Federal Defense Industrial Policy, Firm Strategy, and Regional Conversion Initiatives in Four American Aerospace Regions

Michael Oden
Additional contact information
Michael Oden: Community and Regional Planning Program, University of Texas, Austin, TX, oden@mail.utexas.edu

International Regional Science Review, 2000, vol. 23, issue 1, 25-47

Abstract: This article examines divergent experiences among U.S. defense regions in the post-cold war era, highlighting the interplay between shifting federal policies, large defense firm investment and location decisions, and adjustment policies implemented by regional actors. Case studies of four defense aerospace centers reveal that economic impacts were highly uneven across major defense regions. Regional conversion and diversification efforts mitigated some adjustment costs when local actors overcame interjurisdictional conflict and vested leadership in a single agency or government department. Communities that had experienced structural downturns in previous periods were better able to draw on prior knowledge, pull actors together, and plan more strategically. While the scale of local initiatives has not been large enough to have measurable impacts on aggregate regional economic performance, conversion programs did succeed in overcoming specific market failures and improved outcomes at the level of firms and individual workers.

Date: 2000
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/016001700761012576 (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:inrsre:v:23:y:2000:i:1:p:25-47

DOI: 10.1177/016001700761012576

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Regional Science Review
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().