Identifying Employment Subcenters: The Method of Exponentially Declining Cutoffs

Jifei Ban, Richard Arnott and Jacob L. Macdonald
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Jifei Ban: Fannie Mae, 4000 Wisconsin Ave NW, Washington, DC 20016, USA
Jacob L. Macdonald: Nova School of Business and Economics, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisbon 1099-032, Portugal

Land, 2017, vol. 6, issue 1, 1-33

Abstract: The standard method of identifying subcenters is due to Giuliano and Small. While simple, robust and easy to apply, because it uses absolute employment density and employment cutoffs, it identi?es “too few” subcenters at the metropolitan periphery. This paper presents a straight forward modi?cation to this method aimed at remedying this weakness. The modi?cation entails using cutoffs that decline exponentially with distance from the metropolitan center, thereby giving consideration to the employment density of a location relative to that of its locality. In urban studies, there is a long history of estimating employment density “gradients”, the exponential rate at which employment density declines with distance from the metropolitan center. These density gradients differ substantially across metropolitan areas and across time for a particular metropolitan area. Applying our method to Los Angeles, Calgary and Paris, we have found that using cutoffs that decline exponentially at one-half the estimated density gradients achieves an appealing balance between subcenters identi?ed close to the metropolitan center and those identi?ed at the metropolitan periphery. Many other methods of subcenter identi?cation have been proposed that use sophisticated econometric procedures. Our method should appeal to practitioners who are looking for a simple method to apply.

Keywords: subcenter; employment subcenter; subcenter identi?cation; Giuliano–Small; Los Angeles; Paris; Calgary (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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