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Migration is a major engine of demographic change for towns, regions, and whole countries. Traditionally, migrations have been divided into those caused by push or pull factors or classified by events that triggered them. In other words, push and pull factors are but one way to classify migration movements. This work distinguishes between life course and structural migrations. Life course migrations are linked to important events in people’s lives such as graduation, marriage, having children, job promotions, discharge from the military, or retirement and the motivation comes from the migrant. Structural migrations are caused by changes in the economic, social, political, or natural environment and, therefore, externally motivated. This classification scheme is compatible with and complementary to existing classifications and particularly those based on push and pull factors. It yields some additional insights for policy making, empirical research, and migration modeling.

Research on the relationship between real estate investment and economic growth has a long history in the economic development literature. This study adds to the literature by focusing on the largest segment of commercial real estate, retail establishments. Not only quantifying the economic impacts of retail establishments, but also understanding how the economic and socio-demographic characteristics of an area affect investment location decisions, contributes to the understanding of regional growth process. A 3SLS simultaneous equations model derived from is used to analyze the role of “small” and “large” retail establishments in the economic development of the Northeast region of the United States. The study concludes that growth in retail establishments indeed plays a significant role in the economic growth process in the study region. Counties’ government expenditure and housing values play a strong role in attracting retail businesses. Population density has different effects on “small” and “large” retail establishments; high population density areas are found to be attractive, particularly to “small” retail establishments, whereas “large establishments” prefer areas with low population densities.

Place-based policies in large and persistently lagging regions face many challenges. Persistently lagging regions may require such large investments to reverse a downward trend as to be politically infeasible. In regions that have become economically obsolete, place-based policies cannot be justified by appealing to economic efficiency, unless problems are due to market failures. It may, however, be possible to justify policies on social or political grounds, as is the case with the EU’s cohesion policies. Migration as an economic adjustment mechanism has an ambiguous effect on lagging regions. Because the young and skilled are most likely to find success elsewhere, it often results in the loss of emerging economic, civic, and political leadership. The disproportionate loss of young people also causes demographic disequilibria that reduce prospects for recovery. The long-term stagnation of four West Virginia counties in a region that benefits from place-based federal policies, illustrate the challenges.

Large and sudden migrations occurred at many stages in human history, but the combination of increased longevity, declining fertility rates, and aging of populations have no counterpart. Although much longer in the making—modern urbanization began in the late eighteenth century in England—the degree of global urbanization, which passed the 50% mark only around 2010, is also without historical precedent and has not yet run its course. Because of these changes, today migration is a major driver of demographic change in developed as well as in developing economies. The most dramatic new migrations are responses to changes in economic, social, political, and environmental conditions and are continuously evolving and often rapidly changing. In this chapter, we argue that this type of migration should be a research priority for the next half century.

Two traditions have shaped trade theory. Adam Smith highlighted the division of labour and David Ricardo comparative advantage. Ricardo initially had the greater impact, but over the last three dec...

Rural and urban regions are interconnected and form one system. Changes in one region therefore also affect others. This is particularly true for a force as large and pervasive as urbanization which resulted in massive rural and urban economic restructuring and geographic realignment of rural–urban boundaries. Until the mid-twentieth century, rural could be considered the opposite of urban, but in the process of urbanization, economic and social structures of rural and urban regions became more similar. However, perceptions and attitudes often survive long after conditions that shaped them have changed. In this article, the authors explain why attention to proper definitions of rural and urban is important to policymaking and analysis. The authors use ideas, definitions, and empirical results based in large part on A. M. Isserman’s research to highlight the importance of his rural research and to honor his memory.

This study tests the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa, using a panel co-integration approach. Country-level time series data of energy consumption and economic growth are pooled and used to estimate the model. Sub-Saharan African countries in the sample are classified into low income and middle income countries. The findings support the neutrality hypothesis in the short-run, except for middle income countries, and a strong causation running in both directions is found in the long-run. The different results for low and middle income countries provide evidence of the importance of income level in the causal relationship. This study helps to explain the interdependence of energy consumption and economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa. Results are critical in formulating sustainable development policies that are geared to the efficient allocation of resources which are expected to increase access to energy services in the study region.

