O Brasil tem na desigualdade regional um tema que historicamente recebe bastante atenção por parte dos pesquisadores e das formulações de políticas públicas. Regiões mais vulneráveis do país são alvos de iniciativas que tentam amenizar o problema da disparidade econômica. Dentre os instrumentos utilizados, o Fundo Constitucional de Financiamento do Nordeste (FNE) foi criado pela Constituição de 1988 com o intuito de combater as desigualdades intra e inter-regionais na região nordestina. O presente estudo se propõe a avaliar a eficácia do FNE como instrumento de política de combate às desigualdades regionais no Brasil aplicando uma metodologia de equilíbrio geral computável. A retirada do FNE e a realocação do montante do fundo em gastos correntes resultariam em queda no PIB e aumento da concentração da atividade e da desigualdade do PIB per capita, indicando que o FNE funcionaria como indutor de crescimento e cumpriria o objetivo de reduzir a desigualdade entre o Nordeste e o Brasil. / Brazil has in regional inequality a subject that historically receives a lot of attention from the researchers and policy makers. The most vulnerable regions in Brazil received initiatives that attempt to attenuate the problem of economic disparity. Among the instruments used, the Northeastern Constitutional Financing Fund was created by the Constitution with the aim of fight against intra and interregional inequalities in the Northeastern region. The present study proposes to evaluate the efficiency of the fund as an instrument of combatant policy of regional inequalities in the Northeast region applying a methodology of computable general equilibrium. The estimation of the scenario with no existence of the fund and its reallocation in government demand implies that income and investment decreases, together with higher concentration of production and inequality of GDP per capita.

This thesis focuses on what constitutes leadership for regional economic development in each of three regional cities in South Australia. The research underpinning the thesis investigates and analyses themes and patterns of local economic development policy adoption and considers the role leadership plays in local government and regional economic development boards. / thesis (MBusiness)--University of South Australia, 2004.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI/Dissertation Abstracts International.

Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on Feb 24, 2010). The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file. Dissertation advisor: Dr. Thomas G. Johnson. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Each state or region within the United States has certain unique and distinct characteristics that cause its economic performance to vary from that of the nation as a whole. Unemployment rates, as summary measures of unutilized manpower resources, frequently serve as a gauge of the general economic situation and social well-being. It is a well documented fact that unemployment is not evenly distributed througout the nation. For example, although 54% of the labor force is concetrated in the northeast and north central regions, they only account for 46% of the unemployment in recent years. This thesis focuses on the measurement and behavior of unemployed in Indiana, with particular attention devoted to contrasting performance by the State's economy with that of the nation as a whole.

In this set of essays, I grapple with issues related to the core questions of urban economics. Why are people so heavily clustered in urban areas? Why do some cities grow while others decline? What explains where people live within urban areas? My first essay focuses on understanding patterns of racial segregation within metro areas. One factor that has long been hypothesized to contribute to this divide, but has proven difficult to test empirically, is that local zoning regulations have an exclusionary impact on minority residents in some neighborhoods. I focus on variation in block-level racial composition within narrow bands around zone borders within jurisdictions. My results imply a large role for local zoning regulation, particularly the permitting of dense multi-family structures, in explaining disparate racial location patterns. The second essay returns to core issues of agglomeration and the role of cities. The fact that wages tend to be higher in cities, and that this premium grows with density, has been seen as strong evidence for urban agglomeration forces enhancing productivity. In modern data this density premium seems only to exist in areas with above average levels of human capital. Agglomeration models emphasizing learning and knowledge spillovers between workers in close proximity seem most compatible with the data. Finally, I investigate the impact of local governance structure on urban growth over the last 40 years. Some economists have touted the virtues of competition between fragmented local governments in efficient provision of local public goods, while regionalists have pointed to the need to coordinate planning and infrastructure across jurisdictions, and warned of the impacts of fractionalization on segregation and sprawl. While cities with regionalized governments have grown more rapidly, a small set of strong historical correlates with local government density can account for this. Impacts on segregation are more robust. / Economics

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This thesis provides empirical evidence to assess the long term contribution of the B.C. forest industry to the provincial economy. Estimates of resource rent are constructed to measure the direct contribution of the resource to provincial income and growth. Measures of rent are constructed for a firm level sample (1906-76) and at an industry level (1918-92). The figures for rent are used to generate estimates of the share of provincial income measures directly attributable to the industrial exploitation of the province's forests. While there were periods during which the direct contribution to provincial income and its growth was nontrivial, in general the growth of forest industry rent did not drive overall economic growth but rather lagged behind. Rent was low on average and volatile during the years before W.W.II, rose rapidly from roughly 1940-51, then declined unevenly. To investigate the forces which underlie both the broad trends and the variability in rent, a stylized model of the forest industry is applied in an empirical analysis. Broad changes in aggregate rent were the result of changes in rent per unit of B.C. timber. The rapid increase in rent coincided with a marked rise in the price of forest products. The secular decline resulted from the combination of a falling output price and rising costs. An investigation of real harvesting costs indicates that depletion played a role in this increase. The variability of rent is also explored and found to be most strongly influenced by factors reflecting market risk which the B.C. industry could not diversity away from. The rent measures may not capture the full impact of the forest industry, so the industry's potential role as a leading export sector is also examined. The possibility of a stable long term link between forest exports and provincial income is investigated using cointegration tests. B.C. forest exports and G.D.P. are not cointegrated; their levels axe not linked in a deterministic way in the long run. A bivariate VAR, is used to examine the short run interaction between the growth of forest exports and provincial G.D.P. The results do not strongly support the view that the forest industry acts as a leading export sector in the provincial economy.