Geographical scale, industrial diversity, and regional economic stability

Jing Chen

Growth and Change, 2019, vol. 50, issue 2, 609-633

Abstract: This paper compares the empirical relationship between industrial diversity and economic stability across different geographical scales, including counties, states, Economic Areas, and Metropolitan Statistical Areas, in the contiguous U.S. between 2000 and 2014. It is found that this relationship varies greatly when it is analyzed across these four geographical scales. Meanwhile, several scale‐related problems, such as the modifiable areal unit problem and the small population problem, are introduced to economic diversity literature and further discussed with this variability of the diversity–stability relationship. This paper concludes that the spatial scale problem as well as the optimal unit can be study dependent. Thus, when choosing analytical units to quantify regional economic structure for a specific study, future research should pay attention to scale‐related problems.

Date: 2019
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