agglomeration Effects In Colombia.
  Gilles Duranton.
  Journal of Regional Science. December 11, 2015
  I estimate an elasticity of wages with respect to city population of about 5 percent for Colombian cities. This finding is robust to a number of econometric concerns. The second main finding is a negative effect of market access on wages. Third main finding regards stronger agglomeration effects in the informal sector. In turn, this explains a range of other negative findings, including only weak evidence in favor of human capital externalities, no evidence of a complementarity between cities and skills, and an absence of learning effects. I do not find measurable effects of roads or amenities on wages either.

  December 11, 2015   doi: 10.1111/jors.12239   open full text
• Localization And Industry Clustering Econometrics: An Assessment Of Gibbs Models For Spatial Point Processes.
  Stuart Sweeney, Miguel Gómez‐Antonio.
  Journal of Regional Science. November 20, 2015
  The objective of this paper is to assess an approach to statistical modeling of point referenced establishment data that permit inclusion of “environmental” or establishment‐specific covariates and specific forms of interestablishment interaction. Gibbs models are used to decompose the conditional intensity of the spatial point process into trend and interaction components. The trend is composed of access measures (primarily different classes of roads) and three different interaction processes are tested: Geyer, area interaction, and Strauss hard core. While the models used have proved to be useful in ecology, we are unaware of any applications to establishment or firm data. In empirical application, the models yield intuitively appealing results for the trend component, and the ability to specify the interaction component gives deeper insights into interestablishment spatial dynamics than any previously published methods.

  November 20, 2015   doi: 10.1111/jors.12238   open full text
• What Drives The Urban Wage Premium? Evidence Along The Wage Distribution.
  Alessia Matano, Paolo Naticchioni.
  Journal of Regional Science. November 20, 2015
  This paper aims at disentangling the role played by different explanations on the urban wage premium along the wage distribution. We analyze the wage dynamics of migrants from lower to higher density areas in Italy, using quantile regressions and individual data. The results show that unskilled workers benefit more from a wage premium accruing over time, while skilled workers enjoy a wage premium when they migrate as well as a wage increase over time. Further, we find that for unskilled workers the wage growth over time is mainly due to human capital accumulation in line with the “learning” hypothesis, while for skilled workers the wage growth is mainly explained by the “coordination” hypothesis, i.e., cities enhance the probability of better matches between workers and firms.

  November 20, 2015   doi: 10.1111/jors.12235   open full text
• Urban Spatial Structure And Motorization In China.
  Bindong Sun, Tinglin Zhang, Zhou He, Rui Wang.
  Journal of Regional Science. November 05, 2015
  Using data from 161 Chinese cities, this paper investigates the effects of various dimensions of urban spatial structure on the ownership and commute mode split of automobile. Results confirm the positive effects of city size on auto ownership and mode split and the negative effect of density on auto ownership. Echoing a small number of studies, this research discovers the seemingly counterintuitive effect of jobs‐housing balance on the use of automobiles, probably due to the potential advantage of public transit relative to driving in dense and congested Chinese cities. Cities should emphasize public transit and maintain density in the future.

  November 05, 2015   doi: 10.1111/jors.12237   open full text
• The Impact Of Migration On Regional Wage Inequality: A Semiparametric Approach.
  Heather Dickey.
  Journal of Regional Science. May 15, 2014
  According to economic theory, regional migration is a primary mechanism through which regional wage convergence is predicted to occur. However, this does not necessarily imply that regional migration has an equalizing effect on regional inequality. Despite considerable literatures on regional migration and regional wage inequality, little attention has focused on the relationship between the two. This paper investigates one of the primary mechanisms through which migration affects individual region's wage distributions. It adopts a semiparametric procedure to examine how the regional wage distributions in Great Britain have changed as a result of migration using British Household Panel Survey data for 1991–2007.

  May 15, 2014   doi: 10.1111/jors.12127   open full text
• Sectoral Change And Unemployment During The Great Recession, In Historical Perspective.
  Curtis Simon.
  Journal of Regional Science. May 07, 2014
  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.

  May 07, 2014   doi: 10.1111/jors.12126   open full text
• Cities, Tasks, And Skills.
  Suzanne Kok, Bas ter Weel.
  Journal of Regional Science. April 30, 2014
  This research applies a task‐based approach to measure and interpret changes in the employment structure of the 168 largest U.S. cities in the period 1990–2009. As a result of technological change some tasks can be placed at distance, while others require proximity. We construct a measure of task connectivity to investigate which tasks are more likely to require proximity relative to others. Our results suggest that cities with higher shares of connected tasks experienced higher employment growth. This result is robust to a variety of other explanations including industry composition, routinization, and the complementarity between skills and cities.

  April 30, 2014   doi: 10.1111/jors.12125   open full text
• How Do Supply Chain Networks Affect The Resilience Of Firms To Natural Disasters? Evidence From The Great East Japan Earthquake.
  Yasuyuki Todo, Kentaro Nakajima, Petr Matous.
  Journal of Regional Science. April 15, 2014
  This paper uses firm‐level data to examine how supply chain networks affected the recovery of firms from the Great East Japan Earthquake. Extensive supply chains can negatively affect recovery through higher vulnerability to network disruption and positively through support from trading partners, easier search for new partners, and general benefits of agglomeration. Our results indicate that networks with firms outside of the impacted area contributed to the earlier resumption of production, whereas networks within the region contributed to sales recovery in the medium term. The results suggest that the positive effects of supply chains typically exceed the negative effects.

