The Performance of Metropolitan Area Industries

[...]In this paper, I analyze the performance of theregion’s industries over the recent economic decline andrecovery. In the next section, I present the taxonomy ofindustries employed here. That taxonomy, adopted frominternational trade theory, displaces economic base theory,which sorts industries into basic (export) and nonbasic(local). The region’s economy is compared with the nationaleconomy in the context of the taxonomy developed. I thenpresent a model of regional economic growth based on trade,specialization, and agglomeration economies. That model,which seeks to explain growth of real per capita income, hasbeen estimated with annual data for the region. The crosssectionversion of that model was developed in another paper(Drennan and Lobo 1996). A second model develops theexogenous character of the traded goods and services sectorfor aggregate regional growth. I conclude the paper bydescribing recent employment trends in the two-digit StandardIndustrial Classification (SIC) industries of the region.[...]