Local Employment Growth Research Articles

The Dynamics of Local Employment in France

This Paper studies the impact of local economic structure on local sectoral employment growth. Local employment growth is decomposed into 'internal' growth (the growth of the size of existing plants) and 'external' growth (the creation of new plants). Using panel data methods, we estimate the dynamics of both variables simultaneously. Our observations refer to 36 manufacturing, trade and service sectors and 341 French 'Employment Areas' in every year between 1984 and 1993. Carefully specifying the short-run dynamics and controlling for fixed effects and endogeneity are proved to be critical devices. The low order of the selected model, an ARMA (1,1), implies that static externalities are prevalent compared to dynamic ones. Moreover, whereas fixed effects explain most of the spatial variation of plant size, plant creation is mainly determined by the current local economic structure. Policies targeted on the creation of new plants should therefore prove to be more rapidly efficient. For instance, large areas endowed with a small number of even size sectors and large leader firms transferring growth to smaller numerous plants experience larger growth.

Local Economic Structure and Industry Development in Germany, 1993-2001

This paper formulates a weighted regression approach to analyze the impact of dynamic MAR- and Jacobs-externalities on local employment growth in Germany between 1993 and 2001. We find that Jacobs-externalities matter both in manufacturing, and service industries. MAR-externalities are present only in services.

Force Reduction, Base Closure, and the Indirect Effects of Military Installations on Local Employment Growth

Abstract This study examines the indirect effects of military installations on county–level private employment, and specifically the special cases of base closure under the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) proceedings of 1988, 1991, 1993, and 1995. Local employment impacts are considered within a partial adjustment construct of the changes model, a specification that facilitates the decomposition of defense personnel changes into their positive, negative, and BRAC–related components. The latter two components are subsequently examined for asymmetric effects attributable to ordinary force drawdown on the one hand, and base closure on the other. Also considered are the specific effects of direct federal assistance as well as facilities conversion and reutilization within BRAC communities.

Unearned Income and Local Employment Growth in North Carolina: An Economic Base Analysis

Economic base theory has long provided a basis for understanding regional growth and decline. Structural change, both economic and demographic, alters the composition of a community's economic base and influences rates of employment and population growth. The same factors affect the composition of income. In particular, unearned sources of income such as transfer payments, interest, dividends and rents have been increasing and now account for a significant proportion of total personal income. As such, they represent a substantial economic stimulus to many counties and a significant boost in local demand. This paper examines the impact of unearned income on employment growth within an economic base framework for the counties of North Carolina covering the 1969-1994 period. Results from pooled cross-section time series regression indicate that, among other things, higher proportions of local income from interest, dividends and rents are associated with faster annual rates of nonbasic employment growth, while slower rates of employment growth are associated with dependence on transfer payments.

The Exclusive Brethren and an Australian rural community

This paper examines the history, theology and geography of the Christian sect known as the Exclusive Brethren. This sect emerged as a result of discontent within the Church of England in Ireland during the 1820s and has gradually spread throughout much of the developed world. Central to the beliefs of the Exclusive Brethren is that they should separate from the perceived evils and corruption of the wider world. Traditionally, this involved a social and spiritual separation from those outside of the sect. More recently, however, reinterpretations of the scriptures and the emergence of a more permissive morality outside the movement have led members of the Exclusive Brethren in Australia to pursue a more physical separation. Members of the sect have attempted to achieve this spatial separation by settling in a few small, relatively remote communities in rural Australia. This emerging Brethren geography has led to significant economic and social changes in those rural communities in which sect members have settled. Drawing on the case of one such community in the Western Australian wheatbelt, the paper demonstrates that the Brethren have contributed to significant local economic activity and employment growth. At the same time, however, the sect is a source of social tension and controversy, largely as a result of their religious practices and beliefs.

A Multi-Sector Export Base Model of Long-Run Regional Employment Growth

The relationships between intersectoral export and local employment and regional economic growth are analyzed in a long-run equilibrium framework. Dynamic location quotients decompose regional employment into export and local components for multiple sectors. Johansen's Full-Information Maximum Likelihood (FIML) approach is used to identify the existence and resultant rank of the co-integrating relationship between sectoral export and local employment in West Virginia's four metropolitan areas. Empirical results indicate inter-sectoral basic and non-basic employment form a co-integrating system of equations. Furthermore, this analysis shows that inter-sector shocks to local and export employment may cause multipliers to be positive or negative in magnitude.

The Effect of Absentee Ownership on Local Employment Change

To determine whether absentee-owned firms destabilize local economies, we examine the relationship between absentee ownership of manufacturing companies and employment change in manufacturing for 109 Pennsylvania towns. This issue arises because some earlier studies find that corporate connections through absentee-owned firms are positively related to local employment growth, whereas other work claims that locally owned operations are more stable. We attempt to reconcile these findings by arguing that absentee ownership is destabilizing only in the case of non-conglomerate firms. Our results show that absentee ownership in fact increases the closure rate of firms, thereby negatively affecting manufacturing employment change. Yet, this relationship differs by the parent company's organizational structure. Employment in branches of non-conglomerate firms is more detrimental than employment in branches of conglomerates — an important qualification of the argument that the “conglomeratization” of advanced industrial societies negatively affects communities.

Are politics and geography related?: Evidence from a cross-section of capital cities *

With a few prominent exceptions, a capital city is typically alsothe biggest city of its country. This might suggest that a capitalcity is more attractive than other cities because of thecapital city function. In the paper, we test this hypothesis bylooking at employment growth in a sample of capital cities.Employment growth might indicate outmigration from the politicalhinterland and immigration into the capital city. Specifically, welook at a sample of regional capitals that consists of West-Germancounty seats. These county seats underwent reform in the latesixties and early seventies. In this sample, we can rejectthe idea that the county capital role does not have apositive influence on local employment growth.

