IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ags/jrapmc/132420.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Determinants of State Labor Productivity: The Changing Role of Density

Author

Listed:
  • Decker, Christopher S.
  • Thompson, Eric C.
  • Wohar, Mark E.

Abstract

This study examines the determinants of state labor productivity during the 1989 to 2000 period. Using the model developed by Carlino and Voith (1992), we estimate how state cha-racteristics such as population density, education, industrial structure, and business amenities (such as crime rates), influence state labor productivity. We also estimate our model over two sub-periods (1989 to 1995 and 1996 to 2000) in order to isolate the labor productivity boom of the late 1990s. Our aggregate results for the full 1989 to 2000 period were consistent with pre-vious research. However, the determinants of labor productivity changed during the produc-tivity boom of the late 1990s. During the period 1996 to 2000 greater industrial diversity ap-peared to have stimulated labor productivity, whereas in the earlier period, 1989 to 1995, spe-cialization promoted labor productivity. Finally, while population density contributed to labor productivity during the earlier period, population density proved not to be a statistically significant determinant of labor productivity during the period 1996 to 2000.

Suggested Citation

  • Decker, Christopher S. & Thompson, Eric C. & Wohar, Mark E., 2009. "Determinants of State Labor Productivity: The Changing Role of Density," Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy, Mid-Continent Regional Science Association, vol. 39(1), pages 1-10.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:jrapmc:132420
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.132420
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/132420/files/09-1-1.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.132420?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ciccone, Antonio & Hall, Robert E, 1996. "Productivity and the Density of Economic Activity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(1), pages 54-70, March.
    2. Holtz-Eakin, Douglas, 1994. "Public-Sector Capital and the Productivity Puzzle," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 76(1), pages 12-21, February.
    3. Mikael Lindahl & Alan B. Krueger, 2001. "Education for Growth: Why and for Whom?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 39(4), pages 1101-1136, December.
    4. William L. Weber & Bruce Domazlicky, 2001. "Productivity Growth and Pollution in State Manufacturing," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 83(1), pages 195-199, February.
    5. Telle, Kjetil & Larsson, Jan, 2007. "Do environmental regulations hamper productivity growth? How accounting for improvements of plants' environmental performance can change the conclusion," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(2-3), pages 438-445, March.
    6. Mullen, John K. & Williams, Martin, 1994. "Marginal tax rates and state economic growth," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(6), pages 687-705, December.
    7. Kevin J. Stiroh, 2002. "Information Technology and the U.S. Productivity Revival: What Do the Industry Data Say?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1559-1576, December.
    8. Carlino, Gerald A. & Voith, Richard, 1992. "Accounting for differences in aggregate state productivity," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 597-617, November.
    9. Christopher S. Decker, 2005. "Do Regulators Respond to Voluntary Pollution Control Efforts? A Count Data Analysis," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 23(2), pages 180-194, April.
    10. Gallaway, Lowell & Cebula, Richard, 1971. "Impact of Property Rights in Human Capital on Regional Factors Proportions," MPRA Paper 52518, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Wheeler, Christopher H., 2006. "Productivity and the geographic concentration of industry: The role of plant scale," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 313-330, May.
    12. Mark Bils & Peter J. Klenow, 1998. "Does Schooling Cause Growth or the Other Way Around?," NBER Working Papers 6393, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Stephen P. A. Brown & Kathy J. Hayes & Lori L. Taylor, 2002. "State and local policy, factor markets and regional growth," Working Papers 0202, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
    14. Barbera, Anthony J. & McConnell, Virginia D., 1990. "The impact of environmental regulations on industry productivity: Direct and indirect effects," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 50-65, January.
    15. Herbert Smoluk & Bruce Andrews, 2005. "A prerequisite for meaningful state economic performance comparisons: Adjusting for population density," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 39(2), pages 253-272, June.
    16. Besley, Timothy, 1995. "Property Rights and Investment Incentives: Theory and Evidence from Ghana," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(5), pages 903-937, October.
