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Geographical scale, industrial diversity, and regional economic stability
Author(s) -
Chen Jing
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
growth and change
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.657
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 1468-2257
pISSN - 0017-4815
DOI - 10.1111/grow.12287
Subject(s) - diversity (politics) , metropolitan area , economic geography , scale (ratio) , unit (ring theory) , geography , regional science , stability (learning theory) , economic stability , population , econometrics , economics , cartography , computer science , mathematics , demography , sociology , mathematics education , archaeology , machine learning , anthropology , keynesian economics
This paper compares the empirical relationship between industrial diversity and economic stability across different geographical scales, including counties, states, Economic Areas, and Metropolitan Statistical Areas, in the contiguous U.S. between 2000 and 2014. It is found that this relationship varies greatly when it is analyzed across these four geographical scales. Meanwhile, several scale‐related problems, such as the modifiable areal unit problem and the small population problem, are introduced to economic diversity literature and further discussed with this variability of the diversity–stability relationship. This paper concludes that the spatial scale problem as well as the optimal unit can be study dependent. Thus, when choosing analytical units to quantify regional economic structure for a specific study, future research should pay attention to scale‐related problems.