  April 15, 2014   doi: 10.1111/jors.12119   open full text
• Urban Sprawl, Obesogenic Environment, And Child Weight.
  Mouhcine Guettabi, Abdul Munasib.
  Journal of Regional Science. April 15, 2014
  Using the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth along with the child survey, we examine the relationship between urban sprawl of U.S. metro counties and the body mass index (BMI) of children who reside in these counties. We make a distinction between urban sprawl in a county and its geographical placement in the urban hierarchy. Even after accounting for unobserved individual heterogeneity and resulting selection bias, we find that urban sprawl is positively related to child BMI and distance to large metros is negatively related to child BMI. These effects are somewhat pronounced among girls and middle/high school children.

  April 15, 2014   doi: 10.1111/jors.12123   open full text
• How Global Are Global Value Chains? A New Approach To Measure International Fragmentation.
  Bart Los, Marcel P. Timmer, Gaaitzen J. Vries.
  Journal of Regional Science. April 09, 2014
  Denser networks of intermediate input flows between countries suggest ongoing international fragmentation of production chains. But is this process mainly taking place between countries within a region, or is it truly global? We provide new macroeconomic evidence by extending the Feenstra and Hanson () measure of fragmentation to a multicountry setting. We derive the distribution of value added by all countries involved in the production chain of a particular final good. This is based on a new input–output model of the world economy, covering 40 countries and 14 manufacturing product groups. We find that in almost all product chains, the share of value added outside the country‐of‐completion has increased since 1995. This is mainly added outside the region to which the country‐of‐completion belongs, suggesting a transition from regional production systems to “Factory World.” This tendency was only briefly interrupted by the financial crisis in 2008.

  April 09, 2014   doi: 10.1111/jors.12121   open full text
• The Effect Of Walmart And Target On The Tax Base: Evidence From New Jersey.
  Donald Vandegrift, John Loyer.
  Journal of Regional Science. April 08, 2014
  We find that a new Walmart has no significant effect on the growth in the tax base in either the host or the adjacent municipality. By contrast, a new Target has a significant positive effect on the growth in the tax base per acre in host municipality and in the adjacent municipality. In the host municipality, the new Target raises the real tax base per acre in the host municipality by about 2.82 percent and in the adjacent municipality by about 5.87 percent. Seventy percent of the host municipality effect follows from changes in the nonresidential tax base.

  April 08, 2014   doi: 10.1111/jors.12122   open full text
• Local Politics And Economic Geography: Information Aggregation And Polarization.
  Marcus Berliant, Takatoshi Tabuchi.
  Journal of Regional Science. April 04, 2014
  We consider information aggregation in national and local elections when voters are mobile and might sort themselves into local districts. Using a standard model of private information for voters in elections in combination with a new economic geography model, agglomeration occurs for economic reasons, whereas voter stratification occurs due to political preferences. When trade is more costly, people tend to agglomerate for economic reasons, resulting in full information equivalence in the political sector. Under free trade, people sort themselves into districts, most of which are polarized, resulting in no full information equivalence in these districts.

  April 04, 2014   doi: 10.1111/jors.12118   open full text
• New Sports Facilities And Residential Housing Markets.
  Haifang Huang, Brad R. Humphreys.
  Journal of Regional Science. April 04, 2014
  Using data from 56 professional sports facilities opened between 1995 and 2008, we find what at first appears to be a substantial effect of new sports facilities on housing markets. The opening of a new facility is associated with an increase in residential mortgage applications in nearby areas of about 20 percent. However, much of the differential is due to facility location. The new facilities locate in areas which grew faster even if they were not near a new facility. Based on regressions using census‐tract level data, we find that conditioning on local income and poverty rates reduces the effect by more than a half, suggesting that characteristics of locations drive much the increase on mortgage applications associated with new sports facilities.

  April 04, 2014   doi: 10.1111/jors.12120   open full text
• Why Do Renters Stay In Or Leave Certain Neighborhoods? The Role Of Neighborhood Characteristics, Housing Tenure Transitions, And Race.
  Kwan Ok Lee.
  Journal of Regional Science. April 04, 2014
  Given significant variation in population turnover and stability across neighborhoods, this study examines why renters stay in or leave certain neighborhoods. It is the first to analyze how neighborhood characteristics influence renters’ decisions to move within the neighborhood as well as how these decisions are interrelated with their housing tenure transitions and race. Results demonstrate that homeownership rates have a significant, positive association with the probability that renters stay and/or purchase homes in the current neighborhood. Both the tenure composition of the housing stock and higher neighborhood satisfaction appear to be central in understanding this association. Results also suggest that nonblack renters are more likely to leave neighborhoods that experience growth in the percentage of the black population, while blacks are more likely to stay and purchase homes within such neighborhoods.

  April 04, 2014   doi: 10.1111/jors.12124   open full text
• Do Floods Have Permanent Effects? Evidence From The Netherlands.
  Trond G. Husby, Henri L.F. Groot, Marjan W. Hofkes, Martijn I. Dröes.
  Journal of Regional Science. March 03, 2014
  This study investigates the short‐ and long‐run impact on population dynamics of the major flood in the Netherlands in 1953. A dynamic difference‐in‐differences analysis reveals that the flood had an immediate negative impact on population growth, but limited long‐term effects. In contrast, the resulting flood protection program (Deltaworks), had a persisting positive effect on population growth. As a result, there has been an increase in population in flood‐prone areas. Our results suggest a moral hazard effect of flood mitigation leading to more people locating in flood‐prone areas, increasing potential disaster costs.

