The Export Decision of Selected Services-Producing and Manufacturing Industries

This article provides a comparative analysis of factors influencing the out-of-state export decisions of establishments within selected groups of services-producing and manufacturing industries. Data were gathered through a mail survey of establishments located in both rural and urban areas of five Midwestern states. The proportion of sales exported was specified as a function of establishment and location characteristics and estimated using Tobit analysis. Results of the study indicate that both establishment and location characteristics are important predictors of the export decision and confirm that establishments in some services-producing industries are able to enter and compete in out-of-state export markets. Similar factors were found to influence the export decisions of services-producing and manufacturing establishments. Results suggest that services-producing establishments in the group of industries may not be footloose with respect to locational choices.     

Growth and Location of Economic Activity: The Spatial Dynamics of Industries in Canada 1971–2001

ABSTRACT A growing literature has accumulated that points to the stability of industrial location patterns. Can this be reconciled with spatial dynamics? This article starts with the premise that demonstrable regularities exist in the manner in which individual industries locate (and relocate) over space. For Canada, spatial distributions of employment are examined for seventy‐one industries over a thirty‐year period (1971–2001). Industry data is organized by “synthetic regions” based on urban size and distance criteria. “Typical” location patterns are identified for industry groupings. Industrial spatial concentrations are then compared over time using correlation analysis, showing a high degree of stability. Stable industrial location patterns are not, the article finds, incompatible with differential regional growth. Five spatial processes are identified, driving change. The chief driving force is the propensity of dynamic industries to start up in large metro areas, setting off a process of diffusion (for services) and crowding out (for manufacturing), offset by the centralizing impact of greater consumer mobility and falling transport costs. These changes do not, however, significantly alter the relative spatial distribution of most industries over time.     

Small Business Development and Nonmetropolitan Job Growth in Georgia

To assess development potential of small business, this research examines the age and size characteristics of nonmetropolitan firms and the contribution of business ‘births,’‘deaths,’ expansions, and contractions to job growth. Analysis of data derived from the federal‐state unemployment insurance program in Georgia indicates that firms employing fewer than 100 workers account for 44.3 percent of private sector nonfarm employment in nonmetropolitan counties. Overall, the mix of small and large firms remained quite stable over the five year study period. The dynamics of job creation and loss differed dramatically by enterprise size and manufacturing/nonmanufacturing sector. Three segments of the business population contributed most to rural job growth: very small continuing firms, large manufacturing establishments, and non‐manufacturing businesses owned by large enterprises. The paper concludes with a discussion of economic development policies that may enable rural communities to capitalize on these business demographic trends.     

The Call of the Wild: Call Centers and Economic Development in Rural Areas

This paper attempts to reflect critically on the role which telephone call centers might play in the economic development of rural places in the ‘information age’, drawing mainly on a case study of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. It argues that although call center employment tends mainly to be urban‐based, the growth of this form of work does present opportunities for some rural areas. The paper considers the locational factors rural areas would have to possess or develop in order to attract such work. It suggests call centers can make a valuable, though limited, contribution towards rural economic development, principally through the creation of additional employment opportunities and the stimulation of new skills and competencies. It also suggests that call centers do not represent a panacea for rural areas and that, indeed, it would be dangerous for rural areas to become over‐reliant on employment in this sector.     

Infrastructure Investment and Rural Economic Development: An Evaluation of USDA's Broadband Loan Program

We empirically evaluate whether participation in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Broadband Loan Program, which began making loans in 2002, has had measurable positive impacts on zip code‐level economic outcomes. Using difference in differences and propensity score matching program evaluation techniques, we find that loans made in 2002 and 2003 under the Pilot Broadband Loan Program have had a substantial positive impact on employment, annual payroll, and the number of business establishments in recipient communities. However, a more spatially disaggregated analysis reveals that the positive economic impacts of the pilot program are driven primarily by the outcomes in communities located closest to urban areas. Finally, we find no evidence that loans received as part of the current Broadband Loan Program have had a measurable positive impact on recipient communities, possibly because not enough time has elapsed for the impacts of the current Broadband Loan Program to have emerged.     

