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The Significance of Regional Studies for the Elaboration of National Economic History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Henry W. Broude
Henry W. Broude
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Extract

The purpose of this paper is to serve as a point of departure for discussion of the relationship of regional differentiation and growth to general economic development. In addition to touching on methodological problems, I hope to establish two specific points: (a) that the needs of economic history call for particular perspectives in delimiting regions, and (b) that study of regional interaction can provide insights in an understanding of national economic development.

Type
Spacial Differentiation and Economic Growth
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 20 , Issue 4 , December 1960 , pp. 588 - 596
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1960

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References

1 This does not preclude, of course, recognition that specific factor cost items made this economically feasible; for example, wage differentials.

2 Also, historians troubled by excessive methodological scientism may be expected to share this reaction.

3 This does not mean predictive significance.

4 See, for example, the list of varying concepts of regionalism cited by Odum, H. W. and Moore, H. E., American Regionalism (New York: Henry Holt, 1938), p. 2Google Scholar.

5 The theoretical work of Ohlin lends itself to regional research.

6 This may be cast, for example, in terms of “dominant-satellitic” areas, or center-periphery interaction, or core areas, and the like.

7 In identifying movement of goods (and shifts in their mix) use can be made of abundant freight data, particularly when placed in a format such as a regional input-output matrix.

8 For an exposition of the theoretical materials associated with an interregional input-output system as an empirical study of the contemporary economy, cf. Moses, L. N., “The Stability of Interregional Trading Patterns and Input-Output Analysis,” American Economic Review, XLV (Dec. 1955), 803–32Google Scholar.

9 Isard, W., “Regional Commodity Balances and Interregional Commodity Flows,” American Economic Review, XLIII (May 1953), p. 175Google Scholar.

10 Questions of diminishing returns and economies of scale are implicitly included here.

11 That is, in Goldsmith's terms, information on regional reproducible tangible wealth.

12 A corollary inquiry would be into the relative strength of local money markets and (state and local) financial institutions related to attitudes toward federal intervention.

13 Separation of regional and national interaction for analytical purposes is reminiscent of the separation of secular trend and cycle in the analysis of economic fluctuations and subject to the same inherent pitfalls.