  March 03, 2014   doi: 10.1111/jors.12112   open full text
• The Public Financing Of America's Largest Cities: A Study Of City Financial Records In The Wake Of The Great Recession.
  Justin Ross, Wenli Yan, Craig Johnson.
  Journal of Regional Science. March 03, 2014
  This paper employs Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports of the 35 largest population American cities from 2005 to 2011 to examine how these cities managed the Great Recession, which was a global macroeconomic shock particularly damaging to the housing sector. While broader surveys of local government suggest that the Great Recession has been associated with substantive revenue declines, particularly via the property tax, the Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports data indicate that large cities remained relatively stable in revenue by using higher property taxes to compensate for other revenue declines. Furthermore, these cities were able to rely on their net assets to engage in deficit spending. These findings indicate that cities are relying on traditional strengths of local governments, but are also able to engage in the deficit spending that is typically characteristic of national governments. It also seems to be the case that grants for capital projects were largely transferred into highly liquid and spendable assets.

  March 03, 2014   doi: 10.1111/jors.12117   open full text
• Balanced Budget Multipliers For Small Open Regions Within A Federal System: Evidence From The Scottish Variable Rate Of Income Tax.
  Patrizio Lecca, Peter G. McGregor, J. Kim Swales, Ya Ping Yin.
  Journal of Regional Science. February 27, 2014
  This paper explores the impact on aggregate economic activity in a small, open region of an income tax funded expansion in public consumption that has no direct supply‐side effects. The conventional balanced budget multiplier produces an unambiguously positive macroeconomic stimulus, but the incorporation of negative competitiveness elements, through the operation of the local labor market, renders this positive outcome less certain. Simulation using a single‐region Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model for Scotland demonstrates that the creation of local amenity effects, and the extent to which these are incorporated into local wage bargaining, is central to the analysis.

  February 27, 2014   doi: 10.1111/jors.12113   open full text
• Estimators Of Binary Spatial Autoregressive Models: A Monte Carlo Study.
  Raffaella Calabrese, Johan A. Elkink.
  Journal of Regional Science. February 20, 2014
  The goal of this paper is to provide a cohesive description and a critical comparison of the main estimators proposed in the literature for spatial binary choice models. The properties of such estimators are investigated using a theoretical and simulation study, followed by an empirical application. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first paper that provides a comprehensive Monte Carlo study of the estimators' properties. This simulation study shows that the Gibbs estimator performs best for low spatial autocorrelation, while the recursive importance sampler performs best for high spatial autocorrelation. The same results are obtained by increasing the sample size. Finally, the linearized general method of moments estimator is the fastest algorithm that provides accurate estimates for low spatial autocorrelation and large sample size.

  February 20, 2014   doi: 10.1111/jors.12116   open full text
• Population Density In A Central‐Place System.
  Yorgos Y. Papageorgiou.
  Journal of Regional Science. February 20, 2014
  The existing empirical literature about polycentric population density has focused on the urban scale, and the alternative models proposed in that context have been justified using heuristic arguments. This paper describes how polycentric density distributions can, in general, be endowed with a theoretical framework which differs from the existing literature with respect to the treatment of centers: instead of assuming that they represent places of work, it assumes they are places that provide goods and services to households. This imposes a hierarchical structure on the model, which allows replacing the set of distances to all centers (typically used in the existing literature as the same explanans irrespectively of location) with a smaller set of distances that corresponds to the number of levels in the hierarchy and varies with location. The central‐place framework used also provides a direct link between a polycentric model and the Clark formula, in the sense that the latter can emerge through a smoothing procedure of the former. Finally, in the context of central places, the scope of related empirical investigations can be extended naturally from the urban to the regional scale. This is the scale of a simple test presented here, which has been specifically included to support the corresponding theoretical arguments about the structure of a polycentric density gradient. The paper concludes with some expected problems and advantages of applying these ideas to the urban scale.

  February 20, 2014   doi: 10.1111/jors.12111   open full text
• Which Firms Are Left In The Periphery? Spatial Sorting Of Heterogeneous Firms With Scale Economies In Transportation.
  Rikard Forslid, Toshihiro Okubo.
  Journal of Regional Science. February 19, 2014
  This paper introduces scale economies in transportation in a trade and geography model with heterogeneous firms. This relatively small change to the standard model produces a new pattern of spatial sorting among firms. In contrast to the existing literature, our model produces the result that firms of intermediate productivity relocate to the large core region, whereas high‐ and low‐productivity firms remain in the periphery. Trade liberalization leads to a gradual relocation to the core with the most productive firms remaining in the periphery.

  February 19, 2014   doi: 10.1111/jors.12115   open full text
• Interpreting Spatial Econometric Origin‐Destination Flow Models.
  James P. LeSage, Christine Thomas‐Agnan.
  Journal of Regional Science. February 10, 2014
  Spatial interaction or gravity models have been used to model flows that take many forms, for example population migration, commodity flows, traffic flows, all of which reflect movements between origin and destination regions. We focus on how to interpret estimates from spatial autoregressive extensions to the conventional regression‐based gravity models that relax the assumption of independence between flows. These models proposed by LeSage and Pace (, ) define spatial dependence involving flows between regions. We show how to calculate partial derivative expressions for these models that can be used to quantify these various types of effect that arise from changes in the characteristics/explanatory variables of the model.

