讲座名称：“人口与社会政策大讲堂”第十七期

讲座时间：2016年6月6日（周一），16：30-18：00

讲座地点：公共政策与管理学院实验中心会议室

讲座题目：

Are the Most Productive Regions Necessarily the Most Successful?

讲座地点：公共政策与管理学院实验中心会议室

讲座人：Mark Partridge教授

讲座内容简介

Are the Most Productive Regions Necessarily the Most Successful?

Abstract: Economists typically celebrate productivity growth as the way to improve living standards for the general population. In addition, economists also advocate that particular cities and regions should strive to be as productive as possible in order to attract businesses and increase employment. However, while productivity growth can reduce cost or improve quality, if demand is not sufficiently responsive or elastic, then labor demand may decrease, reducing employment in the location. Productivity growth may be skill biased, creating larger wage gaps that increase the area’s inequality or poverty. Thus, there may be a fallacy of composition in that productivity growth is good for society as a whole, but the most productive locations may face some unintended consequences associated with productivity growth that may reduce quality of life or weaken local labor markets.

Using U.S. county-level data from the 1990-2013 period, we estimate a series of instrumental variable regressions on a variety of economic outcomes. Our instruments are derived from a novel matching process and prove to be strong. Our results suggest that productivity growth was inversely associated with employment and population growth in the “red-hot” 1990s, but this relationship turned neutral or even slightly positive after the year 2000 when the U.S. economy greatly slowed. In particular, local productivity growth was inversely associated with job growth pre-2000, but there was a positive link in the 2010-2013, though not the one-for-one association expected from standard neoclassical economic models. Our results do not suggest that having a fast-productivity growth composition of industries (e.g., advanced technology) is a salvation for local economies, especially when other strategies such as human capital formation appear to be much more effective.

讲座人Mark Partridge简介

Mark Partridge is the C. William Swank Chair of Rural-Urban Policy at The Ohio State University and a Professor in the Agricultural, Environment, and Development Economics Department. He is also a Faculty Research Affiliate, City-Region Studies Centre, University of Alberta. Prior to Ohio State, he was the Canada Research Chair in the New Rural Economy at the University of Saskatchewan, where he is an Adjunct Professor. Professor Partridge has published over 100 academic and scholarly papers and his work has been ranked among the top-1000 economists in the world. He has published in many journals such as the American Economic Review, Journal of Economic Geography, Journal of International Economics, Journal of Urban Economics, Review of Economics and Statistics. He co-authored the book The Geography of American Poverty: Is there a Role for Place-Based Policy?, published by the W.E. Upjohn Institute. Professor Partridge has received research funding from many sources including the Appalachian Regional Commission, Brookings Institution, European Commission, Infrastructure Canada, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, U.S. National Science Foundation, U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Social Science and the Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Dr. Partridge’s current research interests include investigating rural-urban interdependence, why some communities grow faster than others, and innovations in regional policy and governance. Professor Partridge served as President of the Southern Regional Science Association. He is Co-Editor of the Journal of Regional Science and is on the Executive Council of the Regional Science Association International. He is also on the editorial boards of Annals of Regional Science, Growth and Change, The Review of Regional Studies, and Region etDeveloppement. Dr. Partridge has consulted with OECD, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, various governments in the U.S. and Canada, and he is currently working a project for the European Commission. He has presented to the U.S. Congress and the Canadian Parliament on regional issues. Professor Partridge received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Illinois.