Exploring the Spatial Connectivity of US States, 1993–2007

Jee-Sun Lee and Geoffrey Hewings

Chapter 5 in The Region and Trade:New Analytical Directions, 2015, pp 91-136 from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.

Abstract: After a hiatus of almost 30 years, the publication of the interstate commodity flow data for 1993 afforded the first opportunity to examine the nature and strength of interstate connectivity in the US. While the New Economic Geography has provided new stimulus to understanding the spatial economy, complemented by new developments in trade theory that have highlighted geographical proximity, relatively little attention has been paid to the spatial structure of trade, especially at the inter-regional scale. Using data of 1993, 1997, 2002 and 2007, this paper explores various features of the spatial connectivity of the US states. The initial explorations focus on the concentration of the interstate trade system using simple Gini measures and then exploring the flow patterns with principal component analyses to examine the degree to which states share similar product origins or shipment destinations. Thereafter dyadic factor analysis is used to explore the flow structure for an aggregation of 13 commodities. One of the important findings from the analyses is that the general spatial pattern of interstate trade still reflects a geographical structure based on contiguity, with the notable exception of California.

Keywords: Interregional Trade; Input-Output System; Economics; Regional Economics; Region and Trade; Natural Resources; Labor; Capital; Computational Methods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/pdf/10.1142/9789814520164_0005 (application/pdf)
https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/9789814520164_0005 (text/html)
Ebook Access is available upon purchase.

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:wsi:wschap:9789814520164_0005

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in World Scientific Book Chapters from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tai Tone Lim ().