This dissertation comprises three self-contained essays on urban agglom- eration economies. The first essay studies the optimal population agglomer- ation in a city in dynamic contexts. The second essay tests the local labor market agglomeration economies in the Boston metropolitan area, focusing on the effects of social interactions at workplaces on individual earnings. The third essay tests the effects of social interactions at residential locations on housing values. Chapter 1, "Dynamic Henry George Theorem and Optimal City Sizes", extends the static Henry George Theorem (HGT) to dynamic settings. Through a series of simple dynamic models, we tentatively conclude that the HGT holds in dynamic models in terms of present values. In economies with congestion or production externalities, the dynamic HGT still holds if exter- nalities are correctly priced. Chapter 2, "Smart Cafe Cities: Testing Human Capital Externalities in the Boston Metropolitan Area", uses the 1990 Massachusetts census data and tests four types of human capital externalities at the microgeographic levels in the Boston metropolitan area labor market: depth of human capital stock, Marshallian labor market externalities, Jacobs labor market externalities, and thickness of the local labor market. We find that all types of human capital externalities are significant across census blocks. Different types of externalities attenuate at different speeds over distances. For example, the effect of human capital depth decays rapidly beyond three miles away from a block centroid. We conclude that knowledge spillovers are very localized within a microgeographic scope in cities that we call, "Smart Cafe Cities." Chapter 3, "What Has Been Capitalized into Property Values: Human Capital, Social Capital, and Cultural Capital?" , classifies three types of social- interaction-based social amenities: human capital, social capital, and cultural capital at residential neighborhood levels. We use the 1990 Massachusetts census data and estimate hedonic housing models with social amenities. The findings are as follows: (1) Human capital has significant positive effects on property values. (2) Different types of social capital have different effects on property values: an increase in the percentage of new residents has signifi- cant positive effects on property values, probably due to the strength of weak ties. However, an increase in the percentage of single-parent households has negative effects on property values. (3) Cultural capital's effects vary from high to low geographic levels, the effects of English proficiency and racial homogeneity are positive at and beyond the tract level, but insignificant at the block level.

After emancipation, Southern blacks had extremely low levels of literacy due to strict restrictions on the education of slaves. While many economists have detailed the racial gap in educational outcomes after emancipation, few have examined the gender differences in the educational outcomes of blacks. While blacks quickly pursued neweducational opportunities, young black women especially took advantage. By 1870 the literacy rates of black females under the age of twenty were significantly higher than theirmale cohorts. However, by 1880 the situation reversed- as males of this birth cohort had rates of literacy over six percentage points higher than females the same age. Thisreversal in the gender literacy gap was a result of a sharp increase in literacy rates of males in these birth cohorts. While males continued to attain literacy throughout theirlifetime, females did not experience such a rapid rise and subsequently fell behind. Using a difference in differences framework I find mixed evidence that the reversal of thegender gap is due to literacy attainment through labor market interactions.

This paper uses new data from the squatter wars of the 1850s and 1860s in California, a period in which property rights were extremely uncertain, to investigate two issues related to property rights: i) the links among anarchy, production, and violence and ii) why contracts, which were available and enforceable in California, were so rarely used to mitigate the negative effects of uncertain property rights. The results have implications for understanding the historical development of agriculture in the United States, since squatting on agricultural land was prevalent throughout the United States, and for understanding agriculture in the Third World, since uncertain property rights in agricultural land are still an issue today.

Purpose: We call attention to the widespread belief that the United States is an “increasingly mobile society,” despite the fact that overall mobility has generally declined since about 1950, and interstate mobility has generally not increased during the same period. We review and extend past research documenting these mobility trends. Design and Methods: We describe population-level mobility for people of all ages as well as for several adult age groups, using published data from the U.S. Current Population Survey. We use simple regression methods to estimate the size and significance of mobility trends. Results: Overall mobility rates have declined for individuals of all ages and among all age groups. The largest average annual declines occur for 20- to 29-year-olds, although the rate of decline for those aged 65 and older is also large. Interstate mobility has declined slightly or remained constant, except among adults between 45 and 64 years old. Implications: Although there may be good reasons to worry about the future of family care provided to elderly individuals, increased geographic mobility does not appear to be one of them. We speculate on reasons why the false belief persists.

