IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/ecinqu/v30y1992i2p384-97.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does Industrial Diversity Always Reduce Unemployment? Evidence from the Great Depression and After

Author

Listed:
  • Simon, Curtis J
  • Nardinelli, Clark

Abstract

A portfolio model of employment predicts that cities with more diversified employment opportunities should experience lower unemployment rates than less diversified cities. Empirical analysis of the diversity-unemployment relationship using Census data support the portfolio theory for the years 1950, 1960, and 1970. During the early months of the Great Depression, hower, industrially more diversified cities experienced higher, rather than lower, rates of unemployment. By combining the portfolio model of employment with the Lucas-Phelps islands model, the anomalous effect of diversity in 1931 is explained as the result of employers' difficulty of distinguishing real from nominal shocks. Copyright 1992 by Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Simon, Curtis J & Nardinelli, Clark, 1992. "Does Industrial Diversity Always Reduce Unemployment? Evidence from the Great Depression and After," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 30(2), pages 384-397, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:ecinqu:v:30:y:1992:i:2:p:384-97
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Anna Maria Ferragina & Francesco Pastore, 2008. "Mind The Gap: Unemployment In The New Eu Regions," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(1), pages 73-113, February.
    2. Roberto Basile & Alessandro Girardi & Marianna Mantuano & Francesco Pastore, 2012. "Sectoral shifts, diversification and regional unemployment: evidence from local labour systems in Italy," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 39(4), pages 525-544, November.
    3. Hasan Engin Duran, 2015. "Regional Employment Volatility In Turkey: Causes And Consequences," Working Papers 2015/06, Turkish Economic Association.
    4. Francesco Pastore & Joanna Tyrowicz, 2013. "Polish high unemployment and spatial labor turnover. Insights from panel data analysis using unemployment registry data," Working Papers 2013-18, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw.
    5. Robert A. Margo, 1993. "Employment and Unemployment in the 1930s," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 7(2), pages 41-59, Spring.
    6. Pastore, Francesco & Tyrowicz, Joanna, 2012. "Labour Turnover and the Spatial Distribution of Unemployment: A Panel Data Analysis Using Employment Registry Data," IZA Discussion Papers 7074, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Demidova, Olga & Kolyagina, Alena & Pastore, Francesco, 2018. "Marshallian vs Jacobs Effects: Which One Is Stronger? Evidence for Russia Unemployment Dynamics," IZA Discussion Papers 12042, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Walid Jebili & Lotfi Belkacem, 2015. "Sectoral Shifts, Diversification, Regional Unemployment on the Eve of Revolution in Tunisia: a Sequential Spatial Panel Approach," Working Papers 952, Economic Research Forum, revised Oct 2015.
    9. Claudia Buch & Martin Schlotter, 2013. "Regional origins of employment volatility: evidence from German states," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 40(1), pages 1-19, February.
    10. Pastore, Francesco, 2013. "Primum vivere… Industrial Change, Job Destruction and the Geographical Distribution of Unemployment," IZA Discussion Papers 7126, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Joshua L. Rosenbloom & William A. Sundstrom, 1997. "The Sources of Regional Variation in the Severity of the Great Depression: Evidence from U.S. Manufacturing, 1919-1937," NBER Working Papers 6288, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Demidova, Olga & Kolyagina, Alena & Pastore, Francesco, 2020. "Marshallian vs Jacobs effects: Which is stronger? Evidence for Russia unemployment dynamics," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 244-258.
    13. Kuhlmann, Angela & Decker, Christopher S. & Wohar, Mark E., 2008. "The Composition of Industry and the Duration of State Recessions," Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy, Mid-Continent Regional Science Association, vol. 38(3), pages 1-16.
    14. Chacon-Hurtado, Davis & Kumar, Indraneel & Gkritza, Konstantina & Fricker, Jon D. & Beaulieu, Lionel J., 2020. "The role of transportation accessibility in regional economic resilience," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:oup:ecinqu:v:30:y:1992:i:2:p:384-97. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/weaaaea.html .

    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.