regional assign 2012

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Regional Economics Assignment

Due date: November 26, 2012 Value: 20%

1. For the assigned city collect the data indicated and do the calculations needed to determine the

city’s economic base.

Saskatoon (Young) Winnipeg (Rogerson)Regina (Ross) Calgary (Zheng)

Finding the data.

Access the data via the Library Website.

- Note that you can access this data from computers on campus as indicated below. If you are

trying to access the data source from off-campus you will likely be asked at some point to "sign

in" (prove you are a student) by giving your Lakehead e-mail address and password.

Accessing the IDLS website:

- Go to the library’s Government/Data Sources webpage: http://libguides.lakeheadu.ca/govinfo

- Select: Data and Statistics.

- Go to the bottom of the Data and Statistics page. Click on: Equinox. This will take you to the

Equinox website at the University of Western Ontario.

- In the resulting search Window enter "Labour Force Historical Review". You want the most

recent version (Labour Force Historical Review, 2010 edition). For that version click "Accessdata".

- You now will now see a list of tables sorted alphabetically by topic area.

- The tables are in "ivt" fomat and can be read using the free viewer software "Beyond 20/20". If

you are using a computer in a university lab "Beyond 20/20" is already installed. If using yourown computer you to need to install the viewer (click the link "Beyond 20/20" just before the list

of tables and follow instructions: click the download link and run the installation file).

Getting the Data:

- A bit down the page listing tables by topic area you will see the topic area: “CensusMetropolitan Areas.”

- From the resulting list of Tables find: “Employment by census metropolitan area based on 2006census boundaries industry, annual average" – click on its title and open the file. You will now

see a Beyond 20/20 table containing Total employment data (in 000s) with each city (CMA) as arow and each year as a column.

- Just above the first column containing CMA names you will see a tab which says "Industry:

Total Employed". Move your cursor to that tab then click and drag the tab down to the first row(the row containing year) and release. You will see a new set of employment figures in the table

(employment by industry for each CMA). The "Year" tab now appears where the industry tab

used to be and will likely indicate that the data is for 1996. You want 2010 data. To get this go

to the window just above the table (it will likely read "Industry", click the downward pointing

arrow next to it -- this gives you a pull down menu, on this menu click "Year". Beside the

Halifax(Aleksandrov) Kingston(Groulx)Saint John, NB (Broyles) Greater Sudbury (Harris)Saguenay (Calla) Oshawa (Karebi)Québec (Cheng) Toronto (Lundy)Trois-Rivières (Coates) Hamilton(McArthur)Sherbrooke (Ellis) St.Catharines-Niagara (Ong)Montréal(Evangelista) London (Pereira)Kitchener (Goulding) Windsor (Ragotte)



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window (which now reads "Year") there are arrows pointing left and right Clicking on these

arrows will change the year from which the data in the table is taken (the Year is reported in the

tab just above the list of CMA names). Click the arrows until the 2010 data is displayed.

- You can now either (1) now save the currently displayed table as a file (highlight "File", then

"Save as" and choose the preferred format -- Excel may be easiest); or (2) click on the name of

the assigned city (this will highlight that row of the table, then right click and copy the data). If

you then paste the result into a spreadsheet it will give you the Year of the data, CMA name,industry names and the employment data. This is what you need!

(a) For the assigned city calculate the share of total employment found in each industry (you do

not need the shares for the two aggregated categories 'Goods-producing' and 'Services-producing'.

(b) Use the following employment data to calculate industry employment shares for all cities:

All Canadian CMAs, 2010: (000s)

Total employed 12873.8

Agriculture 53.6

Forestry, fishing, mining, quarrying, oil and gas 104.7

Utilities 82Construction 845

Manufacturing 1230.2

Trade 1991.6

Transportation and warehousing 597.7

Finance, insurance, real estate and leasing 931.4

Professional, scientific and technical services 1139.5

Business, building and other support services 536.8

Educational services 959.6

Health care and social assistance 1479

Information, culture and recreation 649

Accommodation and food services 783.3

Other services 557.6Public administration 894.4

(c) Calculate Location Quotients (LQ) for your assigned city (use the shares from (b) as the

benchmark shares).

(d) (i) What does the LQ method suggest are the base industries of your city? Explain. Does this

seem sensible to you, why or why not?(e) Check with an external source e.g. the cities' own website or that of its economic development

office (reference your source: give its web address if it is from the internet). What does

the external source suggest is the CMAs base? How does this compare to your result in

(d)?

(f) (i) Now calculate the size of your CMAs base (again based on the LQ method). How much

non-base employment is there in your city?(ii) Calculate and report the employment multiplier for your city.

