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Growth and Convergence across the US: Evidence from County-Level Data

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  • Matthew J. Higgins

    (Georgia Institute of Technology)

  • Daniel Levy

    () (Bar-Ilan University)

  • Andrew T. Young

    (University of Mississippi)

Abstract

We use U.S. county data (3,058 observations) and 41 conditioning variables to study growth and convergence. Using OLS and 3SLS-IV we report on the full sample and metro, non-metro, and 5 regional samples: (1) OLS yields convergence rates around 2 percent; 3SLS yields 6–8 percent; (2) convergence rates vary (e.g., the Southern rate is 2.5 times the Northeastern rate); (3) federal, state and local government negatively correlates with growth; (4) the relationship between educational attainment and growth is nonlinear; and (5) finance, insurance & real estate industry and entertainment industry positively correlates with growth while education employment negatively correlates.

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Paper provided by Department of Economics, Bar-Ilan University in its series Working Papers with number 2005-06.

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Date of creation: Sep 2005
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Handle: RePEc:biu:wpaper:2005-06

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Keywords: Economic Growth; Conditional Convergence; and County-Level Data;

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