Undocumented migration is a (inferior) substitute to documented migration. Hence, policies affecting documented migration also affect undocumented migration. This paper explores this relationship from a theoretical perspective. The implications of this exploration are that lax enforcement of visa rules and national borders, combined with a very long waiting line (small annual quotas) for immigrant visas, can make illegal immigration a preferred option over legal immigration or, more generally, that for policy purposes all types of migrations should be regarded as interdependent. Therefore, policies aimed solely at, say, undocumented immigration will generally be less effective than an integrated policy approach.

Amenities are expected to impact regional economic growth by affecting growth in population, employment, income, and house values. This study assesses whether the 299 counties in the Northeast (NE) region of the US can build and pursue a growth strategy that depends on their local and neighborhood amenities (natural and built). It extends previous studies by estimating a simultaneous spatial Durbin model (SDM) using the two stages least square method. Historical and cultural amenities and water based recreational amenities are found to play a positive role in shaping the growth of population in the northeast region of the US. The role of natural amenities, land and winter based amenities is found to be negative or insignificant. One of the important findings of the study is the positive role of surrounding counties’ historical and cultural amenities in the growth of population and employment densities. Overall there is no evidence of a consistent and strong relationship between amenities and regional economic growth, and the results can be termed “mixed and inconclusive”.

Appalachia remains a symbol of poverty in the midst of prosperity. During the 1990s it fell further behind the rest of the nation. Persistent poverty during a period of strong growth is a serious as well as an interesting subject to study. We examine determinants of growth in Appalachia between 1990 and 2000. We show that employment, migration, and median household income were jointly determined by regional covariates and that county economic conditions were conditional on the performance in neighboring counties. One conclusion is that regional cooperation and geographically focused programs may yield the greatest returns to policy investments.

We develop a multivariate spatial autoregressive model of local public expenditure determination based on the maximization of a strictly quasi-concave community utility function. The existence of spatial interdependence is tested for both the spatial error and spatial lag model. The full model is estimated by efficient GMM following Kelejian and Prucha (J Real Estate Finan Econ 17(1):99–121, 1998). The results indicate significant spillover effects among local governments with respect to spending on public services. The OLS estimates of the conventional (non-spatial) model and the corresponding maximum likelihood estimates of the spatial lag and the spatial error models are presented for comparison purposes. The GMM estimates are found to be more efficient.

In this study, a spatial equilibrium model of employment growth is developed and empirically estimated by Generalized Spatial Two-Stage Least Squares (GS2SLS) estimator using cross-sectional data from Appalachian counties for 1990-2000. Besides the existence of spatial spillover effects, the results suggest that agglomerative effects that arise from the demand and the supply side contribute to employment growth in the study area during the study period. The policy implications of the findings are: (1) Regional cooperation of counties and communities is advisable and may in fact be necessary to design effective policies to encourage employment growth; and (2) Policy makers at the county level may need to design policies that can attract people with high endowments of human capital and higher income into their respective counties.

Business growth and formation are fundamental drivers of job crea-tion and economic growth. Business incubators provide a nurturing environment, through an array of business support resources and services, where entrepre-neurs, start-ups, and small businesses can commercially validate and transform their ideas and concepts into viable and tangible products and services. Despite growing attention to evaluate the performance and impact of business incuba-tors, the existing literature continues to suffer from methodological, theoretical, and empirical limitations. In particular, existing performance measures have inherent biases that lead them to underestimate the role of business incubators in entrepreneurship and economic development in economically distressed are-as, which typically face disadvantageous local economic conditions. The pur-pose of this paper is to explain the need for better performance measures and the difficulties in creating them.