  February 10, 2014   doi: 10.1111/jors.12114   open full text
• A Spatial Multivariate Count Model For Firm Location Decisions.
  Chandra R. Bhat, Rajesh Paleti, Palvinder Singh.
  Journal of Regional Science. January 21, 2014
  This paper proposes a new spatial multivariate model to predict the count of new businesses at a county level in the state of Texas. Several important factors including agglomeration economies/diseconomies, industrial specialization indices, human capital, fiscal conditions, transportation infrastructure, and land development characteristics are considered. The results highlight the need to use a multivariate modeling system for the analysis of business counts by sector type, while also accommodating spatial dependence effects in business counts.

  January 21, 2014   doi: 10.1111/jors.12101   open full text
• Search Frictions, Unemployment, And Housing In Cities: Theory And Policies.
  Wei Xiao.
  Journal of Regional Science. January 15, 2014
  We propose an urban search‐matching model with land development. Wages, unemployment, prices of housing and land are endogenously determined. We characterize the steady‐state equilibrium and then discuss the issue of efficiency. To explore interactions among markets, we implement comparative static analysis. We also consider three policies: an entry‐cost policy that reduces firms' entry, a transportation policy that reduces commuting costs, and a housing policy that decreases rental prices. We find that the transportation and housing policies are more efficient if the unemployment rate is low, while the entry‐cost policy is more efficient if the unemployment rate is high.

  January 15, 2014   doi: 10.1111/jors.12098   open full text
• Estimating The Rivalness Of State‐Level Inward Fdi.
  Marius Brülhart, Kurt Schmidheiny.
  Journal of Regional Science. January 08, 2014
  We develop a method for estimating the rivalness of tax bases using the structures of the conditional logit, Poisson, and nested logit models. As an illustration, we apply this method to estimate the effect of state‐level capital taxation on U.S. inward foreign direct investment (FDI). The assumption of perfect nonrivalness can in some cases be rejected, but the assumption of perfect rivalness cannot. Competition over FDI across U.S. states could well be a zero‐sum game.

  January 08, 2014   doi: 10.1111/jors.12102   open full text
• Land Supply And Capitalization Of Public Goods In Housing Prices: Evidence From Beijing.
  Siqi Zheng, Weizeng Sun, Rui Wang.
  Journal of Regional Science. December 23, 2013
  This paper studies the extent to which spatial heterogeneity in housing prices is affected by housing supply in Beijing's specific context of centralized metropolitan government without local property tax. Taking data sets of residential land leases and private housing sales records from 2006 to 2008 within Beijing's metropolitan area, this paper examines how the capitalization of school quality and subway accessibility in housing prices varies with land availability instrumented by the employment density of state‐owned enterprises (SOEs) at the beginning of SOE reform. Results confirm that the capitalization of school quality and subway accessibility is larger in supply‐constrained locations.

  December 23, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jors.12095   open full text
• Industrial Agglomeration And Employer Compliance With Social Security Contribution: Evidence From China.
  Bin R. Chen, Mingqin Wu.
  Journal of Regional Science. December 23, 2013
  This paper, by using annual surveys of Chinese manufacturing firms from 2001 to 2007, investigates the relationship between industrial agglomeration and employer compliance with required pension contributions. The result of panel fixed‐effect estimation shows that in the more agglomerated industrial areas, firms comply with pension mandates at a higher level. Our finding is robust to various specifications and estimations employing instrumental variables.

  December 23, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jors.12096   open full text
• Interjurisdictional Tax Competition In China.
  Yongzheng Liu, Jorge Martinez‐Vazquez.
  Journal of Regional Science. December 23, 2013
  This paper aims to provide empirical evidence on the extent and possible channels of tax competition among provincial governments in China. Using a panel of provincial‐level data for 1993–2007, we find strong evidence of strategic tax interaction among provincial governments. Tax policy is approximated by average effective tax rates on foreign investment, taking into account the tax incentives available to foreign investors. In line with the predictions of the theoretical tax competition literature, we also highlight the impact of each province's characteristics (including its size and level of industrialization) on the strategic interaction with its neighbors. Finally, the paper explicitly identifies the establishment of development zones as an important conduit for tax competition among provinces.

  December 23, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jors.12097   open full text
• Valuing The “Green” Amenities In A Spatial Context.
  Wenjie Wu, Guanpeng Dong.
  Journal of Regional Science. December 23, 2013
  Despite extensive public infrastructure spending, little is known about the benefits of access to “green amenities” like parks within cities. This paper uses spatial econometric methods to estimate the value of proximity to parks using land markets in a Chinese megacity. Our research design captures mechanisms of spatial interaction effects and highlights the importance of avoiding the biases inherent in the traditional valuation approach. Our results suggest that land adjacent to parks is significantly valued by land developers and that these valuations are not distributed evenly over space. Our evidence provides support for considering locations in explaining the amenity value differentials that are grounded in the social, economic, and local contextual forces at stake.

  December 23, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jors.12099   open full text
• The Spatial Development Of India.
  Klaus Desmet, Ejaz Ghani, Stephen O'Connell, Esteban Rossi‐Hansberg.
  Journal of Regional Science. December 23, 2013
  This paper studies the recent spatial development of India. Services, and to a lesser extent manufacturing, are increasingly concentrating in high‐density clusters. This stands in contrast with the United States, where in the last decades services have tended to grow fastest in medium‐density locations, such as Silicon Valley. India's experience is not common to all fast‐growing developing economies. The spatial growth pattern of China looks more similar to that in the United States than to that of India. Our findings suggest that certain frictions are keeping medium‐density places in India from growing faster.

