Social returns to education in Italian local labor markets

The paper estimates social returns to education in the Italian local labor markets. It shows that there is an important correlation between local human capital and average wages after controlling for individual characteristics. Estimated social returns to education range from 2 to 3%, whereas the private returns amount roughly to 6–7%. To find some support about causality running from local human capital to wages, the paper performs a number of robustness checks. It shows that: the estimated social returns are unlikely to be driven by spatially correlated omitted variables; they survive to the introduction of individual- and territorial-level variables; they are not due to imperfect substitutability across workers or spatial sorting; they are robust to IV techniques that deal with both local human capital and individual human capital endogeneity.

Understanding China’s recent growth experience: A spatial econometric perspective

This study reconsiders the question of Chinas recent growth experience from a spatial econometric perspective. An empirical model of Chinese output growth using cross provincial data over the 1978–1998 period is specified, but a spatial econometric analysis of the specification reveals strong evidence of misspecification due to ignored spatial lag dependence. The subsequent estimating using Anselins spatial lag model determines the important sources of growth to be the growth of non-farm labor force, manufactured products, capital stock, and realized direct foreign investment. On the other hand, the estimated coefficient for the spatial lag variable suggests a polarizing process undergoing within the Chinese spatial economy, and the resulting change in the estimates of causal factors implies that as marketization progresses, a variety of spillover effects due to factor mobility, transfer payments and technological diffusion become operational, which actually improve the marginal productivity of factor inputs for labor (G_L) and capital (G_K, G_DFI) and bring national output closer to its frontier of the Chinese economy. I would like to thank Arthur Getis for his invaluable help throughout my research period. I would also like to thank Tschangho John Kim and three anonymous referees for their very constructive critiques and valuable comments on earlier drafts of this article. This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Project No. 40271033.     

The economic effect of age and education on the regional flows of Black human capital

This paper quantifies and analyzes the flow of human capital caused by the migration of Blacks within the U.S. over time. Detailed characteristics of migration flows for Blacks moving in and out of each of the nine divisions in the U. S. were determined and multiplied by the appropriate value of human capital (discounted earnings approach). These flows were then summed to determine the aggregate inter-regional flows of Black human capital. The effects of age and education on these flows are analyzed as are the probable effects of such flows on regional economic growth.Results of the study show that there is a significant ageeducation interaction effect for Blacks. In addition, these interregional flows suggest that there is a substantial flow of Black human capital from the South to the North and West, and from the North to the West. Significant losses in Black human capital on the part of the South have several rather important public policy implications.     

North–South transfers vs biodiversity conservation: a trade differential game

Trade relationships connect developed and developing countries. The former produces a consumption good, using labor, capital, and an intermediate “natural” good which is produced in the developing countries using labor and natural species. A finite horizon differential game is settled out. The North decides about either the saving rate or the portion of its disposable income to transfer to the South or both variables jointly. The South selects the range of species used in the production of the intermediate “natural” good required in the North’s productive process. This is a measure of biodiversity loss. The aim of the paper is to study how transfers from North to South affect capital growth and biodiversity conservation.

Mexico City as a peripheral global player: The two sides of the coin

This article considers the effects of globalization on Mexico City, as well as whether this urban area, one of the largest in the world, can be considered a global city. We base our arguments on a number of scales of analysis suggested in the literature on these topics. At the international scale, we look at the increased concentration of corporate headquarters and air traffic flows in the city. In terms of its role in the national urban system, we argue that while domestic migration patterns have shifted toward other destinations, the majority of domestically produced merchandise continues to find its way to the capital. At the metropolitan scale, our analysis suggests increasing spatial segregation, as well as longer commutes. At the intraurban level, we find that the sectoral composition of jobs has shifted toward commercial and service sectors, the informal sector has expanded, the labor force is polarizing, and that high-level service sector growth is spatially concentrated. In view of these findings, we suggest that the effects of globalization on Mexico City are mixed, as it consolidates its position as a second-tier global city. We also argue that, in spite of welcome steps toward democratization, pre-existing income inequalities in the country have accentuated the socio-economic polarization predicted by the literature on global cities and globalization, giving rise to a megacity with two very distinct sides. The authors would like to recognize Emelina Nava and Raul Lemus at El Colegio de México and Irma Escamilla and Josefina Hernández at the Institute of Geography, UNAM, for their participation in data management and producing tables and maps.     

