IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/pubcho/v199y2024i1d10.1007_s11127-023-01055-y.html

Some searches may not work properly. We apologize for the inconvenience.

   My bibliography  Save this article

Constructing and validating a best-fit economic well-being index for urban U.S. counties: a Tiebout model approach

Author

Listed:
  • Justin Ehrlich

    (Syracuse University)

  • Simon Medcalfe

    (Augusta University)

  • Shane Sanders

    (Syracuse University)

Abstract

This study builds on the history of economic well-being (EWB) index construction to develop such an index for urban U.S. counties (population > 62,437). Unlike previous studies, we rely on external validation of economic well-being to construct a best-fit index, where our external validation approach follows the Tiebout Hypothesis. We estimate a best-fit, linear regression-based index, in which lagged features of economic well-being are weighted based on ability to explain subsequent county population change. Compared to an arbitrarily equally-weighted model using a composite index a model using lagged weighted EWB individual variables provide greater transparency while also explaining substantially more variation in population change across urban counties (19.9% vs. 15.7%).

Suggested Citation

  • Justin Ehrlich & Simon Medcalfe & Shane Sanders, 2024. "Constructing and validating a best-fit economic well-being index for urban U.S. counties: a Tiebout model approach," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 199(1), pages 45-63, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:199:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1007_s11127-023-01055-y
    DOI: 10.1007/s11127-023-01055-y
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11127-023-01055-y
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11127-023-01055-y?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Donald Epley & Mohan Menon, 2008. "A Method of Assembling Cross-sectional Indicators into a Community Quality of Life," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 88(2), pages 281-296, September.
    2. William D. Nordhaus & James Tobin, 1973. "Is Growth Obsolete?," NBER Chapters, in: The Measurement of Economic and Social Performance, pages 509-564, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Andrés Rodríguez-Pose & Tobias D. Ketterer, 2012. "Do Local Amenities Affect The Appeal Of Regions In Europe For Migrants?," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(4), pages 535-561, October.
    4. Richard J. Cebula, 2009. "Migration and the Tiebout‐Tullock Hypothesis Revisited," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 68(2), pages 541-551, April.
    5. Charles M. Tiebout, 1956. "A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 64(5), pages 416-416.
    6. Pilar Murias & Simone Novello & Fidel Martínez-Roget, 2016. "A Malmquist-Based Approach to Change in Local Economic Well-being," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(8), pages 1273-1289, August.
    7. Marc Fleurbaey, 2009. "Beyond GDP: The Quest for a Measure of Social Welfare," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(4), pages 1029-1075, December.
    8. Simon Medcalfe, 2018. "Economic Well-Being in U.S. Metropolitan Statistical Areas," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 139(3), pages 1147-1167, October.
    9. Bianca Biagi & Alessandra Faggian & Philip McCann, 2011. "Long and Short Distance Migration in Italy: The Role of Economic, Social and Environmental Characteristics," Spatial Economic Analysis, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 6(1), pages 111-131.
    10. Michela Nardo & Michaela Saisana & Andrea Saltelli & Stefano Tarantola & Anders Hoffman & Enrico Giovannini, 2005. "Handbook on Constructing Composite Indicators: Methodology and User Guide," OECD Statistics Working Papers 2005/3, OECD Publishing.
    11. Charles I. Jones & Peter J. Klenow, 2016. "Beyond GDP? Welfare across Countries and Time," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(9), pages 2426-2457, September.
    12. Carlos P. Barros & Jelson Serafim, 2016. "The Tiebout Hypothesis in Africa: Evidence from Angola," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 28(2), pages 192-200, June.
    13. Andy Pike & Andres Rodriguez-Pose & John Tomaney, 2007. "What Kind of Local and Regional Development and for Whom?," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(9), pages 1253-1269.
    14. Justin Ehrlich & Simon Medcalfe & Shane Sanders, 2021. "Composite Index Ranking of Economic Well-Being in U.S. Metropolitan Areas: How Prevalent are Rank Anomalies?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 157(2), pages 543-562, September.
    15. Salvatore Greco & Alessio Ishizaka & Menelaos Tasiou & Gianpiero Torrisi, 2019. "On the Methodological Framework of Composite Indices: A Review of the Issues of Weighting, Aggregation, and Robustness," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 141(1), pages 61-94, January.
    16. Saltz, Ira S. & Capener, Don, 2016. "60 Years Later and Still Going Strong: The Continued Relevance of the Tiebout Hypothesis," Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy, Mid-Continent Regional Science Association, vol. 46(1).