  December 23, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jors.12100   open full text
• Is Spatial Bootstrapping A Panacea For Valid Inference?
  Torben Klarl.
  Journal of Regional Science. October 20, 2013
  Bootstrapping methods have so far been rarely used to evaluate spatial datasets. Based on an extensive Monte Carlo study we find that also for spatial, cross‐sectional data, the wild bootstrap test proposed by Davidson and Flachaire () based on restricted residuals clearly outperforms asymptotic as well as competing bootstrap tests, like the pairs bootstrap.

  October 20, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jors.12075   open full text
• Spatial Heterogeneity In Knowledge, Innovation, And Economic Growth Nexus: Conceptual Reflections And Empirical Evidence.
  Roberta Capello, Camilla Lenzi.
  Journal of Regional Science. October 14, 2013
  By drawing on the Schumpeterian distinction between invention (i.e., new ideas and knowledge creation) and commercialization of new ideas (i.e., innovation), this paper shows that knowledge and innovation are both important drivers of economic growth, but have heterogeneous spatial impacts. In particular, the growth benefits accruing from knowledge seem rather selective and concentrated across space whereas the growth benefits generated by innovation seem more diffusive, and regions innovating in the absence of a strong local knowledge base can be as successful as more knowledge‐intensive regions in turning innovation into a higher growth rate, possibly by exploiting local informal knowledge and/or knowledge spillovers. These results are of great importance for the design of research and innovation policies within the frame of the Europe 2020 strategy.

  October 14, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jors.12074   open full text
• Where Is An Oil Shock?
  Kristie M. Engemann, Michael T. Owyang, Howard J. Wall.
  Journal of Regional Science. October 14, 2013
  Much of the literature examining the effects of oil shocks asks the question “What is an oil shock?” and has concluded that oil‐price increases are asymmetric in their effects on the U.S. economy. That is, sharp increases in oil prices affect economic activity adversely, but sharp decreases in oil prices have no effect. We reconsider the directional symmetry of oil‐price shocks by addressing the question “Where is an oil shock?” the answer to which reveals a great deal of spatial/directional asymmetry across states. Although most states have typical responses to oil‐price shocks—they are affected by positive shocks only—the rest experience either negative shocks only (five states), both positive and negative shocks (five states), or neither shock (five states).

  October 14, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jors.12071   open full text
• Regional Wage Differences In The Netherlands: Micro Evidence On Agglomeration Externalities.
  Stefan P.T. Groot, Henri L.F. Groot, Martijn J. Smit.
  Journal of Regional Science. October 13, 2013
  Based on micro data on individual workers for the period 2000–2005, we show that wage differentials in the Netherlands are small but present. A large part of these differentials can be attributed to individual characteristics. Remaining effects are partially explained by variations in employment density, with an elasticity of about 4.8 percent, and by Marshall‐Arrow‐Romer externalities, where doubling the local share of a (two‐digit) industry results in a 2.9 percent higher productivity. We also find evidence for small negative effects of competition (Porter externalities) and diversity (Jacobs externalities).

  October 13, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jors.12070   open full text
• Is The Art Market More Bourgeois Than Bohemian?
  Jenny Schuetz, Richard K. Green.
  Journal of Regional Science. October 13, 2013
  Most research on the art market focuses on the high end, composed of auction houses and a few well‐known dealers. In this paper, we use a new database to examine the industry structure and location patterns of the New York art market, which consists largely of small, independent, relatively unknown galleries. We find that Manhattan galleries are highly spatially concentrated, and that clustering reflects both agglomeration economies and preferences over location‐specific amenities. New galleries are more likely to open in neighborhoods with existing gallery clusters, and proximity to other galleries increases establishment lifespan. New galleries also locate in neighborhoods with high population density and more affluent households, consistent with location models of luxury retail. The results are not consistent with the hypothesis that galleries locate in cheap, “bohemian” neighborhoods.

  October 13, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jors.12068   open full text
• Skill Polarization In Local Labor Markets Under Share‐Altering Technical Change.
  Antonio Accetturo, Alberto Dalmazzo, Guido Blasio.
  Journal of Regional Science. October 13, 2013
  This paper considers the “share‐altering” technical change hypothesis in a spatial general equilibrium model where individuals have different levels of skills. Building on a simple Cobb‐Douglas production function, our model shows that the implementation of skill‐biased technologies requires a sufficient proportion of highly educated individuals. Moreover, when technical progress disproportionately replaces middle‐skill jobs, the local distribution of skills will exhibit “fat‐tails,” where the proportion of both highly skilled and low‐skilled workers increases. These and several other predictions of the model are consistent with recent existing evidence, and avoid some major criticism against the “canonical” CES framework.

  October 13, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jors.12073   open full text
• The Geographic Distribution Of Human Capital: Measurement Of Contributing Mechanisms.
  Peter McHenry.
  Journal of Regional Science. October 13, 2013
  This paper investigates how the geographic distribution of human capital—measured as college attainment—evolves over time. With U.S. data, I decompose generation‐to‐generation changes in local human capital into three factors: the previous generation's human capital, intergenerational transmission of skills from parents to their children, and migration of the children. I find significant persistence of local skills at the commuting zone (local labor market) level. Labor market size, climate, and local colleges affect local skill measures. Skills move from urban‐to‐rural labor markets through intergenerational transmission but from rural‐to‐urban labor markets through migration.

