Publication Date
8-2018
Date of Final Oral Examination (Defense)
5-2-2018
Type of Culminating Activity
Thesis
Degree Title
Master of Science in Economics
Department
Economics
Supervisory Committee Chair
Michail Fragkias, Ph.D.
Supervisory Committee Member
Kelly Chen, Ph.D.
Supervisory Committee Member
Jaechoul Lee, Ph.D.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Abstract
This thesis examines how the effects of industrial diversity and specialization vary across geographical scales and classification levels. The notion of a robust institutional design, in conjunction with a regional resilience framework, is used to model how diversity and modularity affect unemployment through-out economic cycles. We use fixed effects models on employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Census Bureau in all available U.S. counties from 1998-2015. Key results suggest the optimal structure of industrial composition varies across scale, namely, that fine levels of industrial diversity are beneficial at higher levels of geographical scale (regions), whereas a broad type of industrial specialization is ideal for localities (counties/cities). This work is unique as it brings together notions of regional resilience and robustness and conducts analysis across multiple scales in attempts to identify the role of modular structure on the resiliency of a locality.
DOI
10.18122/td/1452/boisestate
Recommended Citation
Sprague, Christian D., "Resilience and the U.S. Labor Market: A Cross-Scale Analysis on the Role of Industrial Diversity and Specialization" (2018). Boise State University Theses and Dissertations. 1452.
10.18122/td/1452/boisestate