IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedfer/y1996p14-25n1.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The 1980s divergence in state per capital incomes: what does it tell us?

Author

Listed:
  • Carolyn Sherwood-Call

Abstract

During most of this century, state per capita incomes have converged. Researchers generally agree that incomes diverged between 1979 and 1988, but there is no consensus about what caused the divergence. This paper makes two significant contributions to the literature on the 1980s divergence and on the longer-term converging trend within the United States. First, it shows that the 1980s divergence was not primarily due to plunging oil prices, as is commonly argued. Instead, the most important reason for the divergence was a positive shock to some Northeast states, which had an unusually large effect on income. Second, this paper addresses the question of whether the 1980s divergence reflects a fundamental change in the long-term downward trend in income dispersion. The analysis suggests that state per capita incomes may be so close to their steady-state levels that they have stopped converging.

Suggested Citation

  • Carolyn Sherwood-Call, 1996. "The 1980s divergence in state per capital incomes: what does it tell us?," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, pages 14-25.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedfer:y:1996:p:14-25:n:1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.frbsf.org/wp-content/uploads/14-25.pdf
    File Function: Full Text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bernard, Andrew B. & Durlauf, Steven N., 1996. "Interpreting tests of the convergence hypothesis," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 71(1-2), pages 161-173.
    2. Cletus C. Coughlin & Thomas B. Mandelbaum, 1988. "Why have state per capita incomes diverged recently?," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, issue Sep, pages 24-36.
    3. Danny Quah, 1993. "Galton's Fallacy and Tests of the Convergence Hypothesis (Now published in Scandinavian Journal of Economics 95 (4), 1993, pp.427-443.)," STICERD - Econometrics Paper Series 265, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.
    4. David A. Brauer & Mark Flaherty, 1992. "The New York City recession," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, vol. 17(Spr), pages 66-71.
    5. N. Gregory Mankiw & David Romer & David N. Weil, 1992. "A Contribution to the Empirics of Economic Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(2), pages 407-437.
    6. Gerald A. Carlino, 1992. "Are regional per capita earnings diverging?," Business Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, issue Mar, pages 3-12.
    7. Olivier Jean Blanchard & Lawrence F. Katz, 1992. "Regional Evolutions," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 23(1), pages 1-76.
    8. Friedman, Milton, 1992. "Do Old Fallacies Ever Die?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 30(4), pages 2129-2132, December.
    9. Paul M. Romer, 1987. "Crazy Explanations for the Productivity Slowdown," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1987, Volume 2, pages 163-210, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Lynn E. Browne, 1991. "The role of services in New England's rise and fall: engine of growth or along for the ride?," New England Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, issue Jul, pages 27-44.
    11. Quah, D., 1990. "Galton'S Fallacy And The Tests Of The Convergence Hypothesis," Working papers 552, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics.
    12. Randall W. Eberts & Mark E. Schweitzer, 1994. "Regional wage convergence and divergence: adjusting wages for cost-of- living differences," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, vol. 30(Q II), pages 26-37.
    13. Rati Ram, 1992. "Interstate Income Inequality In The United States: Measurement, Modelling And Some Characteristics," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 38(1), pages 39-48, March.
    14. Rae D. Rosen, 1993. "Recent developments in New York City's economy," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, vol. 18(Sum), pages 15-26.
    15. repec:bla:scandj:v:95:y:1993:i:4:p:427-43 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. John V. Duca & Jason L. Saving, 2008. "Stock Ownership And Congressional Elections: The Political Economy Of The Mutual Fund Revolution," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 46(3), pages 454-479, July.

