Interregional Trade in Producer Services: Review and Synthesis

This paper reviews some of the past decade's studies of producer or intermediate-services exports from local regions. After a discussion of conceptual and methodological problems and inconsistencies, we present these studies according to the three basic methodologies: surveys, location quotients, and input-output. Overall, our sense is that these studies support limited but important conclusions: (1) If intermediate services are defined broadly, certain of these activities have as their major function interregional or international transfer or trade. By nature, these distributive services have widespread clients, and benefit from locations with substantial physical and communications infrastructure. (2) Among most business-and financial-service activities, most offices are established to serve a local region, but may derive some revenues from beyond this expected zone. (3) The exceptions—the activities and establishments that derive much of their revenue beyond such “normal” zones—are particularly specialized, particularly large, or parts of multiregional enterprises. (4) Such firms tend to locate in larger or more specialized urban places, probably because of the labor force, the corporate connections, and the rapid dissemination of ideas, contacts, and information within and among the largest metropolitan areas. These conclusions lead to some general policy recommendations.     

An Interregional Perspective on Aggregation Bias and Information Loss in Input-output Analysis

This paper extends previous theorems concerning aggregation bias in single-region and national input-output models to interregional input-output (IRIO) models. The results indicate that the conditions for zero aggregation bias are more stringent in input-output models involving multiple regions. In addition, the paper derives the relationship between the information content of IRIO and national input-output accounts. The results confirm the conventional wisdom that the information content of multiple region input-output models of the U.S. economy contain more information than national input-output models.     

Analysis of Quality of Life and Rural Development: Evidence from West Virginia Data

Abstract This paper examines the relationship between quality of life, rural development, and several socioeconomic variables. The analysis utilizes data obtained from a survey questionnaire administered to a random sample of more than 2,000 residents in West Virginia, and spatial data obtained by geocoding the survey respondents’ addressees. Quality of life is measured by a three‐point categorical measure of overall satisfaction, and development is measured by a goods and services availability index. A simultaneous ordered probit model is used to examine the relationships. The empirical results are consistent with the theoretical predictions and indicate a simultaneous relationship between quality of life satisfaction and rural development.     

Firm Demography and Regional Development: Evidence from Italy

This article contributes to the literature on firm demography and regional development in at least three different ways. First, consumption, rather than employment, which is the most common variable seen in literature, is used to measure the impact of firm demography on regional development. Second, while the literature is mainly focused on the relationship between new business formation and regional development, we investigate both entry and exit flows of firms. Third, we decompose each of these flows into spatial and sectoral components. The empirical investigation looks at the Italian regions with reference to the period 2004–2009. Results seem to be substantially divergent between the South and the rest of Italy.     

Open innovation and innovative performance of universities: Evidence from China

University–industry interactions have been extensively discussed by economic geographers. However, while universities increasingly engage in local and nonlocal interactions with the industry, there is a lack of evidence concerning the consequences of universities becoming involved in these open innovation processes. Therefore, this study empirically examines the effects of local and nonlocal knowledge interactions on the innovative performance of universities by utilizing a large panel database constructed from a sample of 185 universities in China. First, we observe that both local and nonlocal interactions have an inverted U-shaped relationship with university innovative performance. Second, local interactions combined with nonlocal interactions have a negative effect on the innovative performance of universities. Finally, we find that a balance is required between local and nonlocal interactions to enhance university performance. These results have important implications for policy design.     

Ranking State Environmental Outputs: Evidence from Panel Data

This paper uses state‐level pollution data from 1986–1997 to construct two indices that rank U.S. states according to environmental outputs. A major finding is that marginal performers in other indices, such as Wyoming, garner top spots in these ranking systems. The paper also presents findings from fixed and random effects models of panel data that imply state income levels are positively associated with environmental outputs after a threshold level of income is obtained.     

中国农业EKC研究：以化肥为例

【研究目的】针对我国农业经济发展与环境关系的演变问题,开展农业环境库兹尼茨曲线研究,验证农业经济增长与农用化肥使用量间的倒U型曲线关系。【方法】本文采用非线性回归的方法,对我国及31个省市1952到2007年间的化肥、人口、农业总产值数据进行实证分析;【结果】结果表明,除少数省市外,我国和大部分省市的化肥投入量无论在人均还是总量上都与人均农业总产值间存在着倒U型曲线关系,且均已出现拐点并跨越峰值,说明我国化肥的投入量已出现整体的下降趋势。而部分出现倒U的省市化肥投入量还将持续增长一段时间。【结论】总的来说,我国化肥投入为增产手段的趋势已基本得到了扭转,人们消费行为和农业生产方式的转变是主要因素。     

Interregional Spillovers in Regional Impact Assessment: New Mexico,Texas, and the Supreme Court

ABSTRACT Input-output models are frequently used to estimate impacts, benefits or damages from some event. These analytic models and the questions they are designed to answer are usually based on political definitions of regions. However the true impacts propagate according to the actual spatial pattern of the regional economy. Because of the divergence between the political regions used for analysis and the economic regions on the ground, the economic impacts which spill over political boundaries can sometimes become analytically important. This paper applies these concepts to a case study of allocating irrigation water from the Pecos River in Texas and New Mexico. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that New Mexico used water belonging to Texas. Our analysis suggests that the spillover benefits to Texas from New Mexico's use of the water might equal or exceed the benefits which Texas would have gotten from using the water itself. Texas might be better off because New Mexico took its water.     

Labor Density and Wages in Spain: Evidence from Geographically Disaggregated Data

In this paper, Ciccone's ( 2002 ) approach is applied to the Spanish case in 2011 but by estimating it using local labor markets (LLMs) instead of NUTS‐2 or NUTS‐3 regions. It is especially relevant in the case of Spain because the NUTS‐3 (provinces) are large regions in comparison with other cases in Europe. From a sample of income taxpayers published by the Spanish Fiscal Studies Institute, we derive figures on average wages by worker on the scale of LLMs. We argue that working at this level of spatial disaggregation is more in line with the idea of externalities from agglomerations, which are generated on a local scale. We can also observe intra‐regional heterogeneity and how the urban wage premium changes along the entire distribution of cities, including small‐medium size urban areas or rural areas. The empirical analysis is based on several estimation strategies, namely, ordinary least squares, two‐stages least squares, quantile regressions (QR), and instrumental variable quantile regressions (IVQR) estimators; they all find a significantly positive effect of agglomeration in the conditional mean of wages. This result can be estimated along the conditional distribution of wages. According to the QR and IVQR estimates, important variations are found along the distribution.     

The heterogeneity of agglomeration effect: Evidence from Chinese cities

Using annual surveys of industrial firms in China from 1998 to 2007, this paper applies the non‐linear least squares (NLS) method based on a grid search to analyse the effect of city size on firm total factor productivity (TFP). The results show that overall, the agglomeration effects in large cities, but not selection effects, significantly promote improvement in firm TFP. The optimal agglomeration scales of different industries differ as follows: those of capital‐ and technology‐intensive industries are larger than those of labour‐intensive industries. The agglomeration effects are also robust to different spatial areas without considering administrative boundaries. An inverted U‐shaped relationship exists between firm size and agglomeration effects, while the relationship between firm age and agglomeration effects is U‐shaped. State‐owned firms experience weaker agglomeration effects than non‐state‐owned firms. Cities higher in the administrative hierarchy and those with special economic zones have stronger agglomeration effects. However, cities higher in the administrative hierarchy and those with a larger economic development zone index can provide more resources to increase the survival rate of low‐productivity firms; thus, selection effects are not significant in Chinese cities.