Beale codes are an important tool for examining rural urban differences in socioeconomictrends. However, as population changes, counties designations also change over time. Thisfeature of Beale codes is commonly overlooked by researchers, yet it has important implicationsfor understanding rural growth. Since the fastest growing counties grow out of their rural status,use of the most recent codes excludes the most successful rural counties. Average economicperformance of the counties remaining rural significantly understates the true performance ofrural counties. This paper illustrates that choice of Beale code can alter conclusions regardingthe relative speed of rural and urban growth across a variety of commonly used social andeconomic indicators. The bias can alter conclusions regarding the magnitude and even the signof factors believed to influence growth. Most strikingly, the estimated impact of human capitalon rural growth is completely reversed when the sample is based on end-of-period rather thanstart-of-period rural status. The use of short time frames such as a single decade to evaluaterelative growth across counties can also yield misleading inferences. Therefore, bothacademicians and policy-makers must be careful to use appropriate Beale code designations andtime frames in evaluating prescriptions for rural growth.

Conventional unemployment rates provide an incomplete measure of local labor marketconditions, especially in poor rural regions. Unemployment, for example, does notinclude involuntary part-time workers; nor does it include discouraged workers who stopseeking work because they cannot find jobs. To get a more complete picture of labormarkets in Appalachia, this data brief contains estimates of underemployment inAppalachia by state and by demographic group for each year from 1996 to 2004. Theseestimates are derived from the Current Population Survey. Although Appalachia per se isnot identified in the CPS (and DWS), we construct a CPS sub-sample that approximatesthe Appalachian region of each state using the metropolitan geographic identifiers thatare available

Drinkers earn more than non-drinkers, even after controlling for human capital and local labor market conditions. Several mechanisms by which drinking could increase productivity have been proposed but are unconfirmed; the more obvious mechanisms predict the opposite, that drinking can impair productivity. In this paper we reproduce the positive association between drinking and earnings, using data for adults age 27-34 from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1979). Since drinking is endogenous in this relationship, we then estimate a reduced-form equation, with alcohol prices (proxied by a new index of excise taxes) replacing the drinking variables. We find strong evidence that the prevalence of full-time work increases with alcohol prices – suggesting that a reduction in drinking increases the labor supply. We also demonstrate some evidence of a positive association between alcohol prices and the earnings of full-time workers. We conclude that most likely the positive association between drinking and earnings is the result of the fact that ethanol is a normal commodity, the consumption of which increases with income, rather than an elixer that enhances productivity.

K-optimal rule discovery finds the K rules that optimize a user-specified measure of rule value with respect to a set of sample data and user-specified constraints. This approach avoids many limitations of the frequent itemset approach of association rule discovery. This paper presents a scalable algorithm applicable to a wide range of K-optimal rule discovery tasks and demonstrates its efficiency.

WHEN THE Census Bureau released its findings from the 2000 census, newspapers and magazines featured articles on how "the American family" was disappearing.A dwindling proportion of households contained married couples with children, and a growing proportion of households contained only single individuals, unmarried partners, or one-parent families. "'Married with Children' Still Fading as a Model," read a Los Angeles Times headline on May 5, 2001.This familiar plaint about the family in decline lacks both analytical and historical perspective. Analytically, the statistics count homes rather than people; historically, it contrasts the contemporary family with that of the 1950s, an unusual era in American history.The full record, once closely examined, reveals some dramatic changes in American family life, but not necessarily the ones the media reports have focused on. Also, there was much continuity in family patterns over the century. Most important, there is no-and never was a-prototypical American family, only a mix of families and households. In this chapter, we describe how that mix changed over the century.The key findings are: Twentieth-century Americans predominantly lived in two-parent nuclear families, especially in the 1950s, though that was an unusual period. The greatest change over the century for Americans under fortyfive years of age was that those living outside a nuclear family increasingly lived as single adults rather than in a larger, extended household. The greatest changes in family life happened to middle-aged and older Americans.They increasingly lived in empty-nest households-as a couple without children in the home-or as single persons. Americans traveled through the life course in increasingly similar ways as variations narrowed among them in how long they lived, how many children they had, and when they made key transitions. Nonetheless, substantial differences in family life opened up between African Americans and whites and between the less- and the more-educated. After 1960, the married-couple household became atypical for African Americans, and by 2000 it was atypical as well for white high school dropouts. We begin by describing the diversity of family patterns at the end of the century.