(g) Say that a new base industry starts up in your city that directly creates 100 new jobs. Forecast

the number of non-base jobs that would also be created and the amount by which total

employment in your city grow? (be sure to show how you made your projections)



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2. Using Statistics Canada’s Community Profiles website

(http://www12.statcan.ca/census-recensement/2006/dp-pd/prof/92-591/index.cfm)

(a) Collect the data indicated below for the city of Toronto, the city of Thunder Bay and the

circled place name:

Red Lake (municipality): Aleksandrov Timmins (city): BroylesTerrace Bay (township): Calla Kenora (city): Cheng

Chapleau (township): Coates Dryden (city): Ellis

Fort Frances (town): Evangelista Espanola (town): Goulding

Ignace (township): Groulx Marathon (town): Harris

Sault Ste. Marie (City): Karebi Atikokan (township): Lundy

Nipigon (township): McArthur Sioux Lookout (municipality): Ong

Hearst (town): Pereira Manitouwadge (township): Ragotte

Pickle Lake (township): Rogerson Emo (township): Ross

Schreiber (township): Young Bruce Mines (town): Zheng

Go to the Community Profiles webpage (see address above). In the “Place name” window type

the name of the place of interest. On the search results page click on the name of your city ortown – this will take you to the data for your assigned place from the 2006 Census. Using the

tables to collect the following data:

- Population size and its growth rate between 2001 and 2006.

- The median age of the population- The share of the population who are immigrants.

- The share of the population age 25-34 with a university certificate, diploma or degree.

- Median earnings if working full-time, full-year.

- Share of income from earnings; Share of income from government transfers.

- Percent share of people who are low income.

- The employment rate and the unemployment rate.

- The (%) share of total employment in each industry

- The (%) share of total employment in each occupation.

Report your data in tables and write a note comparing the economies of the three cities/towns.

You may include additional indicators from the Community Profiles website if you wish.

3. Read Ch. 6 “Poverty Traps and Sexy Cities” from Enrico Moretti’s book The New Geography

of Jobs. Houghton-Mifflin, 2012 (see website). Based on the reading answer the following

questions.

(a) Based on Moretti’s chapter outline what determined the locations of the successful biotech

industry clusters.

(b) The chapter discusses strategies for revitalizing struggling economic regions. Describe what

he means by the demand-side approach and the supply-side approach; give examples of each

approach.(c) (i) What does he mean by a “big push” strategy? Summarize his evidence on their success.

(ii) What does he see as the pitfalls and problems with industrial strategies?

4. FedNor is the national agency concerned with economic development in Northern Ontario.

Go to the FedNor website:

http://fednor.gc.ca/eic/site/fednor-fednor.nsf/eng/home

FedNor oversees two main programs: (1) Northern Ontario Development Program; and (2)

Community Futures. The tabs on the left side of the main page provide a brief description of the






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programs (plus some links to additional information). Have a look at this material and get a feel

for what FedNor does through these two programs. Now look at the evaluation reports for the

two programs:

http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/ae-ve.nsf/eng/h_03331.html

http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/ae-ve.nsf/eng/02864.html

These provide additional detail on the objectives and need for the programs as well as the type of

support that they provide. Have a look especially at the Executive Summaries, Programdescriptions as well as the Findings and Conclusions of the evaluations for each program.

(a) In your own words describe

(i) the objectives of the programs;

(ii) what each program does, i.e. what kinds of funding and assistance does each provide.

(b) According to the evaluation studies are the programs necessary? If so, why, according to the

evaluations are the programs needed? i.e. what problems or shortcomings are they trying to

address?

(c) A report on the FedNor site claims that the activities of one major branch of the program

created 2124 new jobs and maintained another 4277 jobs for a total of 6401 jobs from 2002-2005.

These figures were obtained by asking the FedNor client (be it a business or some other

organization) how many jobs the FedNor intervention created or maintained with that particular

employer.(i) If we think of these jobs as part of the region’s economic base, why might you

think that the estimates above might be too small? Explain.

(ii) The economic concept of “opportunity cost” says that making use of productive resources (that is inputs like land, labour, capital) in one waymeans that they are unavailable for some other use and that the cost of

using these resources is the value of the best foregone alternative use of

these resources. What does the concept of opportunity cost suggest about

FedNor’s real impact on employment? How is your answer affected byconsiderations like unemployment and mobility of labour? Explain.

5. Have a look at the 2003 C.D.Howe Institute Study by J. Mintz and M. Smart Brooking no

Favorites (see course website). (i) Outline their arguments against the types of policies thatCanadian regional development agencies such as FedNor or ACOA undertake. (ii) What do they

suggest instead? (iii) What do you think? Explain.







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