An Occupational Approach to Regional Growth and Specialization

公认的区域增长理论强调企业和管理者在选址决策中的作用。 与此相反，本研究项目调查是否职业而不是工业的方法可能更好地解释区域增长差异。职业方法强调人力资本的因果作用，特别是作为关键的创造性职业。各类熟练工人与具体行业的联系比过去少了，表现出相当大的区域间流动性，与区域分析中传统上依赖行业的做法相比，可以提供一个更好的Vantage位置来评估创业潜力。 为了确定对区域发展至关重要的职业，研究工作使用了四个属性：可捕获性，增长潜力，交叉施肥和创业精神。 利用联邦和州一级的职业数据，这项工作将确定一组美国大都市区的每一个产生的职业，并测试关于每一个对整体增长表现的贡献的假设。 该研究还将比较职业方法与传统工业方法的结果，其研究结果将有助于区域增长比较分析的方法创新，扩大对区域经济组成的了解，并为经济发展从业人员提供指导大都市增长和发展的额外工具。 州政府和地方政府花费了数十亿美元试图吸引和留住公司，结果好坏参半。 通过与创建和组织关键职业的机构（如学校、学院和大学、培训方案、专业协会）合作，鼓励关键职业的发展，可能是一种比针对工业部门更经济有效的将经济活动固定在区域的方式。 这项研究旨在测试这种新的经济发展方法的理论基础。

Received theories of regional growth stress the role of firms and managers in making location decisions. In contrast, this research project investigates whether an occupational rather than an industrial approach might better explain regional growth differentials. The occupational approach emphasizes the causal role of human capital, especially as key generative occupations. Skilled workers of all sorts are less linked to specific industries than in the past, exhibit considerable inter-regional mobility and may provide a better vantage point from which to assess entrepreneurial potential than does the traditional reliance upon industries in regional analysis. To identify occupations key to regional development, the research effort uses four attributes: capturability, growth potential, cross-fertilization and entrepreneurship. Using federal and state level data on occupations, the effort will identify generative occupations for each of a set of US metropolitan areas and test hypotheses regarding the contribution of each to overall growth performance. It will also compare the results of an occupational approach to traditional industrial approaches.The research results will contribute methodological innovations to comparative regional growth analysis, expand the state of knowledge on the composition of regional economies and offer economic development practitioners an additional tool for guiding metropolitan growth and development. Billions of dollars have been spent by state and local governments in attempts to attract and retain firms, with mixed results. Encouraging the development of key occupations by working with the institutions that create and organize them (e.g. schools, colleges and Universities, training programs, professional associations) might prove a more economical and effective way of anchoring economic activity in regions than targeting industrial sectors. This research is designed to test the theoretical underpinnings of this novel approach to economic development.