Understanding employment growth in the recession: the geographic diversity of state rescaling

yuanshuo xu; warner, e. mildred;

We conduct an employment growth model of all US county areas for the mild recession after 9/11 and the Great Recession. We find employment growth is positively related to educational attainment and state centralisation of fiscal responsibility and negatively related to manufacturing employment. We use Geographically Weighted Regression to explore the spatial diversity of responses and find neither theories of the developmental state nor austerity urbanism adequately predict locality response to the recession. State rescaling
has shifted redistributive expenditure responsibility down to the local level, crowding out developmental investments and undermining local resilience.