Bridging the Gap: Integrated Occupational and Industrial Approach to Understand the Regional Economic Advantage

Tuo Lin, Kevin Stolarick and Rong Sheng
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Tuo Lin: School of Urban & Regional Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200062, China
Kevin Stolarick: Martin Prosperity Institute, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S 3E6, Canada
Rong Sheng: Institute of Eco-Chongming, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200062, China

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 15, 1-17

Abstract: In the debates on regional economic analysis, scholars generally reach the consensus that the industrial frame and the occupational mix are not very accurate substitutes for each other. While industry concentration and mix are widely accepted as significant, the independent consideration of occupation has been shown to be important, especially for creativity-concentrated regions. However, neither the industrial nor the occupational mix is separately sufficient to be solely applied to understand the entire regional situation. This paper develops an integrated occupational and industrial structure (IOIS) at the state and also the national level in order to bridge the gap between separate industrial and occupational analytic results. The case of California is used to demonstrate that the integrated approach is a more effective way than either the single occupational or industrial analysis. The further application of this approach to data for the fifty states provides a general view of joint occupational and industrial development across the nation. This approach further links the occupational approach and the industrial development together by providing a new way to measure and identify the regional comparative difference to be able to implement more fruitful policy-making decisions.

Keywords: occupation; industrial structure; integrated approach; regional economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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