Sukkoo Kim

Expansion of Markets and the Geographic Distribution of Economic Activities: The Trends in U. S. Regional Manufacturing Structure, 1860–1987

This paper presents evidence on the long-run trends in U. S. regional specialization and localization and examines which model of regional specialization is most consistent with the data. Regional specialization in the United States rose substantially between 1860 and the turn of the twentieth century, flattened out during the interwar years, and then fell substantially and continuously since the 1930s. The analysis of the long-run trends in U. S. regional specialization and localization supports explanations based on production scale economies and the Heckscher-Ohlin model but is inconsistent with explanations based on external economies.

Regions, resources, and economic geography: Sources of U.S. regional comparative advantage, 1880-1987

Abstract This paper estimates the Rybczynski equation matrix for the twenty two-digit U.S. manufacturing industries for various years between 1880 and 1987. As predicted by the standard general equilibrium theory of interregional trade, the regression estimates show that a consistent set of factor endowments explains a significant amount of the geographic distribution of manufacturing activities over time. Although these results do not rule out the importance of increasing returns, they do suggest certain limits on how increasing returns affect U.S. economic geography.

Urban Development in the United States, 1690–1990

The United States transformed itself from a rural to an urban society over the last three centuries. After a century of unremarkable growth, the pace of urbanization was historically unprecedented between the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. In the twentieth century, the urban population continued to increase but in a much more dispersed manner as the suburban population increased. Throughout these developments, cities also exhibited considerable variation in their population sizes. This paper finds that the pace and pattern of U.S. urban development are explained by changes in regional comparative advantage and in economies in transportation and local public goods, which in turn were determined by the changes in the economic structures of cities. This paper also finds that cities varied considerably in size because the larger cities reduced market transaction costs associated with coordinating greater geographic division of labor.

Kinship Institutions and Sex Ratios in India

This article explores the relationship between kinship institutions and sex ratios in India at the turn of the twentieth century. Because kinship rules vary by caste, language, religion, and region, we construct sex ratios by these categories at the district level by using data from the 1901 Census of India for Punjab (North), Bengal (East), and Madras (South). We find that the male-to-female sex ratio varied positively with caste rank, fell as one moved from the North to the East and then to the South, was higher for Hindus than for Muslims, and was higher for northern Indo-Aryan speakers than for the southern Dravidian-speaking people. We argue that these systematic patterns in the data are consistent with variations in the institution of family, kinship, and inheritance.

CHANGES IN THE NATURE OF URBAN SPATIAL STRUCTURE IN THE UNITED STATES, 1890–2000*

This paper documents the long-run trends in the average densities and density gradients of urban areas in the United States. The data show that between 1890 and 2000 the average densities of cities and metropolitan areas rose and fell but that the density gradients of urban areas generally declined monotonically over time. While it is beyond the scope of this paper to estimate the causes of these changes, this paper argues that a complete understanding of the changes in the nature of US urban spatial structures is likely to go beyond the standard explanations based on the monocentric city model such as decreases in transportation costs and increases in household incomes.

History, Institutions, and Cities: A View from the Americas

Every nation, formally or informally, defines and establishes the lines of political and fiscal authority among its national, regional, and local governments. Historically, centralized governments tend to restrict the power and autonomy of provincial and local governments. In this paper, we exploit the quasi‐experimental distribution of political institutions in the Americas caused by variation in European colonial experience to examine the impact of institutions on urban and local development, specifically on the degree of urban primacy, the size distribution of cities, the number and density of local government units, and the fragmentation of metropolitan areas. We argue that centralization of political power at the national level, as experienced in many countries in Latin America, contributes to urban primacy and a size distribution of cities favoring large cities. Additionally, even in more politically decentralized countries such as Canada and the U.S., variance in political centralization at the provincial (state) level over local governments led to significant divergences in urban primacy, the distribution of city sizes, as well as the form, number, and density of local governments. While we cannot rule out the importance of other factors, our findings suggest that political centralization affects spatial economic development.

Division of labor and the rise of cities: evidence from US industrialization, 1850--1880

Industrial revolution in the United States first took hold in rural New England as factories arose and grew in a handful of industries such as textiles and shoes. However, as factory scale economies rose and factory production techniques were adopted by an ever growing number of industries, industrialization became concentrated in cities throughout the Northeastern region which came to be known as the manufacturing belt. While it is extremely difficult to rule out other types of agglomeration economies such as spillovers, this paper suggests that these geographic developments associated with industrial revolution in the U.S. are most consistent with explanations based on division of labor, job search and matching costs.

The US Urban System

This chapter documents the historical evolution of the US urban system. From a handful of port cities in the colonial period, there was a sustained urban growth from 1830 to the twentieth century. While the initial rise is associated with a transportation revolution and early industrialization, regional shocks associated with immigration, Second Industrial Revolution, gold and oil discoveries, and land speculation give special character to US urban development. The rank-size analysis of city sizes shows that there were three periods of urban hierarchy, largely coinciding with functional evolutions of cities: first, as regional mercantile centers; second, as national, industrial-mercantile, densely built cities; and, third, as postindustrial, service-oriented, metropolitan, suburban places. A more detailed analysis of postindustrial cities shows that innovations in services such as finance, insurance, and real estate contribute significantly to the concentration of few large metropolitan areas, whereas manufacturing and retail tend toward medium and smaller cities. The larger cities were considerably more economically diverse than smaller cities, and a spatial analysis indicates that cities tend to coevolve as they compete to grow. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the impact of political institutions on urban development. In contrast to developments in Latin America and Canada, American federalism that grants significant political authority to state and localities has significantly impacted US urban and rural development.