Manufacturing Plant Survival in a Period of Decline

We examine the effects of individual plant and local characteristics on explaining survival of manufacturing plants over the last two recessions. We link the establishment‐level Rural Manufacturing Survey to longitudinal establishment employment records (Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages) and examine establishment survival using a Cox proportional hazards model. We find that independent and smaller plants were most likely to survive this period of manufacturing decline (1996–2011) and their survival was more affected by local context than establishments which are part of a multi‐plant firm. Among independent plants, we find that those in metropolitan counties had higher hazard rates despite finding access to local markets being a driver of survival. Plants located in more competitive counties had higher hazard rates.     

Commuting distances to local non‐farm workplaces and out‐migration: The case of Northeast Thailand

The relationship between commuting distances and where people work has been studied for urban contexts in both developed countries and developing countries. However, few studies have examined the situation in rural areas, and none look at commuting distances to non‐farm workplaces in rural areas of developing countries. This paper investigates how commuting distance, and thus accessibility, to local non‐farm work influences non‐farm employment and out‐migration from rural villages in Northeast Thailand. The main issues examined are: (i) the distance that rural residents travel to work in local non‐farm jobs; and (ii) the influence that local non‐farm employment has on the number of outmigrants from rural villages. The study finds: (i) distance between villages and non‐farm work sites impact the number of villagers who are employed in regular wage work; (ii) beyond 20 km villagers are less likely to travel to non‐farm employment using their own means of transportation; and (iii) employment in regular wage work decreases outmigration. The findings from this study contribute to the debates over the drivers of rural out‐migration, rural livelihood changes, and agrarian changes that are taking place in Southeast Asia.     

Agglomeration Potential: The Spatial Scale of Industry Linkages in the Southern California Economy

ABSTRACT Targeting industry clusters for economic development has become popular despite the lack of empirical evidence about the spatial scales over which various clusters agglomerate. This paper identifies twenty manufacturing industry clusters from a principal components analysis of interindustry patterns of trade and measures the spatial employment concentration of each cluster's plants within a polycentric framework. Two to eight centers of employment concentration are detected within the Southern California region for each set of trade linkages. Our spatial half‐life measure reveals that half of a cluster's employment in associated establishments is located within a typical range of eight to twelve kilometers (about 5–7.5 miles) to the nearest employment center or subcenter for the particular cluster. Furthermore, employment in seventeen of the twenty clusters is found to be more spatially concentrated than manufacturing employment as a whole, suggesting that geographic proximity is important to interindustry linkages in the Southern California economy. More important, the spatial concentration across industry clusters varies considerably within the metropolitan area, implying that economic development practitioners should consider local context and adapt industry cluster theories to the specific advantages and disadvantages of their immediate locality.     

The impact of external knowledge sourcing on innovation outcomes in rural and urban businesses in the U.S.

This paper examines the relationship between external knowledge sourcing and a diverse set of innovation outcomes in rural and urban establishments in the U.S. Existing studies in the broader knowledge management literature principally examine firms in a single industry, overwhelmingly rely on patent data to proxy for innovation, and cannot account for the innovations of businesses in rural American markets. By addressing these limitations using data from the 2014 Rural Establishment Innovation Survey of the USDA's Economic Research Service, this research provides novel insights into how externally acquired knowledge by American establishments may support innovation. Results of the analysis suggest that external knowledge sourcing may specifically promote product, process, and green innovation in U.S. firms. While collective results when external sources of information are divided by industry orientation fail to show that sources outside of a firm's industry play a dominant role in the innovation processes of American establishments in general, findings provide evidence for an outsized impact of these relationships within rural establishments specifically and suggest that external knowledge sourcing from extra‐industry organizations is most critical for promoting successful innovation in rural firms. Results additionally indicate that knowledge sourcing from non‐local organizations may be more important for supporting innovation in rural compared to urban markets.     

Using Economic Base Models to Explain New Trends in Rural Income

The economics or urban and rural areas in the United States continue to experience change in their structure, leading to changes in their economic base. This paper argues that nontraditional sources of income, employment, and business activity have become more important in the economic base of rural areas. Current trends in rural parts of the western United States are used to document this argument. In spite of the decline in the relative or absolute important of traditional natural-resource-oriented industries in the rural West, in the 1990s this region is experiencing population growth rates well above those of the nation as whole. This reversal of development experience from the 1990s is analyzed empirically, and extended economic base models are proposed to capture forces which now are found to be of growing significance in explaining current development trends in western rural economics.     