  October 13, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jors.12067   open full text
• The Determinants Of Localization And Urbanization Economies: Evidence From The Location Of New Firms In Spain.
  Jordi Jofre‐Monseny, Raquel Marín‐López, Elisabet Viladecans‐Marsal.
  Journal of Regional Science. October 10, 2013
  The objective of this paper is to analyze why firms in some industries locate in specialized economic environments (localization economies) while those in other industries prefer large city locations (urbanization economies). To this end, we examine the location decisions of new manufacturing firms in Spain at the city level and for narrowly defined industries. First, we estimate firm location models to obtain estimates that reflect the importance of localization and urbanization economies in each industry. Then, we regress these estimates on industry characteristics related to the potential importance of labor market pooling, input sharing, and knowledge spillovers. Urbanization effects are high in knowledge‐intensive industries, suggesting that firms locate in large cities to benefit from knowledge spillovers. We also find that localization effects are high in industries that employ workers whose skills are more industry‐specific, suggesting that industries locate in specialized economic environments to share a common pool of specialized workers.

  October 10, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jors.12076   open full text
• Profiling U.S. Metropolitan Regions By Their Social Research Networks And Regional Economic Performance.
  Deborah Strumsky, Jean‐Claude Thill.
  Journal of Regional Science. August 01, 2013
  On the premise that knowledge creation defines contemporary metropolitan regions, we profile them by their inventive networks, as measured by a variety of complementary social network, technology, and patenting metrics that distinguish scalar and structural aspects. Using a comprehensive, multiyear database of patent applications, we investigate whether the knowledge creation network profiles are discriminating characteristics of metropolitan regions by establishing a new urban taxonomy for metropolitan areas in the United States. The four‐class taxonomy is not only statistically significant, but it is also economically meaningful in terms of economic performance of metropolitan areas. We find that metropolitan areas benefit from a higher density of inventors in the population, and that there is a positive correlation between economic performance and metropolitan areas with inventor teams working in similar or complementary areas of technology. In fact, the structure of knowledge creation networks are fundamental to economic performance and extends to metropolitan growth rates in jobs and income.

  August 01, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jors.12048   open full text
• Attracting Global Talent And Then What? Overeducated Immigrants In The United States.
  Julia Beckhusen, Raymond J.G.M. Florax, Jacques Poot, Brigitte S. Waldorf.
  Journal of Regional Science. July 03, 2013
  This research assesses the prevalence and determinants of job–education mismatches among male immigrants in the United States between 1980 and 2009. The results suggest that educational attainment levels do not match occupational education requirements for almost half of all immigrants. Overeducation among high‐skilled immigrants vastly exceeds that of comparable natives. Probit models of overeducation suggest that: (i) personal characteristics operate in similar fashion for immigrants and natives; (ii) immigrant brain waste is above average in gateway states, metropolitan areas and in prosperous high‐wage areas; and (iii) proficiency in English and length of residence reduce the overeducation risk among high‐skilled immigrants.

  July 03, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jors.12030   open full text
• Do Location‐Based Tax Incentives Improve Quality Of Life And Quality Of Business Environment?
  C. Lockwood Reynolds, Shawn Rohlin.
  Journal of Regional Science. July 02, 2013
  We examine how location‐based tax incentives affect quality of life and business environment through changes in property values and equilibrium wages. Using the federal Empowerment Zone program, we determine whether offering tax incentives to firms improves the welfare of the citizens and attractiveness to firms. We demonstrate that quality of life methodologies can be applied using small geographically aggregated data, such as census block groups. We find that the tax incentives offered by the program notably enhances the quality of business environment for firms in the area while modestly improving the quality of life for the individuals living in the area.

  July 02, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jors.12035   open full text
• Spatial Scope Of A Modern Transport Technology.
  Armando J. Garcia Pires, José Pedro Pontes.
  Journal of Regional Science. July 02, 2013
  This paper studies the endogenous choice of transport technology, “traditional” versus “modern,” by a shipper. Although the “modern” technology is characterized by higher fixed costs and a higher speed of transport, it is chosen for intermediate distances, rather than to long distances. The reason is that, when the shipper switches to the “modern” technology, the industrial firm changes production from the home to the foreign city. Thus, the demand for transport decreases proportionally to the distance between the home and foreign city. For long distances, revenue from transportation becomes so low that the “modern” technology does not break even.

  July 02, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jors.12032   open full text
• On The Value Of Foregone Open Space In Sprawling Cities.
  Wouter Vermeulen, Jan Rouwendal.
  Journal of Regional Science. July 02, 2013
  Foregone benefits of the open space that is sacrificed through urban sprawl are hard to quantify. We obtain a simple benchmark measure by introducing a demand for trips beyond the urban boundary into the monocentric city model. The externality arises from the increase in travel costs that expansion of the city imposes on its prior inhabitants. An empirical application illustrates the moderate informational requirements. It indicates that open space externalities warrant rather mild restrictions on urban expansion.