The Growing Role of Transportation Funding in Regional Habitat Conservation Planning

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Regional conservation initiatives struggle to meet funding needs when complying with the Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1996 and need money early to pay for required planning and to acquire land to mitigate the impact of development. Transportation agencies struggle to comply with the ESA and have increasingly been willing to fund regional habitat conservation plans (RHCPs) to do so. We review documents from 22 RHCPs and interview representatives of 16 RHCPs to understand how transportation agencies have contributed to funding RHCPs. We find that transportation agencies mitigate their impacts and provide early and consistent financing to facilitate the planning process, help RHCPs establish initial conservation preserves, and allow RHCPs to capitalize on lower land prices during downturns in the development market. We only sample RHCPs in a few states, however, and these examples may not comply with laws in others. Many of the cases studied are recent; time is needed to assess their long-term success. We recommend further study to assess applications to sectors beyond transportation and beyond the areas we studied.

Takeaway for practice: Transportation agencies have struggled to meet environmental requirements and habitat conservation agencies have typically considered transportation agencies threats to the environment. Where adversarial relationships can be overcome, partnerships between transportation and conservation programs can effectively finance habitat conservation while facilitating capital investments in transportation systems.     

Testing the credit view with pooled data: dynamic links among state bank health, investment-oriented bank loans, and economic performance

This paper focuses on the “credit view” theory at the state level, which suggests that state-level banking sector health influences state-level real economic performance. Specifically, we extend typical analysis of the credit view theory, applying relevant state-level economic variables to consider whether the health of a state’s banking system affects capital investment loans and, in turn, whether growth of these loans affects a state’s economic performance. We develop a two-equation state-level model, use more refined measures of capital investment loans, and apply advanced dynamic pooled estimators to our panel of state data for the 1984–1993 period. Regression results support dynamic links among state bank health, state investment-oriented bank loans, and state economic performance, thus supporting existence of a state-level credit channel effect.

VARIATION IN INTRACITY INCOME INEQUALITY IN THE MID-ATLANTIC STATES

ABSTRACT: Explanations for dissimilarities in intracity income inequality have been dominated by Kuznets's hypothesis. It is argued that this identifies statistical associations rather than causal relationships. An alternative model is presented which focuses on the ideas of James O'Connor and Claus Offe concerning the effects of employers' market power on the income of their workers. The model is tested for 274 mid-Atlantic cities in 1980. The explanatory power and main propositions of the model are confirmed and the effects of differences in human capital are shown to be weak. Suggestions are made for improving the basic formulation which is offered.     

Special Ethical Considerations for Planners in Private Practice

Problem, research strategy, and ­findings: Planners must constantly consider the ethics of their professional behavior, yet few studies have specifically investigated the ethical landscape for those planners working in private practice, assuming that all members of the profession are subject to similar ethical considerations. We investigate the particular ethical considerations faced by planners in private practice by interviewing owners of 10 planning consulting firms. Our sample size is very small and limited to three states, which limits the generalizability of the study. We find that private practice planners routinely experience ethical conflicts related to disclosure of information, balancing uneven benefits among stakeholders, interests of the client, and ethics of firm competition. Alhough planners mostly navigate everyday ethical concerns with confidence, they face ethical challenges in managing client relationships when values conflict, and in competing with other firms.

Takeaway for practice: We find that challenging ethical situations arise for private sector planners on a routine basis. The planners we interview feel that they are able to identify ethical pitfalls and choose the correct course of action, but more research is needed to understand the scope and nature of private practice ethical challenges, and to determine whether more education or enforcement would be effective solutions to between-firm conflicts.     

Spatial and temporal variation of mortality and deprivation 2: statistical modelling

"Building on the tabular analyses exemplified in our first paper and widely used in the medical literature, we use generalised linear models to provide a formal, statistical approach to the analysis of mortality and deprivation relationships, and their change over time. Three types of fixed effects model are specified and estimated with the same ward-level data sets for Wales examined in our first paper. They are: Poisson models for analysing mortality and deprivation at a single cross section in time; repeated-measures Poisson models for analysing mortality-deprivation relations, not only at cross sections in time, but also their changes over time; and logit models focusing on temporal changes in mortality-deprivation relationships. Nonlinear effects of deprivation on mortality have been explored by using dummy variables representing deprivation categories to establish the connection between formal statistical models and the tabular approach"     

Unpacking Cohort Social Ties: The Appropriateness of Perceived Social Capital to Graduate Early Career Performance in Construction Project Teams

Construction project teams require social capital. When present in appropriate forms, it creates the social cohesion through which individuals accept project goals as their own. It lets team members share knowledge when present and reveal when it is missing. In education, social learning helps students appreciate the need for social capital appropriate to team performance. In practice, social capital enables the project team learning that overcomes project-specific challenges. Despite this importance, little is known about how students perceive social capital or the compatibility of that understanding with construction project needs.