贫困地区少数民族女性弹性就业可持续生计评价研究

推进贫困地区女性就业脱贫对增强女性自我发展能力,促进家庭可持续发展具有重要意义。本文借鉴参与式农村评价法、可持续生计框架理论,对新疆喀什地区2020年脱贫县典型乡镇进行实地抽样调查,从个人禀赋、家庭特征与社会保障层面对少数民族女性脆弱性贫困进行分类识别,建立少数民族女性弹性就业可持续生计资产评价体系,测算其家庭生计资产,对比分析女性弹性就业生计资产稳定性差异,探讨贫困地区少数民族女性弹性就业脱贫效益与生计可持续诉求。研究表明：（1）研究区农村女性弹性就业意愿较为强烈,个人资源禀赋、家庭环境以及社会保障因素均可产生脆弱性贫困风险。（2）研究区4县农村女性弹性就业生计资产指数水平总体偏低且差异较大。（3）依据资产指数与脆弱性特征,将莎车县、叶城县界定为个人禀赋、家庭环境脆弱型区域,英吉沙县、伽师县界定为家庭环境、社会保障脆弱型区域,据此提出相应对策建议,实现优化女性生计资产配置,维护就业脱贫可持续发展。     

The Influence of Location on Productivity: Manufacturing Technology in Rural and Urban Areas

ABSTRACT Policies to counter the growing discrepancy between economic opportunities in rural and urban areas have focused predominantly on expanding manufacturing in rural areas. Fundamental to the design of these strategies are the relative costs of production and productivity of manufacturing in rural compared to urban areas. This study develops information that can be used to assess the productivity of manufacturing in rural and urban areas. Production functions are estimated for the meat-products and household-furniture industries to investigate selected aspects of location and productivity. The results show that the effect of location on productivity varies with industry, size, and the timing of entry. Although the analysis is specific to two industries, it suggests that development policies targeting manufacturing can be more effective if they focus on industries and plants with characteristics that predispose them to the locations they support.     

Manufacturing Output Indexes for a Metropolitan Area: A Look at New Economic Indicators

The purpose of this paper is to construct monthly manufacturing output indexes for a metropolitan area, employing a method used by the Federal Reserve Banks to construct regional manufacturing indexes. The Tulsa metropolitan area is the region considered. The index of total manufacturing output is included in a vector autoregression model of the Tulsa economy. The results indicate that the linkages between manufacturing activity and non-manufacturing employment differ from the linkages between employment in those sectors, and that since the early 1980s both sectors have become less sensitive to changes in the price of oil.     

Spatial Patterns in the Economic Development of the Mountain West

ABSTRACT Many counties in the mountainous areas of the western U.S. are experiencing rapid growth in population and income, even though extractive industries that served historically as their primary economic base are in decline. The purpose of this paper is to establish statistically the spatial determinants of population, employment, and income densities in 86 rural mountain counties and any changes in those determinants between 1985 and 1994. The results of this analysis indicate that densities are oriented to regional metropolitan centers and critical amenities such as ski areas, national parks, and universities or colleges. Negatively sloped density gradients with respect to distance from regional metropolitan centers suggest that the densities of settlement patterns beyond metropolitan boundaries are analogous to those within metropolitan areas relative to urban centers. In short, a tension apparently exists in locational choice; residents of the Mountain West desire to live near the beauties and amenities of the mountain landscape but do not want to entirely sever their urban ties. Because amenities are the primary attraction of mountain counties rather than employment in locationally dependent industries, at least some migrants must have relatively footloose forms of income.     

International Trade and the Changing Demand for Skilled Workers in High‐Tech Manufacturing

ABSTRACT States and localities in the U.S. put considerable effort into attracting and maintaining high‐tech manufacturing industries to preserve manufacturing employment. However, little work has examined whether high‐tech industries respond differently than traditional manufacturing to changing trade pressures. This study investigates the impact of international trade on skilled and unskilled labor demand across manufacturing sectors. Results of this study indicate that changes in exchange rates and trade orientation have similar effects across high‐tech and traditional manufacturing sectors. In addition, findings suggest that there is a high degree of variation in the trade‐related effects on labor demand across individual high‐tech sectors, and that the direction of these effects often runs counter to the predictions of traditional trade theory.     

