Economic Geography

Pollard, Jane; Storper, Michael

doi: 10.2307/144499pmid: N/A

AbstractThe last 15 years have seen considerable debate over what constitutes the export-oriented motor of regional economies. Three kinds of activity are cited as the new generators of growth: industries handling information and advanced management functions, which we term “intellectual capital” industries; high technology, or what we term “innovation-based” industries; and a group of flexible manufacturing industries with high levels of product differentiation, relatively short production runs, and lower levels of mechanization than mass-production industries, which we call “variety-based manufacturing.” This paper reports on research measuring and then describing the growth of these three major industry ensembles in 12 metropolitan areas across the United States between 1977 and 1987. Our results reveal major interregional differences in patterns of growth, decline, and specialization and suggest that the sources of employment growth characterizing the 1980s may no longer be those of the 1990s. Variety-based manufacturing, as defined here, declined in importance and is not becoming a motor of growth in the United States, as some literature on post-Fordism suggests. The fastest growing metropolitan areas are specialized in innovation-based production, although employment in these industries peaked in the mid-1980s. Intellectual capital industries grew in all areas studied, even those without any specialization in these industries. Do these industries have a low propensity to agglomerate? Or is the telecommunications revolution making possible a less agglomerated growth pattern? Much more work is needed on changes in organization, linkage patterns, and geographic tendencies of the intellectual capital industries to answer these questions.

Hallsworth, Alan G.

doi: 10.2307/144500pmid: N/A

AbstractDuring the last century, Britain's ranking among the leading economic powers has declined steadily, with indigenous manufacturing capacity declining particularly rapidly in the 1980s. This paper argues that the root causes have been in place for much longer, making that decline both predictable and inevitable. I draw on the work of those who argue that Britain has always had a greater concern for wealth preservation than for wealth creation. The period since 1979–80 has been a particularly difficult one in which to reinstitute industrial growth. Present conditions have, to an unprecedented degree, favored speculation over investment, short-termism over long-termism.

Cooke, Thomas J.; Bailey, Adrian J.

doi: 10.2307/144501pmid: N/A

AbstractThis research reconsiders the human capital hypothesis that married women have a lower probability of employment after family migration. The empirical analysis focuses on a sample of married parents in the economically active population residing in the midwestern United States in 1980. Our analysis establishes that, after controlling for the effects of migration self-selection bias, family migration increases the probability of employment among married women by 9 percent but has no effect on the probability of employment among married men. This research demonstrates the limitations of the human capital model of family migration and indicates the need for reconceptualizing family migration behavior.

McDonald, Mary G.

doi: 10.2307/144502pmid: N/A

AbstractIndividuals living in farm households who commute to wage employment make up an important portion of Japan's “nonfarm” workers. This study examines their growing numbers and the regional and sectoral trends in their off-farm jobs, to argue that farms have been more involved in recent macroeconomic growth than is commonly acknowledged. In the 20 years between 1965 and 1985, individuals living on farms filled new manufacturing jobs in the regions outside the Tōkaidō urban-industrial belt. State subsidies for farm families' agricultural production have been generous, but have paid mainly for farm mechanization, which in turn has allowed and required farm residents to seek off-farm income. Regional policy has directed industrial plants to locate in farming regions, both to provide jobs to fanners and to provide workers to industries. To the extent that farm subsidies have partly supported rural households while enabling members to accept low-wage jobs in machinery manufacturing, farm subsidies have provided labor-cost advantages to the leading firms and industries in this period of restructuring. When farm households are viewed in this larger context of their off-farm employment, they have not fallen outside the loop of national economic growth in recent years, but have remained integral to that growth.

Gregory, Derek

doi: 10.2307/144503pmid: N/A

Barnett, Clive

doi: 10.2307/144504pmid: N/A

Wilton, Robert D.; Wolch, Jennifer R.

doi: 10.2307/144505pmid: N/A

Taylor, Peter J.

doi: 10.2307/144506pmid: N/A

Aaron, Carl

doi: 10.2307/144507pmid: N/A

Sidawi, Steve; Pulido, Laura

doi: 10.2307/144508pmid: N/A