Gegenstand des Beitrags sind die Wanderungsbewegungen deutscher Hochqualifizierter in die USA seit Beginn der 1990er Jahre. Um Ausma und Entwicklung dieses Phnomens zu analysieren, werden deutsche Auswanderungsdaten, amerikanische und deutsche (Mikro-) Zensusdaten sowie Daten der amerikanischen Einwanderungsbehrden herangezogen. Es wird gezeigt, dass die Auswanderung deutscher Hochqualifizierter in die USA vor allem seit Mitte der 1990er Jahre an Bedeutung gewonnen hat. Dieser Befund muss aber in zweierlei Hinsicht relativiert werden. Zum einen lassen sich absolut betrachtet nur wenige Deutsche dauerhaft zu Erwerbszwecken in den USA nieder. Zum anderen ist der Anstieg in der Zahl der hochqualifizierten Auswanderer in erster Linie eine Folge des Anstiegs der zeitlich befristeten US-Aufenthalte. Darber hinaus gibt es keine Hinweise darauf, dass das Risiko der Verstetigung dieser temporren Aufenthalte im Untersuchungszeitraum substanziell zugenommen hat.The influence of cultural factors on social inequality have been the subject of current debates in sociology, stressing culture as an excluding function. This article, based on a cross-cultural study, analyses if and how cultural styles and practices play a part in educational opportunities and occupational choices of young migrant women. According to this study, the young migrant women and comparable indigenous women found parallel forms of coping with the passage from school to vocational training. Due to limited chances of the groups compared, a successful transformation of life-style preferences and occupational orientation into reality can generally not be taken for granted. The qualitative approach differentiates to what extend cultural practices or rather the social values attributed to them become relevant for the course of the status passage between school and occupational training. In this way both primary and secondary effects of culture can be discussed.

This research focuses on the demographic and institutional factors that affect labor market outcomes of males and females within the information technology sector. The study area is the Silicon Valley. Using IPUMS 2000 data, the research focuses on male and female IT analysts and managers. A comparison of male-female wage patterns has been, in part, due to the lack of progress by women in making inroads into higher management positions within this area and in the important role that women can play in furthering IT innovation. Analysts and mangers are chosen as the study groups because these upper IT positions are the occupational segments where women's representation is limited. Explanatory variables include demographic, work-related, and institutional factors. The results for the analysts and managers show that the effects of the explanatory factors vary fox males and females. For example, the number of children has a negative effect on wages for female analysts. The industry sector makes a difference for males and females as well. Male IT analysts earn more in manufacturing compared to other sectors; female IT analysts are better off in terms of wages in retail, wholesale, and producer services. Commuting time has a negative effect on women analyst's wages but longer commuting time has a positive effect on men's wages. The explanatory power of the variables is the strongest for female managers, which implies that human capital factors, institutional affiliation/choice, and other work related factors have to be taken into consideration for women's advancement in IT.

This paper was inspired by the serendipitous finding that the shortfall of the number of young children enumerated in Census 2000 in California relative to the number of births in the preceding years was substantially greater for children born to foreign-born women than for those born to native-born mothers. This discovery was made in the course of calibrating a model being developed to project the population of California by nativity and second and higher "immigrant generations." Although it was not surprising that there was . . .