Location-Specific Adjustments in Population and Employment across Metropolitan America

Abstract

This paper examines the joint adjustment of population and employment numbers across America’s metropolitan areas during the period 1990–2015. Current levels of both are estimated, for 10 year periods, using their lagged (own and cross) levels and eight other lagged variables. Population is affected by both human and natural amenities and employment by wages, patents, and other attributes of the workforce. This paper questions the conventional interpretation of the adjustment process by using geographically weighted regression (GWR) instead of standard linear (OLS, 2GLS) regression. Here the various estimates are all local, so the long-run equilibrium solutions for the adjustment process vary over space. Convergence no longer indicates a stable universal solution but instead involves a mix of stable and unstable local solutions. Local sustainability becomes an issue when making projections because employment can quickly lead or lag population in some metropolitan labor markets.

Handbook of megacities and megacity‐regions

“…However, the boundaries between these various conurbations and their wider urbanized regions remain blurry, and few attempts have been made to sharpen those boundaries. Moreover, little has been said to date about the effects-whether positive or negative-of the shared natural and human-made amenities found either within or proximate to these megacities (Mulligan & Carruthers, 2021). In fact, where transportation infrastructure and household resources allow, overlapping 'urban fields' or 'daily urban systems' form, and travel can occur throughout all parts of the surrounding mega-regions (Friedmann & Miller, 1965).…”

Five new contributions to urban studies

“…With more and better sources of data, it became clear that these rough binary distinctions were more pronounced at some times than at others. To shed light on this issue, and other more technical matters, the adjustment model was extended to reveal the waxing and waning of both the size and amenity effects, and to identify when the national city system was more, or less, impacted by external events (Hoogstra et al, 2017;Carruthers & Mulligan, 2019;Mulligan & Carruthers, 2021b).…”