2013 Session: 691

• Transport Improvement, Agglomeration Effect, and Urban Productivity: Case Study of Chinese Cities
  Abstract: Improvement in the transport sector can increase accessibility to economic activities, which in turn can benefit urban productivity by enabling agglomeration economies which are the major parts of the wider economic impacts of transport. Nowadays, there is an increasing interest on the evaluation of agglomeration effect of transport. However, most of current studies focus attention mainly on the question of improved productivity following an improvement in an intra-city transport system. This paper extends the analysis to look at the issue of inter-city transport improvement and the effects this has on productivity for the case of China using city-level employment and productivity data linked to inter-city transport network data. It is found that depending on the magnitude of the distance decay parameter which represents the conditions of the inter-city transport system, the average agglomeration elasticity for cities in China as a whole can range from a low value of 0.064 to a high value of 0.202, with a middle range value of 0.109 when the distance decay parameter is assumed to be varied from a high value of 1.5 to a low value of 0.5 and with a most commonly used value of 1.0. Agglomeration elasticities are also found to vary across different regions in China.
  Authors: Lin, Tan; Truong, Truong
  Authors: Lin, Tan; Truong, Truong
  Year: 2013
  Document Type: Paper
  Subject: Economics; Finance
  Session: 691
  Paper Number: 13-0360
• Rural Highway Expansion and Economic Development: Impacts on Private Earnings and Employment
  Abstract: With the interstate system substantially complete, the majority of new investment in highways is likely to take the form of selective capacity expansion projects in urban areas, along with incremental expansions and upgrades to expressway or freeway standards of existing intercity highway corridors. This paper focuses specifically on the latter type of project, rural highway expansions designed to connect smaller outstate cities and towns, and examines their effects on industry-level private earnings and local employment. We examine three case study projects in rural Minnesota and use panel data on local earnings and employment to estimate the impacts of the improvements. Our results indicate that none of the projects studied generated statistically significant increases in earnings or employment, a finding we attribute to the relatively small time savings associated with the projects and the maturity of the highway network. We suggest that for rural highway expansion projects, as with other types of transportation projects, user benefits should be a primary evaluation criterion rather than employment impacts.
  Authors: Iacono, Michael J.; Levinson, David M.
  Authors: Iacono, Michael J.; Levinson, David M.
  Year: 2013
  Document Type: Paper
  Subject: Economics; Finance
  Session: 691
  Paper Number: 13-4701
• Transit and Access to Jobs in Competitive Clusters
  Abstract: Since the 1990s, the concept of competitive economic clusters, export oriented industries that are geographically clustered and linked to one another through trading or other arrangements that signify regional specialization, has become an important tool of regional economic development. In this study we use the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area to identify its regional competitive clusters and look at the role the current metropolitan transit system plays in providing access to jobs in these sectors. We identify nine clusters for the region and find that the clusters exhibit different location patterns which affects their ability to be served by transit. We argue that understanding the connection between transit systems and regional competitive clusters have critical policy implications for increasing transit ridership, reducing negative consequences associated extensive auto use, strengthening existing economic clusters by expanding the labor force access, and improving the accessibility for those that are transit dependent in the region to jobs in these sectors. To ensure that jobs with different skill requirements are encompassed in our analysis, we use an expanded definition of economic clusters where a range of industrial sectors are linked together through trading relationships. Though these clusters at their center are anchored by the sectors considered the drivers of the regional economy, the related sectors we identify as part of these clusters constitute a range of employers and labor force needs. The framework allows for focusing on the regions strengths and ensuring that people of varying transportation needs can participate in these growing sectors.
  Authors: Tilahun, Nebiyou Yonas; Fan, Yingling
  Authors: Tilahun, Nebiyou Yonas; Fan, Yingling
  Year: 2013
  Document Type: Paper
  Subject: Economics; Finance
  Session: 691
  Paper Number: 13-5062
• Agglomeration, Accessibility, and Productivity: Evidence for Urbanized Areas in the United States
  Abstract:

  This paper undertakes an empirical analysis with the aim of improving the current understanding of the relationship between labor productivity and urban agglomeration economies across a sample of urbanized areas in the US. Agglomeration economies are represented with driving time measures of employment accessibility to establish a direct account for the link between transport and agglomeration economies. The paper investigates the presence of nonlinearities in the relationship between labor productivity and agglomeration economies, and examines the spatial decay pattern of the effects arising from this relationship. The findings indicate that there is considerable nonlinearity in the relation between productivity and transport induced agglomeration effects, implying that the estimation of country-level aggregate elasticities is likely to misrepresent the actual magnitude of any productivity gains from urban agglomeration. The results also suggest that the magnitude of the productivity-agglomeration effects decays very rapidly with time and is very strong within 20 minutes driving time. This suggests that knowledge spillover externalities are likely to be a very important Marshallian source of agglomeration economies.

  Authors: Melo, Patricia C.; Graham, Daniel; Levinson, David M.; Aarabi, Sarah
  Authors: Melo, Patricia C.; Graham, Daniel; Levinson, David M.; Aarabi, Sarah
  Year: 2013
  Document Type: Paper
  Subject: Economics; Finance
  Session: 691
  Paper Number: 13-1479
• Agglomeration, Accessibility, and Productivity: Evidence for Urbanized Areas in the United States
  Authors: Melo, Patricia C.
  Authors: Melo, Patricia C.
  Year: 2013
  Document Type: Presentation
  Subject: Economics; Finance
  Session: 691
  Paper Number: 13-1479
• Transport Improvement, Agglomeration Effect, and Urban Productivity: Case Study of Chinese Cities
  Authors: Lin, Tan
  Authors: Lin, Tan
  Year: 2013
  Document Type: Presentation
  Subject: Economics; Finance
  Session: 691
  Paper Number: 13-0360
• Rural Highway Expansion and Economic Development: Impacts on Private Earnings and Employment
  Authors: Iacono, Michael
  Authors: Iacono, Michael
  Year: 2013
  Document Type: Presentation
  Subject: Economics; Finance
  Session: 691
  Paper Number: 13-4701
• Transit and Access to Jobs in Competitive Clusters
  Authors: Tilahun, Nebiyou
  Authors: Tilahun, Nebiyou
  Year: 2013
  Document Type: Presentation
  Subject: Economics; Finance
  Session: 691
  Paper Number: 13-5062