The Economic Contribution of Alabama’s Automotive Industry to Its Regional Economy

Lei Zhang, Henry Kinnucan and Jing Gao

Economic Development Quarterly, 2016, vol. 30, issue 4, 295-315

Abstract: This study focuses on quantifying the economic impact of the automotive industry on Alabama’s economy using a static regional computable general equilibrium model. The findings suggest that the automotive industry has a disproportionate impact across Alabama in terms of a series of indicators including gross state product, employment, and household welfare. Benefits accrue primarily to counties in which the auto plants and their suppliers are located. The spillover effects into nonautomotive-plant counties are modest and about evenly distributed. Middle-income households are the largest gainers, and this is true across all counties, including the Black Belt, a region across the South where rural poverty is concentrated. Despite its rapid growth, the auto industry continues to constitute a small fraction of the state’s economy (less than 3% of gross state product). Thus, overdependence on a cyclical industry is as yet not an issue for policy makers.

Keywords: automotive industry; export expansion; Black Belt; regional CGE model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0891242416659136 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ecdequ:v:30:y:2016:i:4:p:295-315

DOI: 10.1177/0891242416659136

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economic Development Quarterly
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().