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Functional regions capturing local socioeconomic dynamics are a framework for territorial statistics and policy‐making. The usefulness of such statistics and policies depends on the adequateness of the regions used in the analysis. Several authors have adopted the modularity quality function to drive their regionalization methods. This function, originally devised for non‐spatial data, has limitations particularly relevant in this context. The paper discusses these limitations and illustrate them using real data for the United States. The results warn against using standard modularity to assess or optimize the quality of a functional delineation, and advocate for available alternatives that consider the spatial nature of functional regionalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years many countries all over the world adopted a variety of preservation tools and market‐oriented solutions to contain land consumption. Among these countries Italy slowly began to incorporate the principles of the free market into the urban planning programmes. The United States Transfer of development rights programmes (TDR) represent a reference point for a market‐based approach in the field of environmental preservation policies. In this paper we compared the criteria successfully adopted by the US TDR programmes to the specifications adopted by the municipal plans of three important Italian cities (Milan, Rome and Florence) and we discussed their efficacy to control the urban growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the occupational segregation of white women in the US at a metropolitan area level. Our results show substantial variation across areas and suggest that the national scale does not reveal the real situation of white women. The proportion of white women who would have to shift occupations to achieve zero segregation ranges between 20 per cent in some areas and 40 per cent in others. The consequences that occupational segregation has in terms of earnings also vary dramatically within the country, which suggests that in dealing with labour inequalities, local authorities should play an active role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a spatial hedonic growth model, this paper empirically assesses the roles of natural amenities and urban agglomeration economies in US regional growth patterns from 2000 to 2010. Natural amenities and urban agglomeration are measured using the USDA Economic Research Service county classification codes. The general finding is that natural amenities and urban agglomeration both influenced regional growth. Yet, the natural amenity ranking is estimated to be positively related to increased productivity over the period rather than increased attractiveness to households. Urban agglomeration is positively related to increased amenity attractiveness to households. Within census regions, household natural amenity demand played a stronger role in non-metropolitan areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper substantiates the debate following Richard Florida's suggestion to measure regional human capital by creative occupations rather than education. Consistent with Florida's notion of creativity, it suggests a microfoundation that relates creativity to workers' cognitive and non-cognitive skills. It shows that this microfoundation is similar to that of human capital in recent labour economics, which has facilitated important new insights. While the regional measures of creative occupations developed by Florida or others are too crude to make a difference, occupations may help project workers' cognitive and non-cognitive skills from the micro to the regional level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies regional impact of three mature public surface transportation infrastructures in the Northeast corridor of the US: highway, public railway and public transit. Infrastructure stock is valued in real terms from 1991 to 2009. A spatial panel approach with fixed effects is adopted to test the hypothesis of spillovers by allowing for spatial dependence. The result shows that public surface transportation infrastructure in general does have a significant impact on regional output, most of which is from spillover effect; highways have an overwhelming influence through both local effects and spillover effects. The impacts from public railway and public transit are not significant, but transit does show a positive though small spillover effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses four statistical distributions used to describe city size distributions: lognormal, double Pareto lognormal, q-exponential, and log-logistic. We use un-truncated city size data for the US, Spain and Italy from 1900 until 2010, and, in addition, the last available year for the remaining countries of the OECD. We estimate the four functions by maximum likelihood. To check the goodness of the fit we use the Kolmogorov- Smirnov and Cramér-von Mises tests, and compute the Akaike information criterion and Bayesian information criterion. The results show that the distribution which best fits data in most of the cases (86.76%) is the double Pareto lognormal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Conservation Reserve Program ( CRP) is the largest land-based agricultural policy in the US. Several economic studies have studied this programme; however, only a few have studied its implications for non-enrolled land, that is, its regional effects on land use decisions. This paper examines the CRP's indirect effect on the conversion of non-agricultural land to agriculture, phenomenon known as land slippage. Building on earlier studies, I model county-level slippage empirically using satellite imagery, which allows observation of specific land cover changes (e.g., forest to agriculture). Results suggest the existence of CRP slippage, but at varying rates according to initial land covers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examines the evolution of technology within the optics industry. Optics is the study of the behaviour and transmission of light. We identify core optical technologies using a list of optics‐related keywords and US patent data. Sub‐class data, spanning 3,000 technology fields, enabled the characterization of different branches of knowledge production within optics. The "map equation" is used to represent the evolution of these technological branches across centres of optics innovation in the US. Analysis shows that individual cities specialize in the creation of different kinds of optics technologies, and these technologies take on different evolutionary pathways over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We try to identify the determinants of regional variation in both exploitative and exploratory innovative competencies. Hereby, we focus on how a knowledge‐creation mechanism with specialized externalities differs from one with diversified externalities. Innovative competence in the US is measured by local patenting performance; exploitative and exploratory patenting performances are distinguished by the degree of backward citation. Based on the extended knowledge‐production function, including the two agglomeration externalities, our findings show that specialized externalities are associated with exploitation, while diversified externalities are positively related with both exploration and exploitation, regardless of industrial sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economic effects of tax and expenditure limits (TELs) have been often studied in the literature. However, little research has addressed how TELs might influence the propensity for a jurisdiction to default on its obligations. This study specifically fills that void. Overall, the results indicate that while the likelihood of default increases as TELs become more restrictive, the magnitude is not particularly large. Once decomposed, it would appear that property tax limits increase the likelihood, while expenditure limits have the opposite effect, though the latter result is insignificant. The findings are robust to a number of specifications and provide potential policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of new industries demands access to local capabilities. Little attention has yet been paid to the role of spillovers from neighbour regions for industrial diversification, nor has the role of network linkages between neighbour regions been investigated. As the spread of capabilities has a strong geographical bias, we expect regions to develop new industries in which their neighbour regions are specialized. To test this hypothesis, we analyse the development of new industries in US states during the period 2000-2012. We show that a US state has a higher probability of developing a comparative advantage in a new industry if a neighbour state is specialized in that industry. We also show that neighbour US states have more similar export structures. This export similarity seems to be explained by higher social connectivity between neighbour states, as embodied in their bilateral migration patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The location of households within metropolitan areas has been a topic of interest for many decades. It has been receiving more attention by researchers recently because of the increasing attractiveness of many cities in the United States to certain types of households and to certain types of jobs. This study considers whether 15 large cities and the boroughs of New York City are attractive to families with school-age children, especially those with college-educated parents. It is shown that overall more affluent and educated families with school-age children are less likely to live in many large central cities with a few important exceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, Duranton and Turner estimated the impact of interstate highways on the average growth of US cities between 1983 and 2003. By estimating a structural model, one of their striking points is that increasing a city's initial stock of highways by 10 per cent leads to a 1.5 per cent positive respond of the city's employment over the sample period. This note mainly argues that their investigation leaves out potential spillovers of labour input from neighbouring growth centres/cities in the steady-state directly implied by the open city assumption. More specifically, this contribution readily extends Duranton and Turner's work by a general equilibrium effect induced by the urban system's labour market fluctuations which is a direct consequence of the open city assumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research evaluates the impacts on poverty rates of government funds for education, health and hospitals, and public welfare allocated to poverty reduction for counties with persistently high poverty in the Southern United States. Our analysis found that increases in education funding in a poverty hot-spot county reduce the poverty rates of that county and its neighbouring hot-spot counties. We also found that higher health and hospital funding in a hot-spot county is associated with higher poverty rates in neighbouring hot-spot counties and that public welfare funding is not effective in mitigating poverty either within or outside of poverty hot-spots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]