This paper presents a model of legal international labor migration particularly temporary migration. It explores the likelihood of voluntary return of a majority of foreign workers to their home countries. The approach chosen is that of deterministic simulation. The results of the simulation suggest that a relatively quick labor turnover as required for a true guestworker system is unlikely under most conditions. (EXCERPT)

Migration movements to industrialized countries have grown in number and size, and the presence of large numbers of immigrants has raised concerns about their integration and assimilation into host societies. This article is an empirical study of assimilation of foreign nationals in Germany. Their experience may hold lessons for other relatively recent immigration destinations. As expected, language is one of the most critical factors for determining integration and assimilation at the workplace and in society. Our results indicate uneven success in these two areas, and suggest that greater language skills may be required for social assimilation, compared to economic assimilation. Among the most important findings of our study are the strong and statistically significant effects of the attitudes by Germans toward immigrants, the significant influence of the region of residence, and the ambivalence of German-born foreign residents toward naturalization and continued stay. This signals the failure of past integration and assimilation policies. The results show that negative attitudes by ethnic Germans against others at work or in society, in general, reduce interest in integration and assimilation. This is neither new nor surprising and this research does not contribute new theoretical insights, but it demonstrates the magnitude and significance of the effects. The question of why different locations seemed to have different impacts on citizenship aspirations is beyond the scope of this article. The data do not provide information to pursue this question and we suspect that the causes are too complex for a short answer. As expected, non-EU citizens showed greater interest in acquiring German citizenship than EU citizens. Finally, the results also indicate that the immediate post-World War II notion of “guest workers” was not completely false. There has been significant return migration and a significant number of respondents to the survey say that they intend to return.

Unless literally forced to leave, prospective refugees have a choice between staying and flight, subject to constraints, particularly the willingness of a country to grant asylum. Although all options may be unpleasant, they nonetheless represent alternatives amenable to economic analysis. The incentive to flee is a function of threat severity and credibility, and the attractiveness of available safe havens. The theoretical analysis suggests that restrictive asylum policies have little impact on demand for asylum, except in the interplay with other factors, such as costs of flight and retribution against unsuccessful refugees. While the case of bogus refugees has received much attention in the popular literature, this article shows that threatened individuals may choose emigration instead of flight if there are repercussions associated with refugee status. The article also analyzes the case of bogus refugees.

Entrepreneurship is now recognized as a strategy to achieve economic growth in many regions. The goal of this paper is to increase the understanding of entrepreneurship's contributions to economic growth and its potential as a development strategy for a region, such as Appalachia, characterized by poverty and underdevelopment. Using data on Appalachian counties, a system of simultaneous equations is empirically estimated to measure the effects of entrepreneurship on economic growth and development. An expanded Carlino-Mills growth model is used where changes in population, employment and per capita income represent measures of growth. Proprietorship and firm formation rate data are used to measure entrepreneurial activity. The results show start-up businesses contribute significantly to determining population growth. Employment growth is positively affected by self-employment rates as well as by firm formation rates. In terms of policy implications, the paper recommends the creation of an environment to encourage entrepreneurial activity as a strategy to battle unemployment. It concludes that regional policy makers need to renew their efforts to support the growth of self-employment and sustain the existing firms.

Regional scientists, with their experience investigating social and economic phenomena at different levels of aggregation, awareness of the importance of the role public and private institutions in society, and interdisciplinary tool box, are particularly well suited to provide rural policy advice to state and local governments. In spite of this, there are those who argue that faculty neglect state rural policy (SRP) research. This article explores this question and ties answers and recommendations to incentives faced by faculty and their institutions.

County median household income and employment growth rates tend to be characterized by spatial interaction. A spatial simultaneous-equations growth equilibrium model was estimated using GS2SLS and GS3SLS. The results indicate strong feedback simultaneity between employment and median household income growth rates. They also show spatial autoregressive lag simultaneity and spatial cross-regressive lag simultaneity with respect to employment and median household income growth rates, as well as spatial correlation in the error terms. Estimates of structural parameters show strong agglomerative effects and significant conditional convergence with respect to employment growth and median household income growth in Appalachia in the 1990 s.

