The present study seeks to extend the depth and scope of a very useful earlier study published in 2004. Using that study as a starting point and using more recent data [for the year 2009], this study seeks to provide a broader and more in-depth perspective on the role and relative contribution...

This empirical study investigates the impact of property taxes, public education outlays, and other factors on interstate differentials in the cost of housing. While the literature on geographic cost-of-living differentials is well developed, the literature on geographic cost-of-housing...

This empirical study investigates determinants of interstate living-cost differentials for the year 2005. It seeks to supplement existing related studies, most of which have investigated such differentials at the metropolitan area or county levels and for earlier time periods. OLS and two-stage...

We use US county level data (3,058 observations) from 1970 to 1998 to explore the relationship between economic growth and the extent of government employment at three levels: federal, state and local. We find that increases in federal, state and local government employments are all negatively...

Higgins et al. (2006) report several statistically significant partial correlates with U.S. per capita income growth. However, Levine and Renelt (1992) demonstrate that such correlations are hardly ever robust to changing the combination of conditioning variables included. We ask whether the...

We use Mississippi county-level data on (per capita) income and the percentages of populations that are Black (henceforth "Black") to examine the relationship between race and economic growth. The analysis is also conditioned on 40 other economic and socio-demographic variables. Given a negative...

In this paper we outline (i) why sigma-convergence may not accompany beta-convergence, (ii) discuss evidence of beta-convergence in the U.S., and (iii) use U.S. county-level data containing over 3,000 cross-sectional observations to demonstrate that sigma-convergence cannot be detected at the...