  July 02, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jors.12033   open full text
• The Impact Of Marginal Business Taxes On State Manufacturing.
  Richard Funderburg, Timothy J. Bartik, Alan H. Peters, Peter S. Fisher.
  Journal of Regional Science. June 30, 2013
  We estimate the impact of manufacturer business taxes on value added during the 1990s for 15 manufacturing sectors in 20 U.S. states. When the tax climate is properly measured as the potential liability arising from new investment in a state, we estimate that a 10 percent reduction in the effective tax liability is associated with a 3.5 to 5.3 percent increase in value added for the state's targeted manufacturing industry. When we isolate the value of industrial incentives from the basic tax system in our theoretically preferred marginal tax measure, we find that a 10 percent reduction in liability achieved by way of lowering taxes is associated with a 4.5 percent increase in value added while an equivalent reduction achieved by way of increasing incentives is associated with only 1.2 percent industrial growth, the latter elasticity not statistically different from zero.

  June 30, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jors.12031   open full text
• Globalizing Knowledge: How Technological Openness Affects Output, Spatial Inequality, And Welfare Levels.
  Giulio Bottazzi, Pietro Dindo.
  Journal of Regional Science. June 19, 2013
  Using an analytically solvable model, we study how the spatial distribution of economic activities and the ensuing welfare levels are affected by pecuniary externalities, depending on transportation costs, and localized technological externalities, due to the cost saving effect of intra‐ and interregional knowledge spillovers. Under the assumption of capital mobility and labor immobility, we show that increasing interregional knowledge spillovers, i.e., promoting technological openness, favors a smoother transition between different levels of firms concentration, makes trade globalization less likely to generate catastrophic and irreversible agglomeration, and ultimately leads to a less uneven distribution of welfare.

  June 19, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jors.12034   open full text
• Absorptive Capacity, Knowledge Flows, And Innovation In U.S. Metropolitan Areas.
  Nivedita Mukherji, Jonathan Silberman.
  Journal of Regional Science. May 26, 2013
  High growth and progressive regions possess a culture that promotes innovation. Innovation depends on a region's ability to use its own existing knowledge and knowledge generated elsewhere. This paper demonstrates the importance of the ability to absorb external knowledge in explaining innovation productivity for 106 U.S. metropolitan areas. Using a spatial interaction model of patent citation flows with origin and destination dependence, the destination fixed‐effects coefficients provides a measure of a region's absorptive capacity. We identify local conditions that shape a region's absorptive capacity and demonstrate it has a positive and significant impact on innovation productivity.

  May 26, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jors.12022   open full text
• The Death Of Distance Revisited: Cyber‐Place, Physical And Relational Proximities.
  Emmanouil Tranos, Peter Nijkamp.
  Journal of Regional Science. May 26, 2013
  This paper studies the impact of physical distance and different relational proximity types on the formation of the Internet infrastructure. Although there is some anecdotal evidence on the “end of geography” effect of the Internet, the relationship between physical space and the Internet has not been yet scrutinized. Our paper builds upon recent studies in economic geography and relational proximities, and aims to study whether physical distance survives in virtual geography even after controlling for relational proximities. In order to do so, a unique and extensive database with geo‐coded IP links and spatial interaction models with panel data specifications in combination with network analysis are utilized. Our results indicate that physical distance, but also different relational proximities, have a significant impact on the structure of the Internet infrastructure, highlighting the spatiality of the Internet.

  May 26, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jors.12021   open full text
• Skyscrapers And Skylines: New York And Chicago, 1885–2007.
  Jason Barr.
  Journal of Regional Science. May 17, 2013
  This paper investigates skyscraper competition between New York City and Chicago. The urban economics literature is generally silent on strategic interaction between cities, yet skyscraper rivalry between these cities is a part of U.S. historiography. This paper tests whether there is, in fact, strategic interaction across cities. First, I find that each city has positive reaction functions with respect to the other city, suggesting strategic complementarity. In regard to zoning, I find that height regulations negatively impacted each city, but produced positive responses by the other city, providing evidence for strategic substitutability.

  May 17, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jors.12017   open full text
• Spread And Backwash Effects For Nonmetropolitan Communities In The U.S.
  Joanna P. Ganning, Kathy Baylis, Bumsoo Lee.
  Journal of Regional Science. May 16, 2013
  Few studies empirically estimate the effects of metropolitan growth on nonmetropolitan communities at a national scale. This paper estimates the growth effects of 276 MSAs on population in 1,988 nonmetropolitan communities in the United States from 2000 to 2007. We estimate the distance for growth spillovers from MSAs to nonmetropolitan communities and test the assumption that a single MSA influences growth. We compare three methods of weighting cities’ influence: nearest city only, inverse‐distance, and relative commuting flow to multiple cities. We find the inverse‐distance approach provides slightly more reliable and theoretically supportable results than the traditional nearest city approach.

  May 16, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jors.12026   open full text
• The Spatiotemporal Evolution Of U.S. Carbon Dioxide Emissions: Stylized Facts And Implications For Climate Policy.
  James G. Baldwin, Ian Sue Wing.
  Journal of Regional Science. May 13, 2013
  We characterize the evolution of U.S. carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions using an index number decomposition technique which partitions the 1963–2008 growth of states’ energy‐related CO2 into changes in five driving factors: the emission intensity of energy use, the energy intensity of economic activity, the composition of states’ output, per capita income and population. Compositional change and declining energy intensity attenuate emissions growth, but their impacts are offset by increasing population and income. Despite absolute interstate divergence in both emissions and their precursors, states’ emission‐ and energy intensities—and ultimately, CO2—appear to be stochastically converging. We assess the implications of these trends using a novel vector autoregression (VAR) emission forecasting technique based on our index numbers. The resulting emission projections are comparable to, but generally exceed, those forecast by the 2010 EIA Annual Energy Outlook.

