Employment in electricity generation from renewable resources has expanded rapidly in the US and in Texas during the last decade. Availability of the Production Tax Credit has been an important driver of this growth. Using a fully-disclosed establishment-level employment and payroll data set for...

Economists have, for some time, studied the factors that induce firm entry, lead to growth, and help firms succeed in various markets. Unfortunately, such patterns have not been considered for the so-called "green industries." Although policymakers might like to stimulate development of the...

If localization economies are present, firms within denser industry concentrations should exhibit higher levels of performance than more isolated firms. Nevertheless, research in industrial organization that has focused on the influences on firm survival has largely ignored the potential effects...

If localized knowledge spillovers are present in the university setting, higher rates of both start-ups and/or survival than in the broader economy would be observed in areas that are geographically proximate to the university. Using a fully-disclosed Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages for...

We use geocoded administrative data from Texas on all business establishments to estimate the effects of localization economies on the spatial persistence of industrial employment for the software industry. We decompose this persistence into components arising from entry rates, firm growth, and...

The objective of this paper is to employ the Hurricane Katrina evacuation into Houston, TX as a natural experiment to estimate the effect of large scale in-migration on regional earnings. Given the characteristics of the evacuees, their influx would have caused the supply of applicants for lower...

The shift toward renewable forms of energy for electricity generation in the electricity generation industry has clear implications for the spatial distribution of generating plant. Traditional forms of generation are typically located close to the load or population centers, while wind and...

We consider the relationship between the location choices of potentially polluting firms and local income. Unlike previous research in the area of economic justice, we distinguish between pollution potential and actual releases of toxic substances in the locality. We explore the relationship...