Jordan Rappaport

The United States as a Coastal Nation

US economic activity is overwhelmingly concentrated at its ocean and Great Lakes coasts, reflecting a large contribution from coastal proximity to productivity and quality of life. Extensively controlling for correlated natural attributes and initial conditions decisively rejects that the coastal concentration of economic activity is spurious or just derives from historical forces long since dissipated. Measuring proximity based on coastal attributes that contribute to either productivity or quality of life, but not to both, suggests that the coastal concentration derives primarily from a productivity effect but also, increasingly, from a quality of life effect.

Why are Population Flows so Persistent

Extending the neoclassical growth model to allow for mobile labor, small shocks to a local economys productivity or quality of life along with small frictions to capital and labor mobility effect extended equilibrium transition paths. During such transitions local population may be far away from its steady-state level but local wages and housing prices remain relatively close to their steady-state levels. Exogenous technological progress together with a partially elastic local housing supply imply steady-state population flows from high productivity to high quality-of-life economies. In addition, consumption smoothing causes steady-state population density to be history dependent. Empirical evidence suggests that some time around 1930, the United States experienced a shock which realigned productivity across its localities and which set in motion extended population flows. The data further suggest that some time around 1960,> quality-of-life considerations became more important in driving population flows and that a capital shock temporarily drove population flows during the 1970s.

How Does Labor Mobility Affect Income Convergence

The neoclassical growth model is extended to allow for mobile labor. Following a negative shock to a small economys capital stock, capital and labor frictions effect an equilibrium transition path during which wages remain below their steady-state level. Outmigration directly contributes to faster income convergence but also creates a disincentive for gross capital formation. The net result is that across a wide range of calibrations, the speed of income convergence is relatively insensitive to the degree of labor mobility.

Local Growth Empirics

Using a newly constructed data panel on U.S. locality attributes, this paper sketches four sets of empirical facts on economic growth across U.S. counties. A first set of facts focuses on the time series and cross-correlation properties of local economic growth as measured by net migration, per capita income growth, and housing price growth. A second and a third set of facts focus on the geographical correlates of local growth over the 20th century and the non-government correlates of local growth over the period 1970 to 1990. A fourth set of facts focuses on the government fiscal policy correlates of local growth. Local economic growth from 1970 to 1990 is strongly negatively correlated with financial measures of initial local government size. This negative correlation is extremely robust across alternative specifications; an extensive set of control variables eliminates any obvious omitted variable bias; there is no indication of reverse causality; and the result is not driven by the elderly. Controlling for local government size, local growth is positively correlated with expenditures on elementary and secondary school education; it is negatively correlated with the percent of local tax revenue derived from personal income and selective sales taxes. A neoclassical model of local growth provides a framework for interpreting these correlations.

How Does Openness to Capital Flows Affect Growth

An average adjustment cost which is convex with respect to the rate of gross investment success-fully calibrates a neoclassical growth model to match real world observables including the transition paths of convergence speed, the shadow value of capital, interest rates, and savings rates. Comparing the open-economy and closed-economy versions of the calibrated model shows that relaxing the constraint that domestic savings finance domestic investment effects only a small increase in the growth rate of output per capita: less than one percentage point per year for an economy with current output 20 percent its steady-state level and less than one-half percentage point for an economy with current output 60 percent its steady-state level. Rather than higher growth, the main effect of openness to capital flows is higher current levels of consumption financed by large trade deficits.

The settlement of the United States, 1800 to 2000: the long transition towards Gibrat's law

This paper studies the long run development of U.S. counties and metro areas from 1800 to 2000. In earlier periods smaller counties converge whereas larger counties diverge. Over time, due to changes in the age composition of locations and net congestion, convergence dissipates and divergence weakens. Gibrats law emerges gradually without fully attaining it. Our findings suggest that orthogonal growth is a consequence of reaching a steady state population distribution, rather than an explanation of that distribution. A simple one-sector model, with entry of new locations, a growth friction, and decreasing net congestion closely matches these and related dynamics.

Is the Speed of Convergence Constant

Empirical attempts to measure the speed of convergence -- the rate at which a countrys per capita income approaches its steady state relative to its distance from its steady state -- have started from the assumption that it is constant. In contrast, neoclassical models of capital accumulation usually predict that the speed of convergence decreases as income approaches its steady state. Estimating a flexible functional form which allows the speed of convergence to vary suggests that the speed of convergence actually increases as income approaches its steady state. An increasing speed of convergence calls into question structural interpretations of coefficients on conditioning variables in cross-sectional growth regressions. Instead, excluding initial income from cross-sectional growth regressions allows coefficients on exogenous variables to be interpreted as measuring changes in underlying structural relationships.

Comparing Aggregate Housing Price Measures

Three methodologies have been developed to measure the aggregate price of housing. This article provides an overview of these three methodologies for pricing housing as well as a detailed guide to the major house price indexes based on them.

Moving to High Quality of Life

The U.S. population has been migrating to places with high perceived quality of life. A calibrated general-equilibrium model shows that such migration follows from broad-based technological progress. Rising national wages increase demand for consumption amenities. Under a baseline parameterization, a place with amenities for which individuals would pay 5 percent of their income grows 0.3 percent faster than an otherwise identical place. Productivity is shown to be a decreasingly important determinant of local population. The faster growth of high-amenity places is considerably strengthened if they have low initial equilibrium population density underpinned by low relative productivity. Places with identical amenities asymptotically converge to an identical population density, regardless of their relative productivity levels. An implication is that the high growth rates of high-amenity localities should eventually taper off.>

A simple model of city crowdedness

Population density varies widely across U.S. cities. A calibrated general equilibrium model in which productivity and quality-of-life differ across locations can account for such variation. Individuals derive utility from consumption of a traded good, a nontraded good, leisure, and quality-of-life. The traded and nontraded goods are produced by combining mobile labor, mobile capital, and non-mobile land. An eight-fold increase in population density requires an approximate 50 percent productivity differential or an approximate 20 percent compensating differential. A thirty-two-fold increase in population density requires an approximate 95 percent productivity differential or a 33 percent compensating differential. Empirical evidence suggests productivity and quality-of-life differentials of this magnitude are plausible. The model implies that broad-based technological progress can induce substantial migration to localities with high quality-of-life.