To characterise this aspect of ‘graduateness,’ collective understanding of social capital was elicited from construction students in a Scottish university by free recall. Analysis was structured around four dimensions of social capital: cohesion, legitimacy & authenticity, sharing, and safety. Notions of friendship were found to dominate student understanding of their social capital even though this understanding derived from settings where the need for capital to support team performance is emphasized. The potential for misalignment between the capital that graduating students bring into practice with that required by project teams was apparent. The case for further investigation of this influence on early career development was established.     

An analysis of ethnic differences in UK graduate migration behaviour

In this paper, we analyse the employment–migration behaviour of 13,753 UK university graduates. In particular, we distinguish between five different types of sequential migration behaviour from domicile to higher education and on to employment. By controlling for a range of variables relating to human capital acquisition, local economic conditions and personal characteristics, we are able to identify the role of ethnicity in determining the interregional migration behaviour of university graduates.

Start-up activities,individual characteristics,and the regional milieu: Lessons for entrepreneurship support policies from German micro data

This paper contributes to empirical research on the role of regional policy for entrepreneurship by focusing on the link between two stylized facts that emerged from a number of studies for Germany and other countries: Entry rates differ between regions, and the propensity to become an entrepreneur is influenced by socio-demographic variables and attitudes. We develop a theoretical framework to discuss this link, and we test whether for a person of a given age, degree of schooling, attitude towards risk etc. regional variables and, therefore, regional policies, do matter for the decision to start a new business ceteris paribus. Our econometric study is based on data for 10.000 persons from a recent representative survey of the population in ten German planning regions, the Regional Entrepreneurship Monitor (REM). We use a version of the probit model that takes care of the regional stratification of the data, and the results of the nonlinear models are carefully interpreted and illustrated. We find that the propensity to step into self-employment is, among others, higher for males, unemployed, people with contacts to a role model, and with past entrepreneurial experience, who live in more densely populated and faster growing regions with higher rates of new firm formation, while risk aversion and high prices of land have the opposite impact. Interestingly, it does not matter whether the region has a left or right government. However, many implications for entrepreneurship supporting policies in German regions are discussed in the final section.Research for this paper was done as part of the project Regional Entrepreneurship Monitor REM Germany financially supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG STE 628/7-1/2 and WA 610/2-1/2). We thank two anonymous referees and the guest editors of this issue for comments that led to an extensive revision of an earlier version.     

The responsiveness of the private rental sector in Australia to changes in commonwealth taxation policy

The introduction of a series of tax reforms by the Hawke government midway through the 1980s generated widespread disagreement about their liable impact upon the production, availability and cost of rental accommodation in Australia. In this paper we examine the validity of the claims made for and against the tax reforms (ie the ‘quarantining’ of negative gearing, the imposition of a capital gains tax, and provision for a 4 per cent depreciation allowance on new rental housing) by setting them against trends in the private housing sector, and other housing and investment markets.

Although the real estate industry was prepared to attribute the adjustments occurring within the private rental sector almost entirely to the changes in taxation policy, we present evidence of other ‘exogenous’ effects that helped amplify the trends and ‘panic’ the Hawke government into an ill‐considered reversal in September 1987 (viz, the reinstatement of full negative gearing on residential rental property). We conclude that this indirect approach to the provision of private rental accommodation via taxation policy is too indiscriminate to achieve national housing goals.     

Highway infrastructure and state-level employment: A causal spatial analysis

This paper analyses the causal relationship between highway infrastructure and employment within the U.S. We estimate dynamic panel models in a vector autoregressive framework using time-series cross-sectional data on lane miles of roadway capacity and private sector employment for the 48 contiguous states over the period 1984–1997. The issue of spatial dependence is explicitly taken into account by means of a spatial filtering technique. Our analysis reveals evidence of employment growth temporally influenced by annual growth in the provision of major highways within the same state and all other states, as well as the other way around. However, the results show that the existence and direction of these temporal and spatial effects depend on the type of highways and time lags considered.