  May 13, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jors.12028   open full text
• Evaluating The Welfare Effects Of School Quality Improvements: A Residential Sorting Approach.
  Constant I. Tra, Anna Lukemeyer, Helen Neill.
  Journal of Regional Science. May 08, 2013
  Las Vegas experienced improvements in math and reading performance between 2006 and 2011. This study evaluates the benefits of these nonmarginal improvements to Las Vegas area homeowners, using a residential sorting model. We estimate households’ preferences for multiple characteristics including the proportion of proficient students in their assigned elementary school. The estimation accounts for the endogeneity of school quality using school boundary fixed effects. The welfare estimates suggest that the school quality improvements provided substantial benefits to the area's households. We find that benefit measures derived from a hedonic price model are substantially larger than our sorting model benefit measures.

  May 08, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jors.12027   open full text
• On The Population Density Distribution Across Space: A Probabilistic Approach.
  Ilenia Epifani, Rosella Nicolini.
  Journal of Regional Science. April 30, 2013
  Working within a Bayesian parametric framework, we develop a novel approach to studying the distribution of regional population density across space. By exploiting the Gamma distribution, we are able to introduce heterogeneity across space without incurring an a priori definition of territorial units. Our contribution also permits the inclusion of an approximation of individual preferences as a further driving force in location choices. We perform an empirical application to the case of Massachusetts. Our results demonstrate that a subjective measure of distance performs well in replicating the population distribution across Massachusetts.

  April 30, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jors.12018   open full text
• Innovation, Entrepreneurship And Economic Growth In Lagging Regions.
  Heather M. Stephens, Mark D. Partridge, Alessandra Faggian.
  Journal of Regional Science. April 24, 2013
  The paper investigates what are the most important factors in fostering growth in rural, remote regions with historically low growth rates. In particular, we focus on the lagging Appalachian region and compare it to both nearby counties and other similarly lagging U.S. counties. Factors such as self‐employment, human capital, creativity, university spillovers and high‐technology clusters are considered. Our results suggest that entrepreneurship and creativity factors are key to increasing growth in the Appalachian region and in similar lagging regions nationally. However, there is little evidence that other knowledge‐based factors are conducive to growth in these regions.

  April 24, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jors.12019   open full text
• The Effects Of Agglomeration On Wages: Evidence From The Micro‐Level.
  Bernard Fingleton, Simonetta Longhi.
  Journal of Regional Science. April 23, 2013
  This paper estimates individual wage equations to test two rival non‐nested theories of economic agglomeration, namely New Economic Geography (NEG), as represented by the NEG wage equation and urban economic (UE) theory, in which wages relate to employment density. In the U.K. context, we find that for male respondents, there is no significant evidence that wage levels are an outcome of the mechanisms suggested by NEG or UE theory, but this is not the case for female respondents. We speculate on the reasons for the gender difference.

  April 23, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jors.12020   open full text
• Borders As Boundaries To Fiscal Policy Interactions? An Empirical Analysis Of Politicians’ Opinions On Rivals In The Competition For Firms.
  Benny Geys, Steffen Osterloh.
  Journal of Regional Science. April 23, 2013
  Studies of spatial policy interdependence in (local) public policies usually concentrate on the relations between jurisdictions within a single analyzed region, and disregard possible extraregional effects. However, the theoretical spatial statistics literature shows that biased estimates might emerge if spatial interactions extend beyond the boundaries of the available data (i.e., the boundary value problem). This paper empirically assesses the practical relevance of this concern by studying German local politicians’ assessments of their jurisdictions’ main competitors in the struggle to attract firms. We find that location near a border significantly undermines politicians’ perception that the fiercest competitive pressure derives from jurisdictions within their own state. This effect sets in about 20 km (10.2 km) from a national (international) border. These results indicate that nearest municipalities perceive each other as competitors regardless of the state or country where they are located, which has important implications for estimating spatial dependence models.

  April 23, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jors.12029   open full text
• Productivity Growth In The Old And New Europe: The Role Of Agglomeration Externalities.
  Emanuela Marrocu, Raffaele Paci, Stefano Usai.
  Journal of Regional Science. September 24, 2012
  As Europe is currently characterized by huge disparities in the economic performance of “old” and “new” states, we investigate whether this is the result of local agglomeration—specialization and diversity—externalities. Our spatial econometric analysis focuses on total factor productivity dynamics over the period 1996–2007 for 13 industries located in 276 European regions. Consistently with the “nursery cities” theory, we find that diversity exerts a positive effect in the knowledge‐intensive services of the “old” Europe urban areas, while specialization is still effective in the “new” Europe low‐tech manufacturing. Human and technological capital has also a positive impact.

  September 24, 2012   doi: 10.1111/jors.12000   open full text
• Homeowners Associations And The Demand For Local Land Use Regulation.
  Ron Cheung, Rachel Meltzer.
  Journal of Regional Science. September 03, 2012
  Residents pay into Homeowners Associations (HOAs) to exert greater control over service provision, their properties and those of their neighbors. HOAs enforce restrictions governing land use within their boundaries, but theory is ambiguous about their impact on public land use. By combining two novel data sets on Florida HOAs and municipal regulations, we examine how HOAs affect public land use regimes for 232 cities. We find that the prevalence of HOAs is positively associated with a propensity for regulation, as are newer and bigger HOAs. Also, HOAs are positively associated with land use techniques that direct development through incentives, rather than mandates.

  September 03, 2012   doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9787.2012.00783.x   open full text