The incorporation of economic thinking into the valuation of landscapes is still relatively new. It is an approach that yields valuable new insights and can help with prioritizing the use of scarce resources to improve and/or preserve landscapes. This paper explores and discusses the uses and limitations of economic valuation of landscapes from market failure, policy process, and theoretical and philosophical perspectives.

This paper attempts to investigate further the nonlinear feedback relationship found in Kyrtsou and Labys (2006) between US inflation (BLS CPI) and primary commodity price index (the BLS PPI component for all primary commodity series). Our goal is to disaggregate the above index to the individual commodity level for a group of raw materials prices, including crude oil. Assuming the hypothesis that a non-linear feedback relationship exists between US inflation and the commodity price index, we examine if individual primary commodity prices also nonlinearly causes inflation and vice-versa. We also improve upon our previous research by employing a new test for non-linear feedback causality recently developed by Hristu-Varsakelis and Kyrtsou (2006). Our results suggest the presence of non-linear interdependences between inflation and the various commodity price series, and particularly bi-directionality in the case of crude oil.

This paper examines the relationship between quality of life, health and several socioeconomic variables. The analysis utilizes empirical data obtained from a survey questionnaire administered on a random sample of over 2000 residents in twenty-one counties 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 an ordered probit model is used to examine the relationships. The empirical results are consistent with the theoretical predictions and indicate, for instance, that quality of life satisfaction increases with income and education while it decreases with unemployment.

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.

Governments frequently join forces with private organizations. The focus of this article is on characteristics of sustained cooperative efforts that require a significant commitment of resources over an extended period. The authors observe that cooperators’ expected rewards and risks may influence the form voluntary cooperation will take. This article classifies public-private cooperation into four common forms and provides a conceptual framework for better understanding why cooperators choose a particular form of cooperation.

Focuses on various regions and their economies at a pivotal time when the majority of nations are struggling with stabilizing their economies. Outlining areas such as employment rates, utilization of natural resources, and regional impacts, this collection of research is an excellent tool for scholars, academics, and professionals looking to expand their knowledge on today's turbulent and changing economy.

Views are very attractive to most people. Their monetary value is hard to quantify, however. Indications for the value of views are derived from the pricing of hotel rooms in Zurich, Switzerland. The higher price, which is charged for rooms with a view compared with those without a view, directly reflects the market value of the view. This type of information, though site specific, and therefore not necessarily representative, may be more persuasive to the public than information that is derived from sophisticated estimation procedures.

Significant ethnic minority business growth has occurred in the United States in the post-World War II period. The self-employment pattern of ethnic minority business, particularly the success of Asian-immigrant small business, is currently explained by two different hypotheses: the social resources explanation and the class resources explanation. While the former approach attributes the large number of small business enterprises and their success to the existence of such social resources as rotating credit associations, a protected market, and a labor source within Asian American communities, the latter argues that success instead is caused by greater investment of human and financial capital by these immigrants. The present study compares the self-employment pattern of the restaurant industry operated by African Americans and immigrant Chinese in Denver. Contrasts and similarities in ownership characteristics, start-up capital, location, soical networks, and economic significance prompted this study to ...

This article appraises the conceptual foundations of the new international division of labor (NIDL) literature. According to NIDL, the observed shift of international production from developed to less developed nations can be explained by an international verticalfragmentation of production in which different phases of production are undertaken in different nations, often by the samefirm. The purpose of this review is to examine the conceptual issues surrounding this theory, to analyze NIDL's intellectual relationship to key economic theories, and to draw a conceptual critique.

