We observe that the location of non-primary production activities is concentrated among cities and regions. The pattern of domestic and international trade and the growth of a nation are intimately related to the country’s regional and urban structure. The theoretical and empirical essays in this dissertation analyze the consequences of these observations, seeking to determine the influence of cities on national growth and vice versa.
Chapter 1 models locales which produce goods for trade outside the locale’s boundaries. I use a model that assumes monopolistic competition in both service and traded goods sectors to study the impact of both a localization externality and a nation-based externality. The localization externality is related to innovation that occurs because of agglomeration in a locale. The nation-based externality reflects the idea that some nations promote competitive industries more successfully than do others. The model highlights the “success breeds success” (or “failure breeds failure”) pattern associated with economies in various stages of economic development.
Many current models in urban economics assume that cities are highly specialized in the production of goods and services, and that specialization leads to growth of output and employment; Chapter 1 yields such a result. Chapter 2 is an econometric study examining those assumptions. Using a set of 63 of the largest and potentially most specialized cities in the United States, I study data for some 40 industries and sectors in the years 1947, 1956, 1970, 1980, and 1990; I have divided the data into two periods, 1947 to 1970 and 1970 to 1990, for analyzing dynamic growth patterns. I find that static specialization is less evident in U.S. cities over time. I also find that what specialization does exist in a city is not necessarily associated with growth in an industry in a city. For some industries, increased specialization is associated with negative growth. Overall, growth in an industry in a city is more often associated with a growing labor force in that city, which I interpret as an indication of the importance of diversity.
A change in the distribution of city sizes in an economy is a potential indicator of change in that economy’s structure. I consider several methods of measuring change in the city size distribution in the United States in this century, and conclude that the distribution is becoming more concentrated over that time period. I use both parametric and non-parametric distributional approaches to study the dynamics of the evolution of the U.S. city size distribution. I find that the balance between manufacturing and service sector employment, agricultural land values and the prime interest rate have statistically significant effects on the changing distribution. / Ph. D.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/39147 |
| Date | 14 August 2006 |
| Creators | Dobkins, Linda Harris |
| Contributors | Economics, Ioannides, Yannis M., Butcher, Kristin, Hardman, Anna M., Michalopoulos, Charles, Nuxoll, Daniel |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation, Text |
| Format | iv, 121 leaves, BTD, application/pdf, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
| Relation | OCLC# 33434047, LD5655.V856_1995.D635.pdf |
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