Manufacturing employment in the United States has tended to fall since 1979. Geographically, the Northeast and Mideast regions have incurred the brunt of this decline and, except in the Southwest region, urban countries have tended to fare worse than rural countries. Meanwhile, foreign-owned...

Does national market size matter for industrial structure? This has been suggested by theoretical work on "home market" effects, as in Krugman (1980, 1995). In this paper, I show that what previously was regarded as an assumption of convenience — transport costs only for the differentiated...

Firms’ headquarters [HQ] support their production activity, by gathering information and outsourcing business services, as well as, managing, evaluating, and coordinating internal firm activities. In search of a better location for these functions, firms often separate the HQ function...

Competition among state and local governments to lure businesses has attracted considerable interest from economists, as well as legislators and policymakers. This paper quantifies the role of plant relocations in the geographic redistribution of manufacturing employment and examines the...

An examination of the role of productivity differences in explaining the decline of manufacturing activity in large metropolitan areas relative to the rest of the country, with special attention given to the decline of the large metropolitan areas of the Manufacturing Belt.