How does the location of new jobs in a metropolitan area affect the suburban housing market? Does it matter whether job growth occurs in the city or in the suburbs? And who, if anyone, benefits from job growth? Dick Voith takes a look at housing prices and construction rates in some Philadelphia...

Jerry Carlino points out that the fortunes of local economies usually depend on a confluence of national, sectoral, and local shocks. That, in turn, raises the question: Does one type of shock systematically buffet local economies more than another? The answer has important implications for both...

In "Agglomeration Economies: The Spark That Ignites a City?" Satyajit Chatterjee discusses his research, which questions this belief. He finds that while agglomeration economies are important, they're not the most important factor in the spatial concentration of employment. The combined effects...

What accounts for the sharp increase in the number of hours worked by married women? Although the number of hours worked per person in the U.S. has changed very little over the past 60 years, the labor force has undergone some pronounced shifts over that same period. One prominent change is this...

During the first half of the 20th century, people and jobs in the United States moved from rural to urban areas. After World War II, the U.S. saw other important shifts, including deconcentration - the movement of people and jobs from large, dense MSAs to small, less dense ones. This article...

Over the past 30 years, the three states of the Third Federal Reserve District have lost more than one-third of their manufacturing jobs. And that job loss has accelerated over the past 15 years. Despite this, the region's manufacturing output has expanded over the same period, although much...

In the early part of this century, both employment and population tended to concentrate in large metropolitan areas such as New York. Over the past 40 years, however, jobs and people have spread out as both firms and workers have sought the lower costs of smaller, less congested places. In fact,...