IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/ecdequ/v36y2022i3p317-328.html

Local Employment Impacts of Connectivity to Regional Economies: The Role of Industry Clusters in Bridging the Urban-Rural Divide

Author

Listed:
  • Christiana K. McFarland
  • Erica H. Grabowski

Abstract

This article proposes a new economic development framework – regional economic connectivity – to address the deep and growing urban-rural divide. Regional economic connectivity calls attention to the benefits to local communities of fostering connectivity to industry clusters and economic specializations that are already present in their broader regions. This analysis examines the relationship between growth and connectivity across all U.S. counties and their regions from 2010 to 2016 and finds that local cluster employment grows faster when those jobs are part of regional clusters. The magnitude of the relationship between growth and connectivity varies across the urban-rural hierarchy, with particularly strong results for micropolitan communities. A targeted analysis of Virginia is presented to illustrate these trends and implications for practice.

Suggested Citation

  • Christiana K. McFarland & Erica H. Grabowski, 2022. "Local Employment Impacts of Connectivity to Regional Economies: The Role of Industry Clusters in Bridging the Urban-Rural Divide," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 36(3), pages 317-328, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:ecdequ:v:36:y:2022:i:3:p:317-328
    DOI: 10.1177/08912424221094496
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/08912424221094496
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/08912424221094496?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Shiqin Liu & Haifeng Qian & Kingsley E. Haynes, 2021. "Entrepreneurship in Small Cities: Evidence From U.S. Micropolitan Areas," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 35(1), pages 3-21, February.
    2. Ganong, Peter & Shoag, Daniel, 2017. "Why has regional income convergence in the U.S. declined?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 76-90.
    3. Mercedes Delgado & Michael E. Porter & Scott Stern, 2010. "Clusters and entrepreneurship," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 10(4), pages 495-518, July.
    4. Bienvenido S. Cortes & Michael Davidsson & Michael McKinnis, 2015. "Growth And Volatility Of Micropolitan Statistical Areas In The U.S," The International Journal of Business and Finance Research, The Institute for Business and Finance Research, vol. 9(4), pages 89-102.
    5. Michael Porter, 2003. "The Economic Performance of Regions," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(6-7), pages 549-578.
    6. Adam B. Jaffe & Manuel Trajtenberg & Rebecca Henderson, 1993. "Geographic Localization of Knowledge Spillovers as Evidenced by Patent Citations," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 108(3), pages 577-598.
    7. Rosenthal, Stuart S. & Strange, William C., 2001. "The Determinants of Agglomeration," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 191-229, September.
    8. Edward Feser & Andrew Isserman, 2009. "The Rural Role in National Value Chains," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(1), pages 89-109.
    9. David L. Barkley & Mark S. Henry & Shuming Bao, 1996. "Identifying "Spread" versus "Backwash" Effects in Regional Economic Areas: A Density Functions Approach," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 72(3), pages 336-357.
    10. Mercedes Delgado & Michael E. Porter & Scott Stern, 2016. "Defining clusters of related industries," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 16(1), pages 1-38.
    11. Mark D. Partridge & Dan S. Rickman & Kamar Ali & M. Rose Olfert, 2008. "Lost in space: population growth in the American hinterlands and small cities," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 8(6), pages 727-757, November.
    12. Delgado, Mercedes & Porter, Michael E. & Stern, Scott, 2014. "Clusters, convergence, and economic performance," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(10), pages 1785-1799.
    13. Gaure, Simen, 2013. "OLS with multiple high dimensional category variables," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 8-18.
    14. Goetz, Stephan J. & Han, Yicheol, 2020. "Latent innovation in local economies," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(2).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Yiting Wu & Yunqing Liu & Zekun Dai & Fang Da, 2024. "County-Level Economic Development Mode in the Context of China’s Rural Revitalization: A Fuzzy-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis," SAGE Open, , vol. 14(4), pages 21582440241, November.
    2. Mengfan Li & Wanzhen Wen & Wenwu Ma & Yihang Jin, 2025. "Research on the Common Prosperity Effect of Integrated Regional Expansion: An Empirical Study Based on the Yangtze River Delta," Land, MDPI, vol. 14(2), pages 1-24, February.