    17. repec:rre:publsh:v:33:y:2003:i:1:p:40-60 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rangel González Erick & López Ornelas Luis Fernando, 2021. "Foreign Direct Investment and Labor Productivity in Regional Manufacturing Industry," Working Papers 2021-12, Banco de México.
    2. valdivia coria, joab dan & Valdivia Coria, Daney, 2019. "Determinantes de la dinámica en salarios [Determinants of wage dynamics]," MPRA Paper 105203, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Du, Minzhe & Liu, Yunxiao & Wang, Bing & Lee, Myunghun & Zhang, Ning, 2021. "The sources of regulated productivity in Chinese power plants: An estimation of the restricted cost function combined with DEA approach," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(C).
    2. Piyapong Jiwattanakulpaisarn & Robert B. Noland & Daniel J. Graham, 2012. "Marginal Productivity of Expanding Highway Capacity," Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, University of Bath, vol. 46(3), pages 333-347, September.
    3. Mark Rogers, 2003. "A Survey of Economic Growth," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 79(244), pages 112-135, March.
    4. Zhuqing Yang & Yuanyuan Zhu & Yulin Zhang, 2022. "Does urban shrinkage lower labor productivity? The role of spatial expansion," Regional Science Policy & Practice, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14(S2), pages 106-117, November.
    5. Michael J. Hicks, 2006. "Transportation and infrastructure, retail clustering, and local public finance: evidence from Wal-Mart's expansion," Regional Economic Development, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, issue Oct, pages 100-114.
    6. Patricia C Melo & Daniel J Graham & David Levinson & Sarah Aarabi, 2017. "Agglomeration, accessibility and productivity: Evidence for large metropolitan areas in the US," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 54(1), pages 179-195, January.
    7. Miguel Gómez-Antonio & Bernard Fingleton, 2012. "Regional productivity variation and the impact of public capital stock: an analysis with spatial interaction, with reference to Spain," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(28), pages 3665-3677, October.
    8. Anabel Zárate-Marco & Jaime Vallés-Giménez, 2015. "Environmental tax and productivity in a decentralized context: new findings on the Porter hypothesis," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 40(2), pages 313-339, October.
    9. W. Robert Reed, 2009. "The Determinants Of U.S. State Economic Growth: A Less Extreme Bounds Analysis," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 47(4), pages 685-700, October.
    10. Duflo, Esther, 2004. "The medium run effects of educational expansion: evidence from a large school construction program in Indonesia," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(1), pages 163-197, June.
    11. Zhu, Xuehong & Zuo, Xuguang & Li, Hailing, 2021. "The dual effects of heterogeneous environmental regulation on the technological innovation of Chinese steel enterprises—Based on a high-dimensional fixed effects model," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 188(C).
    12. Alfredo M. Pereira & Jorge M. Andraz, 2013. "On The Economic Effects Of Public Infrastructure Investment: A Survey Of The International Evidence," Journal of Economic Development, Chung-Ang Unviersity, Department of Economics, vol. 38(4), pages 1-37, December.
    13. Andreas Kopp, 2005. "Aggregate Productivity Effects of Road Investment - A Reassessment for Western Europe," ERSA conference papers ersa05p631, European Regional Science Association.
    14. Braunerhjelm, Pontus & Borgman, Benny, 2006. "Agglomeration, Diversity and Regional Growth," Working Paper Series in Economics and Institutions of Innovation 71, Royal Institute of Technology, CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies.
    15. Aiello, Francesco & Pupo, Valeria & Ricotta, Fernanda, 2013. "Firm heterogeneity in TFP, sectoral innovation and geography. Evidence from Italy," MPRA Paper 48573, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Angel Alanón & Josep Maria Arauzo Carod, "undated". "Accessibility and Industrial Location. Some Evidence from Spain," Studies on the Spanish Economy 214, FEDEA.
    17. Lan, Jing & Munro, Alistair & Liu, Zhen, 2017. "Environmental regulatory stringency and the market for abatement goods and services in China," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 105-123.
    18. Chandra, Amitabh & Thompson, Eric, 2000. "Does public infrastructure affect economic activity?: Evidence from the rural interstate highway system," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 457-490, July.
    19. Coen Teulings & Thijs van Rens, 2008. "Education, Growth, and Income Inequality," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 90(1), pages 89-104, February.
    20. Antonio Ciccone & Giovanni Peri, 2006. "Identifying Human-Capital Externalities: Theory with Applications," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 73(2), pages 381-412.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:jrapmc:132420. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/mcrsaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.