Bennett Harrison

Innovative Firm Behavior and Local Milieu: Exploring the Intersection of Agglomeration, Firm Effects, and Technological Change

AbstractRegional economists, planners, and geographers for more than half a century have drawn a useful distinction in characterizing the properties of spatial agglomerations, or growth centers (or, to use the currently fashionable term, “clusters”). They write on the one hand of the presence of same-sector businesses and employees (“localization”), and on the other of a diverse complex of economic and social institutions (“urbanization”). While both processes—sameness and diversity—are relevant to making sense of how economic activity sorts itself out across space, empirically oriented economists and students of organizational behavior are just now providing scientific support for the hypothesis that urbanization is more important than localization in explaining spatial patterns of innovation and economic development.In this paper, we report on the results of research conducted at the level of individual companies and plants, rather than on the aggregate economies of cities and regions. Across a national...

The subcontracting behavior of single vs. multiplant enterprises in US manufacturing: Implications for economic development

Abstract In this paper we explore the factors shaping the production subcontracting (“make-buy”) decisions of managers in the plants of both small and large firms in 21 industries that constitute the US metalworking and machinery manufacturing sector. Descriptive and multivariate statistical analyses of original survey data collected in 1986–1987 lead us to infer that a regional economic development strategy that promotes those manufacturing firms with a single, relatively large plant making a diverse range of products and having close ties to customers but limited internal machining capacity has the greatest potential for generating local backward linkages. In this respect, we find empirical — if nuanced — support for certain normative aspects of the industrial district (or “networking”) approach to economic development policy.

Reassessing the 'Massachusetts miracle': reindustrialization and balanced growth, or convergence to 'Manhattanization'?

Research suggests that conventional wisdom about the ‘miraculous’ reindustrialization of the regional economy of Massachusetts is much too simplistic. The decline in unemployment was as much the result of low average labor-force growth as it was of rapid job creation. Also Massachusetts has experienced increases in income and wage inequality, and there has been a dramatic slowdown in employment growth. The manufacturing sector is still deindustrializing and high-tech job growth has virtually ceased. Several complementary explanations are offered for these changes. First, a chronic labor shortage is constraining company expansion. Second the declining rate of growth of federal military procurement may particularly affect Massachusetts. Third, the state economy may have begun to converge on a new equilibrium structure. A shift–share analysis of employment changes during the periods 1973 – 79, 1979 – 84, and 1984 – 87 reveals that the states competitive advantage has narrowed to a small number of business services and their associated real estate and construction activities.

Wage Inequality Takes a Great U-Turn

Inequality among the annual wage and salary incomes of American workers declined steadily throughout the 1960s and well into the decade of the 1970s. Then, somewhere between 1975 and 1978, the distribution of wages and salaries took a sharp U-turn. This was before the election of Ronald Reagan, before the passage of the sharply regressive tax act of 1981, and even before the official commencement of the monetarist

Growing inequality in black wages in the 1980s and the emergence of an African-American middle class

Much recent scholarship and popular discussion posits a substantial movement of African-American households into the “middle class.” Yet over the course of the 1980s, the proportion of individual black wage-earners receiving “annualized” (work experience-adjusted) wages and salaries in excess of about

Full Employment at Living Wages

35,000-three times the poverty line-fell by 22 percent, even as the share of African-Americans earning below the poverty line increased by a fifth. This was true for all age groups, and even for persons within the black community who had completed four or more years of college. The growth of low wage employment was most pronounced for black men between the ages of 25 and 34, among whom the incidence of below-poverty-level employment doubled. Black women aged 35-54 experienced relatively greater progress than any other part of the African-American community, but their gains lagged far behind those of comparable white women. We speculate on possible explanations for these developments, on the basis of which a potential public policy agenda is examined.

Workforce Development Networks: Community-Based Organizations and Regional Alliances@@@Generating Jobs: How to Increase Demand for Less-Skilled Workers

The theme of this article is true full employ ment : the opportunity for all to work for living wages. Under the heading of a full employment policy, we reject the creation of substandard jobs, no matter how many. A policy of guaranteed employment that fails to provide for living wage levels could easily turn into a device for forcing reluctant workers into substandard jobs. A true full employment policy must rest on three principles: (1) a guarantee of the right to useful job opportunities for all workers; (2) the creation of standards for family living wages, at least for principal wage earners, since a pure employment policy with no proper wage standards will merely succeed in reproducing poverty; and (3) a com prehensive framework of manpower, production and capac ity planning. Without this, a job guarantee at living wages is sure to fail, because the task of full employment policy is enormous. It must not merely create millions of jobs; it must upgrade tens of millions.

The deindustrialization of America: Basic Books, Inc., 1982. ISBN 0-465-01590-5.

Introduction The Changing Structure of Labor Markets in American Cities Taking Stock of What We Know about Job Training and Workforce Development Why CBOs Engage in Training/Workforce Development and Form or Enter Interorganizational Networks Help Them Do It Better The Case Studies Workforce Development Networks with Individual CBOs at Their Hubs Peer-to-Peer Networks Engaged in Workforce Development Regional Intermediaries Bridging Business Development, Community Building and Job Training Synthesis and Conclusions Toward Better Design, Promotion and Evaluation of Community-Based Workforce Development Networks