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 dissertation is composed of three essays at the intersection of regional economic analysis and industrial organization. In the first chapter, I derive an estimating equation for retail market structure in order to quantify the effects of e-commerce competition on brick and mortar retail establishment and employment counts. Using a multilevel regression specification, I find that (i) e-commerce establishment count exposure results show heterogeneity in the sign of the effects across the retail sectors represented in the data (ii) the magnitude of the e-commerce exposure effect is also heterogeneous across retail sectors (iii) the heterogeneity is not purely random and correlates highly with retail industrial characteristics like the labor share of receipts and profit margins, (iv) the e-commerce exposure is passed through to intensive margins like employment. The second essay turns to a regional focus, where I develop a multilevel difference-in-difference approach to estimate the causal effects of discontinued Shuttle launches on the industry and labor markets of Florida's Space Coast. I find strong evidence for (i) an across industry substitution effect previously unexplored in the regional literature(ii) a spike in unemployment of 17% relative to the estimated counterfactual outcome for the region (iii) a contraction in payroll of nearly 10% of regional GDP in some industries combined with a gain of 7.5% through across industry labor reallocation. In the final essay, I focus on the relationship between the size of retail establishments and the growth of their proximate markets. In accomplishing this, I demonstrate the utility of Department of Defense satellite images of ambient night light activity as a measure of the spatial variation in economic activity, as well as a measure of economic growth. This allowed me to use a dynamic panel regression approach to test the concentrating effect of market growth on retail firms. I find evidence that (i) with an autoregressive coefficient closer to 0 than 1 (alpha=0.23), establishment size is not persistent (ii) firms adjustment contemporaneously to economic growth and discount past growth for hiring decisions (iii) a positive and significant firm size elasticity with respect to spatial variation in economic activity.

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. / Arts, Faculty of / Vancouver School of Economics / Graduate

The scale is a fundamental yet controversial concept in human geography. Among diverse views over scale, this thesis draws insights from the process-based approach of scale jumping. It is a key notion to understand scale as a process, yet few explorations have been made on making use of its methodological values. Thus this thesis seeks to elaborate the notion by redeveloping it as an analytical framework. Four key elements are therefore concerned: (a) actors and their purposes; (b) directions; (c) approaches; and (d) outcomes. These elements form a framework to investigate the rescaling process of economic space in China. Conventional studies suggest that in the context of global competition, the role of state in scale (re)production has changed from a passive to an active actor. In China, where the state plays an active role in facilitating the economy, different levels of state actors, such as government officials and institutions, are involved in the (re)production of scale. Using the production of Shenshan Special Cooperation Zone (SSCZ) as a case study, the abovementioned four elements are investigated. Specifically, there are three research questions: (a) why do local governments rescale their economy? (b) How do local governments build SSCZ? And (c) what is the outcome of rescaling through SSCZ? The qualitative research method is used to collect data and other information for this research. This includes desktop searches and interviews of businessmen, planners, government officials, and local residents. Through a detailed investigation of the production of SSCZ, this research reveals the role of local governments, their intentions for rescaling, the approaches they used, and the outcomes of the rescaling

We are seeing an influx of out-of-state buyers into Tennessee, and the Tri-Cities area specifically. As a major emerging housing market in the US, the Tri-Cities is being inundated by people from all states and walks of life seeking a better life in Appalachia. Although the reasons vary by person, many agree that political alignment, taxation levels, and the quietness of this area lends itself to population growth. While most members of the housing industry have noticed this uptick in out-of-state buyers, few have taken the time to analyze their own records or review the empirical evidence that is present from the past 24-36 months to see where opportunities lie. Through cooperation with a local real estate attorney, I have obtained records that have been scrubbed of personal details for academic research. Using that information I have run some tests for proportions and changes from 2020 to 2021 to determine the major hot-spot states and regions from which people are moving to Tennessee. After analyzing this data, I have then compared it to input from two real estate agents in the Tri-Cities area regarding what they believe are the largest motivating factors for these out-of-state buyers. I have concluded that the West Coast Region (and California in particular) are showing the most decisive and conclusive increases in Tennessee home buying. Overall out-of-state buyers are quickly becoming a large demographic of our market, with a statistically significant 7.56% difference in proportion from just last year to this year (2021).

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Formation of new firms is important, since new firms create jobs and economic growth. When entrepreneurs lack the financial resources which are needed to start a firm, they often turn to banks to borrow money. Previous research has shown that relationships between banks and new business borrowers most often are local and that the dependence on banks differs across industries. In light of this, the purpose of this paper is to investigate if local access to banks has a stronger relationship with the rate of new firm formation in some industries than in others. Based on cross-sectional data on all Swedish municipalities in 2009, a series of OLS regressions are estimated to test if variables used to describe the bank market in a municipality are related with the new firm formation rate, both in total and in different industry categories. The results show that the number of bank branches per capita is positively related with the total new firm formation rate. In regards to the inter-industry differences, the findings indicate that local access to banks is more important for new firm formation in some industries than in others.

The persisting gap between male and female wages in the United States offers a seemingly unusual disconnect between what is observed in the data and what is suggested by labor economics theory. Many authors have used aggregate or case methods to attempt to explain this gap. One characteristic of the earnings gap which has rarely been discussed is the large variation in female earnings as a percentage of male earnings by state. Why would median female earnings be 65% of male earnings in Louisiana while being 87% of median male earnings in New York? In this paper, using yearly Census data, I first find that the wage gap varies widely by state even when controlled for traditional determinants of wages and the gender pay gap. Then, deriving new variables to represent this controlled variation, I further find evidence that several state-specific characteristics represented by cross-section data explain a large portion of the controlled variation in gender pay gap by state. I conclude that the variables representing the structure of state economies as well as key measures of ideology and gender-related attitudes by state are significant determinant factors in why we see so much geographic variation in the gender pay gap.

Guatemala, the most populous country in Central America, is haunted by the legacy of violence, political instability, poverty, corruption, and persisting, relentless inequality. Narco-trafficking routes through Central America became firmly established after air- and sea-based routes were disrupted by U.S. and Mexican drug enforcement efforts in the 1990s. Guatemala and its Central American neighbors were highly vulnerable to incursion by the drug trade, ideally-located between production sources and major consumers, its people and governments weakened by long-standing armed conflict. Evidence shows the drug trade disproportionately impacts Guatemala in comparison to the rest of the region. Its neighbors share similarly well-located geography and the legacy of armed conflicts, but Guatemala lacks the institutional strength and ability to combat the cartels. This paper posits that U.S. prohibitionist policies are ineffective and harmful to Guatemala’s people, based on a supply-reduction model and a review of previous literature and anecdotal evidence. Narco-trafficking and the United States’ drug enforcement efforts, strategies and policies, intensify existing violence, poverty, inequality and corruption within Guatemala, ensnaring its people in a recurring cycle of violence which reinforces barriers to escaping poverty and crime.