    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. Carlino, Gerald A. & Mills, Leonard, 1996. "Testing neoclassical convergence in regional incomes and earnings," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(6), pages 565-590, December.
    2. repec:kap:iaecre:v:16:y:2010:i:1:p:52-64 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. LAU, Chi Keung Marco, 2010. "New evidence about regional income divergence in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 293-309, June.
    4. Steven N. Durlauf & Andros Kourtellos & Chih Ming Tan, 2008. "Empirics of Growth and Development," Chapters, in: Amitava Krishna Dutt & Jaime Ros (ed.), International Handbook of Development Economics, Volumes 1 & 2, volume 0, chapter 3, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. Nicholas Apergis & Christina Christou & Stephen Miller, 2012. "Convergence patterns in financial development: evidence from club convergence," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 43(3), pages 1011-1040, December.
    6. Rassekh, Farhad & Panik, Michael J. & Kolluri, Bharat R., 2001. "A test of the convergence hypothesis: the OECD experience, 1950-1990," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 147-157.
    7. G. E. Boyle & T. G. McCARTHY, 1999. "Simple measures of convergence in per capita GDP: a note on some further international evidence," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 6(6), pages 343-347.
    8. Mill�n D�az-Foncea & Carmen Marcuello, 2014. "The Relation between Total Employment and Cooperative Employment: A Convergence and Causality Analysis," Spatial Economic Analysis, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(1), pages 71-92, March.
    9. Cem Ertur & Julie Le Gallo & Catherine Baumont, 2006. "The European Regional Convergence Process, 1980-1995: Do Spatial Regimes and Spatial Dependence Matter?," International Regional Science Review, , vol. 29(1), pages 3-34, January.
    10. Desmet, Klaus & Fafchamps, Marcel, 2006. "Employment concentration across U.S. counties," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(4), pages 482-509, July.
    11. Xanthippi Chapsa & Athanasios L. Athanasenas & Nikolaos Tabakis, 2019. "Real Convergence in EU-15: A Comparative Analysis of North versus South Europe," European Research Studies Journal, European Research Studies Journal, vol. 0(3), pages 3-21.
    12. Tunali, Çiǧdem Börke & Yilanci, Veli, 2010. "Are per capita incomes of MENA countries converging or diverging?," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 389(21), pages 4855-4862.
    13. Chi-Keung Lau, 2010. "Convergence Across the United States: Evidence from Panel ESTAR Unit Root Test," International Advances in Economic Research, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 16(1), pages 52-64, February.
    14. Sakari Lähdemäki, 2017. "Traditional convergence tests with Penn World Table 9.0," Working Papers 309, Työn ja talouden tutkimus LABORE, The Labour Institute for Economic Research LABORE.
    15. Lucas Wilfried Hahn-De-Castro & Adolfo Meisel-Roca, 2018. "La desigualdad económica entre las regiones de Colombia, 1926-2016," Cuadernos de Historia Económica 47, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
    16. Roberto Ezcurra, 2001. "Convergencia Y Cambio Estructural En La Unión Europea," Documentos de Trabajo - Lan Gaiak Departamento de Economía - Universidad Pública de Navarra 0111, Departamento de Economía - Universidad Pública de Navarra.
    17. Sergio Rey & Brett Montouri, 1999. "US Regional Income Convergence: A Spatial Econometric Perspective," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(2), pages 143-156.
    18. Camarero, Mariam, & Flôres, R. & C. Tamarit, 2002. "Time series evidence of international output convergence in Mercosur," Computing in Economics and Finance 2002 87, Society for Computational Economics.
    19. Burcu Ozcan, 2014. "Does Income Converge among EU Member Countries following the Post-War Period? Evidence from the PANKPSS Test," Journal for Economic Forecasting, Institute for Economic Forecasting, vol. 0(3), pages 22-38, October.
    20. Riccardo DiCecio & Charles S. Gascon, 2008. "Convergence in the United States: a tale of migration and urbanization," Working Papers 2008-002, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    21. Kris Ivanovski & Sefa Awaworyi Churchill & John Inekwe, 2020. "Convergence in Income Inequality Across Australian States and Territories," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 148(1), pages 127-142, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Income;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:fip:fedfer:y:1996:p:14-25:n:1. 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: Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Research Library (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbsfus.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.