Regional Variations in Cyclical Employment

M I Howland
Additional contact information
M I Howland: Institute for Urban Studies, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA

Environment and Planning A, 1984, vol. 16, issue 7, 863-877

Abstract: In this paper the author develops and tests a model of regional responses to national business-cycles. The model divides cyclical decline in each state into two sectors: a basic sector and a nonbasic sector. The industrial mix, capital—labor ratio, age of capital stock, level of unemployment insurance benefits, labor shortage, and extent of labor-force unionization of a state are hypothesized to influence the response to national recessions by the economy of a state. Employment decline in the nonbasic sector of the economy of a state is a function of employment decline in basic industries and is transmitted through a short-run multiplier. The model is tested on data from five post World War 2 recessions between 1950 and 1975. The findings indicate that industry mix at the two-digit Standard Industrial Code level explains 36% of the across-state variation in cyclical employment. The results also indicate that an old capital-stock, a nonunion labor force, and generous unemployment insurance benefits promote cyclical stability in state economies.

Date: 1984
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/a160863 (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:envira:v:16:y:1984:i:7:p:863-877

DOI: 10.1068/a160863

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment and Planning A
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().