This paper examines the validity of three alternative rationales for industrial specialization in rural areas. Manufacturing specialization can be explained by 1) the greater efficiency of very large plants; 2) the "localization" advantages identified with a number of firms in the same industry...

This article challenges the reliance on summary measures to inform trends in state level inequality. Since only a partial ordinal ranking of inequality is available to the researcher, one can never be certain if the results from a cardinal measure of inequality are unambiguous with respect to an...