Resumen

país comercial este artículo analiza la relación causal entre la infraestructura de autopistas y el empleo en los EE.UU. Estimamos modelos dinámico de datos de panel dentro de un marco autorregresivo vectorial utilizando datos transversales de series temporales en de capacidad de carretera en millas de carril y de empleo del sector privado para los 48 estados contiguos durante el periodo 1984–1997. Nuestro análisis revela pruebas de crecimiento del empleo influido temporalmente por el crecimiento anual en la provisión de autopistas principales dentro del mismo estado y el resto de estados, y a la inversa. Sin embargo, los resultados muestran que la existencia y dirección de estos efectos temporales y espaciales dependen del tipo de autopistas y los lapsos de tiempo considerados.

     

Trust and inventive activity in Europe: causal,spatial and nonlinear forces

This paper investigates the effect of trust on inventive activity. The paper uses generalised trust and about 20 other trust (and trustworthiness)-related indicators and investigates which trust-related variables explain inventive activity in 20 European countries divided into 135 regions with a special focus on causal, nonlinear and spatial forces. The findings indicate that only generalised trust and non-egoistic fairness have robust effects on inventive activity in Europe. Using historical data on the extent and existence of universities as instruments, a causal relationship between trust and inventive activity is set up. Even after controlling for causal, spatial and nonlinear forces, there is a significant direct impact of trust on inventive activity. The result show that a one standard deviation rise in general trust (a 12.5 % rise in the trust level) increases patents per million inhabitants on average by 2 %. Despite the growing literature that associate social capital to inventive activity at the regional level, the direct policy conclusions are weak. This paper argues that moving from “regional learning” to “learning region” may induce researchers to consider direct and down-to-earth policy implications.     

Higher-order shear and normal deformable theory for functionally graded incompressible linear elastic plates

We use the principle of virtual work to derive a higher-order shear and normal deformable theory for a plate comprised of a linear elastic incompressible anisotropic material. The theory does not use a shear correction factor and employs three components of displacement and the hydrostatic pressure as independent variables. For a Kth order plate theory, a set of 4(K+1) coupled equations need to be solved for the (K+1) pressures and the 3(K+1) displacements defined on the reference surface of the plate.

Equations for free vibrations of a plate are derived, and equations for the determination of frequencies and the corresponding mode shapes of a simply supported rectangular plate are given.     

Investigating the predictive capabilities of discrete choice models in the presence of spatial effects

Fully spatial treatments of discrete choice models are difficult to specify and can be computationally intense. Several ad hoc procedures have been proposed in the land use literature to mitigate the potential estimation problems caused by spatial effects. We investigate the consequences of different spatial effects for several of these non-fully-spatial approaches using Monte Carlo simulation of a binary choice and a real world example of land use on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia. We find that there are few effects on categorical prediction and that inclusion of spatially lagged explanatory variables is the most effective procedure.

Resumen

Los enfoques totalmente espaciales de modelos de elección discreta son difíciles de especificar y su cálculo puede ser muy laborioso. En la literatura sobre uso del suelo se han propuesto varios procedimientos para el caso con el fin de mitigar los posibles problemas de estimación causados por efectos espaciales. Investigamos las consecuencias de diferentes efectos espaciales para varios de estos enfoques no totalmente espaciales, utilizando simulación de Monte Carlo de elección binaria y un ejemplo del mundo real de uso del suelo en la isla de Sumatra en Indonesia. Encontramos que existen pocos efectos sobre la predicción categórica y que la incorporación de variables explicativas espacialmente desfasadas es el procedimiento más efectivo.

     

Variations on economic convergence: The case of the United States

This paper tests the hypothesis of conditional β-convergence in per capita income across the United States by extending the neoclassical growth model to incorporate public capital, government taxation, and human capital, and controlling empirically for technology growth. We expand the period of analysis from the late 1980s when studies using public capital stock have stopped, investigate spatial variation across the United States under various cross-sectional and panel spatial models, and tackle the issue of nonlinearities. All model variations provide evidence of economic convergence across the United States over the period 1960–2005.

Resumen

Este artículo evalúa las hipótesis de beta-convergencia condicional en renta per cápita en los Estados Unidos, ampliando el modelo de crecimiento neoclásico con la incorporación de capital público, tributación gubernamental y capital humano, y controlando empíricamente el crecimiento tecnológico. Hemos ampliado el periodo de análisis desde finales de los ochenta, momento en que se suspendieron los estudios que utilizaban reservas de capital público, hemos investigado la variación espacial para los Estados Unidos de acuerdo con diferentes modelos transversales y espaciales de panel, y hemos abordado el tema de las no linealidades. Todas las variaciones del modelo aportan pruebas de convergencia económica dentro de los Estados Unidos para el periodo 1960-2005.