Publication History

This title was first published in 2003.

Introduction to the Theory

Schumpeter first put forward the premise that the incessant turbulence of an economy in motion, carrying out new combinations of products, production methods with new technologies and the opening of new markets, is capable of explaining patterns of economic growth and change.

Research Focus

Focusing on US industrialized urban areas, this volume tests this theory empirically. Localized employment ’churn’ - registered as job creation/destruction dynamics - is used to account for variations in US metro-regional economic productivity performances during the 1986-1999 period.

Key Findings

The results suggest that the employment turnover and replacement dynamics have large and significant positive effects on localized productivity growth independent of a variety of industrial restructuring processes occurring simultaneously.

While employment churn effects are robust across US Census regions, they do not exert a uniform influence on metro-regional productivity performances across time. Until 1996, job creation and destruction dynamics often cancelled each other out as metro-regions underwent continued industrial restructuring. Since 1996, however, positive effects on metro-region productivity growth have been consistently strong.

In addition to a strong positive effect on productivity of the emergence of a localized IT sector, both an expanding service sector share of regional employment and a rising public spending share of regional output exert powerful downward pressure on localized productivity growth rates.