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Journal Article
Spotlight: Texas subprime mortgages: metros vary on risky loans--and delinquencies
The current financial crisis has brought a severe decline in subprime mortgage lending. Like the nation, Texas and its metros still have exposure to existing loans. Housing prices, unemployment and overall economic activity will play a significant part in determining how many of them run into trouble.
Journal Article
The Faster Growth of Larger, Less Crowded Locations
Over the past few decades, the population and employment growth of small and large locations in the United States have diverged. Many smaller cities and rural areas saw declining population and employment from 2000 to 2017 as residents and jobs migrated to larger, more prosperous locations. This migration might suggest that the benefits of size, such as business productivity and urban amenities, have become greater over time. However, the migration might also reflect other factors, such as the disproportionate specialization of smaller locations in the declining manufacturing and agriculture ...
Journal Article
The concentration of poverty within metropolitan areas
Not only has poverty recently increased in the United States, it has also become more concentrated. This Commentary documents changes in the concentration of poverty in metropolitan areas over the last decade. The analysis shows that the concentration of poverty tends to be highest in northern cities, and that wherever overall poverty or unemployment rates went up the most over the course of the decade, the concentration of poverty tended to increase there as well.
Journal Article
Sprawl : friend or foe to rural places?
Discussion Paper
Economic distress and resurgence in U.S. central cities: concepts, causes, and policy levers
This paper provides a review of the literature on U.S. central city growth and distress during the second half of the twentieth century. It finds that city growth tended to be higher in metropolitan areas with favorable weather, higher growth, and greater human capital, while distress was strongly correlated with city-level manufacturing legacy. The article affirms that distress has been highly persistent, but that some cities have achieved resurgence through a combination of strong leadership, collaboration across sectors and institutions, clear and broad-based strategies, and significant ...
Journal Article
Three keys to the city: resources, agglomeration economies, and sorting
Metropolitan areas in the U.S. contain almost 80 percent of the nation?s population and nearly 85 percent of its jobs. This high degree of spatial concentration of people and jobs leads to congestion costs and higher housing costs. To offset these costs, workers must receive higher wages, and higher wages increase firms? costs. So why do firms continue to produce in cities where the cost of doing business is so high? Economists offer three main explanations. First, cities developed and grew because of some natural advantage, such as a port. Second, as cities grew, the resulting concentration ...
Journal Article
Income growth shows Houston's economic strength and maturity
Journal Article
Geography, history, economies of density, and the location of cities
Economists believe that people choose to live and work at sites that have productive or amenity value such as a river, harbor, or some other natural resource. Another factor that may determine the location of a city is the benefits derived from density itself: agglomeration economies. Although these complementary explanations both have something useful to say about the locations and sizes of cities, they also have important limitations. While natural features seem important, it is difficult to point to one or even several that are valuable enough to explain a very large metropolitan area. And ...
Journal Article
Location dynamics: a key consideration for urban policy
What determines where businesses and households locate? Location decisions can affect the economic health of cities and metropolitan areas. But as Jeffrey Brinkman explains, how firms, residents, and workers go about choosing where to locate can involve complex interactions with sometimes unpredictable consequences.