    17. M. Saisana & A. Saltelli & S. Tarantola, 2005. "Uncertainty and sensitivity analysis techniques as tools for the quality assessment of composite indicators," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 168(2), pages 307-323, March.
    18. Carla Alexandra Filipe Amado & Ana Paula Barreira & Sérgio Pereira Santos & Maria Helena Guimarães, 2019. "Comparing the quality of life of cities that gained and lost population: An assessment with DEA and the Malmquist index," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 98(5), pages 2075-2097, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Simon Medcalfe, 2018. "Economic Well-Being in U.S. Metropolitan Statistical Areas," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 139(3), pages 1147-1167, October.
    2. Panagiotis Artelaris, 2022. "A development index for the Greek regions," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 56(3), pages 1261-1281, June.
    3. Justin Ehrlich & Simon Medcalfe & Shane Sanders, 2021. "Composite Index Ranking of Economic Well-Being in U.S. Metropolitan Areas: How Prevalent are Rank Anomalies?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 157(2), pages 543-562, September.
    4. Zhang, Yinjunjie & Xu, Zhicheng Phil & Palma, Marco A., 2017. "Misclassification Errors of Subjective Well-being: A New Approach to Mapping Happiness," 2017 Annual Meeting, July 30-August 1, Chicago, Illinois 258553, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    5. Patrizio Lecca & Peter G. McGregor & J. Kim Swales & Ya Ping Yin, 2014. "Balanced Budget Multipliers For Small Open Regions Within A Federal System: Evidence From The Scottish Variable Rate Of Income Tax," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(3), pages 402-421, June.
    6. Edson Kogachi & Adonias Ferreira & Carlos Cavalcante & Marcelo Embiruçu, 2021. "Development of Performance Evaluation Indicators for Table Grape Packaging Units. 2. Global Indexes," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(11), pages 1-16, June.
    7. Humberto Llavador & John E. Roemer & Joaquim Silvestre, 2013. "Should we sustain? And if so, sustain what? Consumption or the quality of life?," Chapters, in: Roger Fouquet (ed.), Handbook on Energy and Climate Change, chapter 30, pages 639-665, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    8. Brocek, Frantisek & Lalinsky, Tibor, 2017. "Welfare in Slovakia and the EU — an alternative to GDP per capita," MPRA Paper 83456, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Carlo Drago, 2021. "The Analysis and the Measurement of Poverty: An Interval-Based Composite Indicator Approach," Economies, MDPI, vol. 9(4), pages 1-17, October.
    10. V. K. Shrotryia & Shashank Vikram Pratap Singh, 2020. "Measuring Progress Beyond GDP: A Theoretical Perspective," Emerging Economy Studies, International Management Institute, vol. 6(2), pages 143-165, November.
    11. Zhiling Wang & Thomas De Graaff & Peter Nijkamp, 2016. "Cultural Diversity and Cultural Distance as Choice Determinants of Migration Destination," Spatial Economic Analysis, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(2), pages 176-200, June.
    12. Elena Falcettoni & Vegard Nygaard, 2020. "A Comparison of Living Standards Across the States of America," FEDS Notes 2020-05-28-1, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    13. Humberto Llavador & John E. Roemer & Joaquim Silvestre, 2013. "Should we sustain? And if so, sustain what? Consumption or the quality of life?," Chapters,in: Handbook on Energy and Climate Change, chapter 30, pages 639-665 Edward Elgar Publishing.
    14. Paolo Liberati & Giuliano Resce, 2022. "Regional Well-Being and its Inequality in the OECD Member Countries," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 20(3), pages 671-700, September.
    15. Greco, Salvatore & Ishizaka, Alessio & Resce, Giuliano & Torrisi, Gianpiero, 2017. "Is the Grass Always Greener on the Other Side of the fence? Composite Index of Well-Being Taking into Account the Local Relative Appreciations in Better Life Index," MPRA Paper 82718, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Milica Maricic & Jose A. Egea & Veljko Jeremic, 2019. "A Hybrid Enhanced Scatter Search—Composite I-Distance Indicator (eSS-CIDI) Optimization Approach for Determining Weights Within Composite Indicators," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 144(2), pages 497-537, July.
    17. Rosanna Nisticò & Antonella Rita Ferrara, 2011. "Indicatori Di Benessere E Convergenza Tra Le Regioni: Un’Applicazione Al Caso Italiano," Working Papers 201113, Università della Calabria, Dipartimento di Economia, Statistica e Finanza "Giovanni Anania" - DESF.
    18. Luisa Corrado & Giuseppe De Michele, 2019. "Are governments matching citizens’ demand for better lives? A new approach comparing subjective and objective welfare measures," Working Papers 39, European Stability Mechanism.
    19. Andrea Saltelli, 2007. "Composite Indicators between Analysis and Advocacy," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 81(1), pages 65-77, March.
    20. Rajko Tomaš, 2022. "Measurement of the Concentration of Potential Quality of Life in Local Communities," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 163(1), pages 79-109, August.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:199:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1007_s11127-023-01055-y. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.