The objective of this chapter is to highlight the role played by governance in GDP growth and changes in telephone density in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. The contribution of these two factors to aggregate output and telephone density is examined using the dynamic system GMM estimation that accounts for the endogeneity of GDP and telephone density. GMM estimations reveal that government effectiveness is positively associated with GDP growth, while political stability has a negative effect on telecommunications penetration. In addition, the estimations indicate that changes in telephone density have a positive effect on GDP growth. From a policy standpoint, the empirical model results suggest that telecommunications infrastructure-driven growth can be augmented if telecommunications infrastructure investment can generate a multiplier effect through job creation, both directly related and indirectly related to telecommunication infrastructure.

Many scholars and professionals believe that entrepreneurship is critical to maintain an economy’s health and that business creation in low income areas is essential for economic development (Goetz and Freshwater, 2001; Acs, 2006; Lichtenstein and Lyons, 2001; Smilor, 1997). As Minniti (1999) argues, entrepreneurs are catalysts for economic growth as they generate a networking innovation that promotes the creation of new ideas and new market formations. Schumpeter (1934) also states that the success of markets lies in the spirit of entrepreneurs who persist in developing new products and technologies and succeed, ultimately, resulting in lower production costs. He also described five cases in which innovative activity increases economic growth. First is the introduction of a new good, which is a new product or an improvement of a product which is not yet known by the consumers in the market; a new method of production, the one that is not yet used in the manufacturing of the product; a new market that has not been entered for a particular product; a new source of supply for raw materials whether it already exists and is eventually discovered or it has to be created; and the evolution of a new organization in an industry like the formation of a monopoly. According to Schumpeter, these activities result in economic opportunities which eventually lead to economic growth. In addition, the works of entrepreneurs lead to more innovations and more profit opportunities and, hence, more growth which becomes a cycle of economic opportunities and for maximizing profit.

We estimate a regional spatial panel simultaneous-equations growth model, using a five-step new estimation strategy that generalizes an approach outlined in Kelejian and Prucha. The study region consists of the 418 Appalachian counties 1980−2000. Estimates show feedback simultaneities among the endogenous variables, conditional convergence with respect to the respective endogenous variables, and spatial autoregressive lag and spatial cross-regressive lag effects with respect to the endogenous variables. A key policy conclusion is that sector-specific programs should be integrated and harmonized and that regionally differentiated development policies may yield greater returns than treating all locations the same. Estimamos un modelo de crecimiento de panel espacial regional por ecuaciones simultaneas, utilizando una nueva estrategia de estimacion de cinco pasos que generaliza una enfoque descrito en Kelejian y Prucha. La region de estudio comprende los 418 condados Apalaches 1980-2000. Las estimaciones muestran simultaneidades de retroalimentacion entre las variables endogenas, convergencia condicional con respecto a las variables endogenas respectivas, y un retardo espacial autorregresivo y efectos de retardo regresivos cruzados espaciales con respecto a las variables endogenas. Una conclusion clave sobre politicas es que los programas sectoriales especificos deberian estar integrados y armonizados, y que las politicas de desarrollo diferenciadas regionalmente podrian producir mejores retornos que si se tratasen todas las localizaciones del mismo modo.

State policy makers and local leaders have long placed a high priority on local economic development (Isserman 1993; Pulver 1989; Ekstrom and Leistritz 1988), but the changing structure of traditional industries and the impact of those changes on local communities have challenged the efficacy of established policies and strategies. Many of the forces responsible for past economic changes continue to have an impact. One of these changes was the emergence of computer-based technology in production, administration and information, which has reduced the role of economies of scale in many sectors. Studies by Loveman and Sengenberger (1991) and Acs and Audretsch (1993), for example, have shown a shift in industry structure toward decentralization and an increased role for small firms. This was mainly due to changes in production technology, consumer demand, labor supply, and the pursuit of flexibility and efficiency. These factors led to the restructuring and downsizing of large enterprises and the entry of new firms. Brock and Evans (1989) provide extensive documentation of the changing role of small businesses in the US economy, which are likely the result of responses to structural adjustments.