Essays in urban and regional economics

This dissertation investigates issues relating to urban and regional economics in three essays. The first two essays deal with the problem of urban and regional poverty in the United States during the time period 1980--2000. Essay one provides estimates of poverty using recently developed innovations in poverty measurement. Specifically, a comprehensive income concept is used in measuring family resources and distribution sensitive Sen indexes of poverty are estimated. Comparisons are made between these measures and those based on the cash income headcount ratios used in official government statistics. Sen measures of poverty are significantly reduced when comprehensive income is used instead of cash income. The results indicate that poverty in the South is most heavily impacted when comprehensive income and Sen indexes of poverty are used. The second essay examines the relationship between poverty and economic growth using pooled cross section and time series estimates of state level poverty. Empirical evidence is provided for both cash and comprehensive income headcounts and Sen indexes of poverty. Additionally, the analysis is carried out for three distinct poverty lines. The evidence suggests that anti-poverty fighting effects of economic growth diminish as we lower the poverty threshold. The third essay estimates the economic impacts of the government's missile defense program on the state of Alabama and local economies in north Alabama and south-central Tennessee. A computable general equilibrium model is used to estimate the direct and indirect impacts of the program and the findings show that over the ten year period, 1998--2007, the program has positive direct and indirect impacts on the job market, growth, and personal income.