    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. Meek, Shelby Renee & Tietz, Matthias A., 2022. "Entrepreneurship and subjective vs objective institutional performance: A decade of US hospital data," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(9).
    2. Mercedes Delgado & Kimberly Zeuli, 2016. "Clusters and Regional Performance," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 30(2), pages 117-136, May.
    3. Timothy F. Slaper & Karter M. Harmon & Barry M. Rubin, 2018. "Industry Clusters and Regional Economic Performance: A Study Across U.S. Metropolitan Statistical Areas," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 32(1), pages 44-59, February.
    4. Harold (Hal) Wolman & Diana Hincapie, 2015. "Clusters and Cluster-Based Development Policy," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 29(2), pages 135-149, May.
    5. Benjamin Montmartin & Ludovic Dibiaggio & Lionel Nesta, 2018. "Regional Alignment and Productivity Growth," Sciences Po Economics Publications (main) halshs-01948337, HAL.
    6. Georgeanne M. Artz & Younjun Kim & Peter F. Orazem, 2016. "Does Agglomeration Matter Everywhere?: New Firm Location Decisions In Rural And Urban Markets," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(1), pages 72-95, January.
    7. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/32ctbi8fbq8j5aom2j69qam6tf is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Ashish Arora & Sharon Belenzon & Honggi Lee, 2018. "Reversed citations and the localization of knowledge spillovers," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 18(3), pages 495-521.
    9. Kim, Jungho & Kollmann, Trevor & Palangkaraya, Alfons & Webster, Elizabeth, 2022. "Does local technological specialisation, diversity and dynamic competition enhance firm creation?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(7).
    10. Li, Yang & Neffke, Frank M.H., 2024. "Evaluating the principle of relatedness: Estimation, drivers and implications for policy," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(3).
    11. Juan Alcacer & Mercedes Delgado, 2012. "Spatial Organization of Firms: Internal and External Agglomeration Economies and Location Choices Through the Value Chain," Working Papers 12-33, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    12. Carlino, Gerald & Kerr, William R., 2015. "Agglomeration and Innovation," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 349-404, Elsevier.
    13. Carmelina Bevilacqua & Pasquale Pizzimenti & Yapeng Ou, 2023. "Cities in Transition and Urban Innovation Ecosystems: Place and Innovation Dynamics in the Case of Boston and Cambridge (USA)," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(18), pages 1-30, September.
    14. Chris Forman & Avi Goldfarb & Shane Greenstein, 2014. "Information Technology and the Distribution of Inventive Activity," NBER Chapters, in: The Changing Frontier: Rethinking Science and Innovation Policy, pages 169-196, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Youwei Tan & Zhihui Gu & Yu Chen & Jiayun Li, 2022. "Industry Linkage and Spatial Co-Evolution Characteristics of Industrial Clusters Based on Natural Semantics—Taking the Electronic Information Industry Cluster in the Pearl River Delta as an Example," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(21), pages 1-14, October.
    16. Delgado, Mercedes & Porter, Michael E. & Stern, Scott, 2014. "Clusters, convergence, and economic performance," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(10), pages 1785-1799.
    17. Gilles Duranton & William R. Kerr, 2015. "The Logic of Agglomeration," Harvard Business School Working Papers 16-037, Harvard Business School.
    18. Haifeng Qian, 2018. "Knowledge-Based Regional Economic Development: A Synthetic Review of Knowledge Spillovers, Entrepreneurship, and Entrepreneurial Ecosystems," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 32(2), pages 163-176, May.
    19. Yang Li & Frank Neffke, 2022. "Relatedness in regional development: in search of the right specification," Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography (PEEG) 2208, Utrecht University, Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Group Economic Geography, revised Apr 2022.
    20. Jorge Guzman, 2024. "Go West Young Firm: The Impact of Startup Migration on the Performance of Migrants," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 70(7), pages 4824-4846, July.
    21. Kalathil, Nikhil & Lanahan, Lauren & Feldman, Maryann & Fuchs, Erica R.H, 2025. "Varieties of agglomeration: Disentangling horizontal and vertical agglomeration within the manufacturing sector in the United States," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 54(7).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    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:sae:ecdequ:v:36:y:2022:i:3:p:317-328. 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.