Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Economics

Macalester College

Economics Honors Projects

Economic growth

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

The Paradoxical Effect Of Intercity Transportation And Communications Infrastructure On Urban Concentration: The Dispersion-Concentration Model, Alvaro Ballarin Cabrera Jan 2011

The Paradoxical Effect Of Intercity Transportation And Communications Infrastructure On Urban Concentration: The Dispersion-Concentration Model, Alvaro Ballarin Cabrera

Economics Honors Projects

This study examines the effect of intercity transportation and communications infrastructure on urban concentration on a sample of 84 countries between the years 1960 and 2010. By comparing the effects of interregional transportation and communications infrastructure on primacy and urbanization, I find that (1) such investments promote population dispersion amongst connected areas and (2) population concentration from unconnected locations into connected ones. Therefore, intercity transportation and communications infrastructure is only effective at reducing excessive concentration when the dispersion effect exceeds the concentration effect.


How Does Income Inequality Affect The Growth Of U.S. Counties?, Jeremy Roth Aug 2010

How Does Income Inequality Affect The Growth Of U.S. Counties?, Jeremy Roth

Economics Honors Projects

This paper aims to conduct a precise test of the political economy hypothesis linking income inequality and economic growth. By choosing covariates from a detailed county-level dataset and assuming that U.S. counties experience perfect capital mobility, I shut off the four possible channels linking inequality and growth other than political economy. This is a first in an empirical literature that has reported conflicting findings with observations of states and countries. I also present thematic maps to illustrate the cross-county variation in key growth determinants that is masked by state-level studies. My econometric tests find a negative association between the initial …