Immigration and county employment growth

Prior literature has found that immigrants have no effect on the wages and employment of natives. However, this literature has not accounted for the possibility that immigrants contribute to employment growth in the areas where they locate. Research on internal migration has found that internal migrants contribute to local area employment growth. In this paper I compare the effects of natives and immigrants on county employment. Results show that the overall immigrant population contributes more to increases in employment than the overall native population. Recent immigrants and recent internal in-movers have similar effects on employment growth. The net contribution of immigrants to employment growth is confined to nonmanufacturing employment.

Interregional gross migration and structural changes in local industries.

"In this paper the impacts of structural changes in local industries on interregional gross migration in Japan for 1974-85 are empirically examined. Structural changes in local industries, which are represented by a simple index of local employment growth dispersion across sectors, induce interregional migration, as well as intraregional migration. The estimation results with pooled data support this hypothesis. The impacts of structural changes in local industries are different across gross migration flows (rural-urban, urban-rural, urban-urban, and rural-rural migration), as are the impacts of other determinants of migration such as earnings differentials, aggregate employment growth, national unemployment, distance, and age structure."

From Managerialism to Entrepreneurialism: The Transformation in Urban Governance in Late Capitalism

In recent years, urban governance has become increasingly preoccupied with the exploration of new ways in which to foster and encourage local development and employment growth. Such an entrepreneur...

Local Government Finance and Metropolitan Employment Growth, a Simultaneous: Equation Model

Local Government Finance and Metropolitan Employment Growth, a Simultaneous: Equation Model

An Econometric Model of Employment Growth in US Metropolitan Areas

This paper reports on tests of hypotheses about the determinants of employment growth in US metropolitan areas. All urban employment covered by Social Security is included; the hypotheses are tested for each of forty groups of four-digit SIC industries. The units of observation are 284 areas, including all SMS As, as of 1970, plus some smaller places. The period is 1965–1970. The two main findings are: First, ease of attracting labor is not shown to have an important influence on local employment growth. Second, access to markets is the most important factor, followed by localization economies, and—for some industrial groups—low wage rates and access to inputs; urbanization economies (measured by city size) are a negative factor for some groups. The research is part of a larger study of the determinants of migration and employment growth.

Urban growth and decline: San Jose and St. Louis in the 1960's.

The population changes in San Jose and St. Louis between 1960 and 1970 exemplify the two broad trends-urban formation followed by metropolitan dispersal-that have shaped 20th-century urbanization in this country. The fact that these developmental trends were expressed through demographic processes found to be common to both cities, despite their contrasting recent experiences, suggests that generalizations can be made about the complex forces underlying urbanization. The formation of metropolitan San Jose's population parallels the traditional process whereby a region's growth comes to be focused, through migration, on a few urban centers. The modern variant is not characterized by a rural-to-urban shift, however, but by migration flows among urban areas, and particularly to a few most-favored areas, such as San Jose. Migratory growth has left a powerful demographic legacy in San Jose. This legacy is also instructive for studying the migratory formation of any new city's population. Its demographic character determines its demographic destiny, whose likely variations we can now perceive with some clarity. San Jose's population is both youthful and chronically migratory. The presence of many prospective parents and relatively few elderly persons lays a broad foundation for the population's continued growth through natural increase, despite the national downturn in fertility (14). Even without further net in-migration, the population of new cities like San Jose would continue to grow at an above-average rate. The hypermobility of San Jose's population (that is, its propensity for further migration) also has an important bearing on the future. With about 21 migrants entering and 17 departing each year per hundred residents, San Jose's rapid migratory growth rests (as it would in other new cities) on a precarious arithmetic balance. A significant dip in local employment growth could easily reduce net migration to a small fraction of its present high level. Even a slight decline would result in the inflow's no longer exceeding the high volume of outflow. Demographic analysis alone cannot foresee such an employment downturn, but if it happened, the migratory downturn probably would be swift. Hypermobility also works the other way; and given San Jose's focal position in California's expanding metropolitan structure (with its virtually endless supply of migratory growth), net migration could resume with equal swiftness. The outward dispersal of population from central cities that has occurred in St. Louis has been accelerating in other cities as well, and will remain a prominent feature of U.S. urban growth. It may seem paradoxical that in a period noted for something called "urban growth" there are so many declining central cities, but that is merely one indication that the "central city" no longer is the real city, except in name. Real city or not, the central city can expect to come into political conflict with other jurisdictions created in the process of dispersion. In cities like St. Louis, where population is dispersing but old political boundaries are fixed, the problems of the central city are separated from the resources in the suburbs. Transitional problems associated with persistent and severe outmigration also arise: accumulation of disadvantaged citizens, declining demand for city housing, and a diminished replacement capacity in the population. Carried far enough, the last of these problems results in natural decrease, and thereafter the population's decline acquires its own dynamic. As noted earlier, the white population in St. Louis has reached this point: The number of persons dying now exceeds the number being born. For two reasons, this natural decrease can do little other than intensify. First, a substantial proportion of whites are either entering or already within the high-mortality age brackets. The white population's crude death rate therefore will continue to rise. Second, prospective parents are becoming scarce among St. Louis's whites, and the national evidence that parents in general will choose to have smaller families continues to mount. The white population's crude birth rate is therefore likely to fall, barring a dramatic increase in fertility or a strong and sustained inflow of childbearing families. Nor is St. Louis's black population likely to grow substantially. It is expanding steadily through natural increase, but black migration out of the city is more than enough to cancel that increase.