Dissertation
IMPROVED METHODS FOR CHARACTERIZING INDUSTRIES IN REGIONAL ECONOMICS
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
01/2018
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/111517
Abstract
This dissertation consists of three separate papers each of which merges the concepts of industrial organization, economic accounts, and regional economics. The first paper develops and implements a technique for eliminating aggregation bias in input-output accounts and reduces overall bias in the associated regional models based on such accounts. By regressing an industrial sectors’ intermediate material inputs of production on their labor inputs, a list of labor coefficients is obtained. Those labor coefficients are then applied to an industrial sectors’ constituent 6-digit industry labor inputs, provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This process estimates a 6-digit industry’s intermediate material inputs and effectively disaggregates the parent sector.
The second paper analyzes when central place theory and applied gravity models predict inconsistent trade patterns to one another. By creating a measure of the discrepancy between the central place trade pattern and the gravity model trade pattern we can isolate regions within a geographical space that minimize the discrepancy. The regions that are isolated from the larger geographical space act as functional economic areas that are modestly consistent with both the central place theories of industry location and gravity trade models. Because the regions describe an economic geography rather than a political or geological geography they are more appropriate for conducting economic activity analysis.
The third and final paper looks at the increasing returns to scale that firms within an industry receive from agglomerating, or co-locating, in a particular region. Current research on the topic has struggled to isolate the sources of the increasing returns for various industries because the potential sources all results in a similar functional representation. This problem is often referred to as an issue of Marshallian equivalence. This research provides insight into this issue by looking at industries that are deagglomeration and monitoring how the returns to scale of labor productivity evolve over time.
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Details
- Title
- IMPROVED METHODS FOR CHARACTERIZING INDUSTRIES IN REGIONAL ECONOMICS
- Creators
- Timothy P. Nadreau
- Contributors
- Michael Brady (Advisor)Philip Watson (Advisor)Randy Fortenbery (Committee Member)Jill McCluskey (Committee Member)Andrew Cassey (Committee Member)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Economic Sciences, School of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 120
- Identifiers
- 99900581818901842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Dissertation