Restructuring Appalachian Manufacturing in 1963–1992: The Role of Branch Plants

This paper uses the Longitudinal Research Database (LRD),a unique, detailed, plant‐level database that covers the entire U.S. manufacturing sector in five‐year intervals to examine how the manufacturing sector in Appalachia has evolved over the past thirty years (from 1963 to 1992). The research focuses on three questions:1) Is the Appalachian Region attracting new manufacturing plants at the same rate as the rest of the country? 2) Does Appalachian manufacturing employment exhibit low wage, low productivity characteristics, compared with the rest of the country? 3) Is Appalachia still heavily reliant on branch plants? The results show the manufacturing base of Appalachia in 1992 looks very much the same as it did in 1967. Compared to the rest of the country, Appalachian manufacturing is still more reliant on branch plants and is characterized by lower wage and lower productivity establishments. This result is not due to a lack of entry—manufacturing plant entry rates and manufacturing job formation associated with entrants in Appalachia are only slightly lower than for the U.S. as a whole. Job destruction rates caused by exits are actually lower than in the U.S. as a whole.     

Does Commuting Reduce Wage Disparities?

ABSTRACT This paper shows that in the Baltic countries, commuting reduces urban‐rural wage and employment disparities and increases national output. To quantify the effect of commuting on wage differentials, two sets of earnings functions are estimated (based on Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian Labor Force Surveys) with location variables (capital city, rural, etc.) measured at the workplace and at the place of residence. We find that the ceteris paribus wage gap between capital city and rural areas, as well as between capital and other cities is significantly narrowed by commuting in some cases but remains almost unchanged in others. Different outcomes are explained by country‐specific spatial patterns of commuting, educational and occupational composition of commuting flows, and presence or absence of wage discrimination against rural residents in urban markets. A treatment effects model is used to estimate individual wage gains to rural—urban or inter‐city commuting; these gains are substantial in most but not all cases. Wage effects of commuting distance, as well as impact of education, gender, ethnicity, and local labor market conditions on the commuting decision are also explored.     

Rural‐to‐Urban Commuting: Three Degrees of Integration

Commuting ties between rural places of residence and urban places of employment are among the most visible forms of rural–urban integration. For some rural areas, access to urban employment is a key source of population retention and growth. However, this access varies considerably across rural areas, with distance representing a primary deterrent. In addition to distance, the size of the urban community will also influence rural‐to‐urban commuting opportunities. In this paper, using Canadian data, we empirically estimated the influence of local rural population and job growth on rural out‐commuting within the urban hierarchy. We find consistent support for the deconcentration hypothesis where population moves to rural areas for lifestyle and quality of life reasons, while retaining urban employment. Further, we find some evidence that in addition to distance from the nearest urban center being a deterrent, increased remoteness from the top of the urban hierarchy exerts a positive influence on out‐commuting. Recognition of these types of rural–urban linkages through commuting is essential in designing Canadian rural policy and targeted programs that may effectively support local rural populations. In particular, they point to the need to have reasonable transportation infrastructure for urban accessibility, which should be complemented by other “built” infrastructure to improve the livability of rural communities.     

Remoteness and rural development: economic impacts of rural roads on upland farmers in Sarawak,Malaysia

>Although Sarawak has a rapidly growing economy, the benefits of growth have been focused largely in the urban centres. However, the majority of the population lives in rural areas, where poverty, although on the decline, prevails. Attention is given to the role of rural roads in countering remoteness and, hence, promoting more equitable development. To assess the impact of rural roads, two roads were used for comparison. One provided Iban communities with access to Betong, a small district town. The other provided Bidayuh communities with access to Kuching, the capital city. This paper focuses on three economic impacts of roads – agricultural production, employment, and household income. Findings show that the impact of roads varied within an area (a function of remoteness) and between areas (also a function of remoteness). Impacts were considerably greater when roads provided communities with access to a major urban centre compared with a small town. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the government's strategy of rural development.     

城市外来农村已婚女性劳动力就业的制约因素分析——基于河北省的实证分析

以城市外来农村已婚女性劳动力为研究对象,构建二元Probit回归模型,实证分析城市外来农村已婚女性劳动力就业的制约因素。研究表明:技能是制约城市外来农村劳动力就业的关键因素,且相对于城市外来农村男性劳动力,城市外来农村已婚女性劳动力就业受技能因素的影响更大。因此要改善农村已婚女性劳动力在城市就业的状态,必须要加大职业技能培训,同时尽快建立城市外来农村劳动力非正规就业劳动组织,对促进农村劳动力转移和推进城市化进程具有重要意义。