Ann Markusen Professor

• Professor Emerita at University of Minnesota

Since World War II, America’s economic landscape has undergone a profound transformation. This economic restructuring, the authors argue, is a direct result of the rise of the military industrial complex (MIC) and the formation of a new industry based on defence spending and Pentagon contracts. This book chronicles the dramatic growth of this vast...

Arts and journalism enterprises may serve as effective economic development tools for small cities and neighborhoods. The author demonstrates how a new, for-profit, weekly newspaper serving a Minnesota city of 12,000 residents in a county of 36,000 has diversified and energized a depopulated downtown and surrounding region. Through powerful investi...

The United States off ers a decade-long illustration of the implementation of a major policy initiative for art and culture across the nation's cities and towns. In this article, we focus on the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), and its companion ArtPlace and Our Town initiative around place-making, as they have developed since 2009. We descri...

The author hosted Clelio Campolina Diniz during the writing of his second dissertation, required of professors in Brazil, at Rutgers University’s Project on Regional and Industrial Economics in the 1990s and subsequently headed up a US National Science Foundation-funded international project on new industrial districts with Campolina and colleagues...

This article, based on the inaugural Andrew Isserman lecture, explores whether regional science has lived up to its founder’s aspirations to create an interdisciplinary and international field to tackle key societal problems with reasoning, evidence, and sound policy recommendations. I distinguish methods-driven research from problem-driven researc...

Facing excess capacity and changing demographics, theatres are struggling to maintain audiences, while their marketing and outreach strategies often fail. Our participation studies reveal that theater-goers increasingly value venues, not just performances, challenging owners and directors to curate settings as part of their offerings. People also s...

Over the past decade, under the rubric of creative placemaking, policymakers, planners and practitioners have turned to arts and culture to enliven city life and stimulate urban economies. Good multidisciplinary research has kept pace, but challenges remain. What are the missions of urban arts and culture? How can offerings and engagement become mo...

Facing excess capacity and changing demographics, theatres are struggling to maintain audiences, while their marketing and outreach strategies often fail. Our participation studies reveal that theater-goers increasingly value venues, not just performances, challenging owners and directors to curate settings as part of their offerings. People also s...

Policy and community organizing around creative placemaking has spread from initial European initiatives to formal US arts and cultural policy and variations in many other places, including Japan and South Korea. In the USA, an indicators approach has been mounted to evaluate funding outcomes at the National Endowment for the Arts and a nationwide...

Despite the specter of artists clustered in inner reaches of a few hip, fashionable cities, people do artwork as a major occupation in most U.S. communities. Artists move across state lines more often than workers in other occupations, and because more apt to be self-employed, for reasons other than a job. The author explores why artists migrate, v...

Throughout his scholarly career, Andrew Isserman made bold calls for vision, storytelling, and narrative construction in regional science and planning. The necessity to plan and make infrastructure and development decisions with incomplete evidence often requires narratives—gists, insights, and ideas that are shorthand for an amalgam of reasoning,...

Since the Great Recession, North American mayors and city councils have boosted investments in arts and culture as creative placemaking to improve the quality of life, to attract residents, managers and workers, and to welcome visitors. Many city leaders are newly aware that artists bring income into the city, improve the performance of area busine...

Markusen A. Organizational complexity in the regional cultural economy, Regional Studies. Cultural industries offer a truncated understanding of the regional cultural economy, undercounting self-employed workers and others outside the for-profit sector. Commercial, public, non-profit, and unincorporated community sectors produce, present, train, or...

Amid the buzz on the creative city and cultural economy, knowledge about what works at various urban and regional scales is sorely lacking. This article reviews the state of knowledge about arts and culture as an urban or regional development tool, exploring norms, reviewing evidence for causal relationships, and analyzing stakeholders, bureaucrati...

A world city is one which is successfully competing for dominance or major status in at least one of the several important functions of integrating the world capitalist economy in a neo-mercantilist world. In the case of New York, the city is relatively specialized in finance- and control-related functions, with a high degree of international inter...

Economic, political, cultural, and environmental distinctiveness may attract highquality workers and firms as well as reflect a region's export viability. We hypothesize that local consumption activity can be a source of such distinctiveness and thus of long-term growth and stability, and that specialization does not reflect export activity alone....

High profile mergers in the 1990s have reduced major defence competitors to three in the USA and may evoke corresponding European consolidation and international mergers. The mergers may reduce capacity and help achieve economies of scale, but pose cost, quality and innovation concerns and have undermined diversification, conversion and civil/milit...

Although federal economic development has fallen on hard times in the past decade, it remains important, especially in rural areas. In addition, the federal government can play key regulatory roles. We review the still powerful case for place-based approaches but argue that a number of program and policy reforms are pressing. Programs should place...

This article reviews conceptual and operational issues in defining the creative sector and its arts and cultural core. Some accounts use establishment data to measure creative industry employment, some use firm-level data, and others use occupational data. The authors examine how cultural-sector employment is conceptualized in three pioneering cult...

Native Artists: Livelihoods, Resources, Space, Gifts Marcie Rendon | Ann Markusen Other Arts Economy Initiative publications available on website or from publishers: The Artistic Dividend: The Arts’ Hidden Contributions to Regional Development, 2003 The Artistic Dividend Revisted, 2004 Artists’ Centers: Evolution and Impact on Careers, Neighborhoo...

Export base theory, which posits that overall regional growth is a function of external sales of locally produced goods and services, dominates economic development practice. But the con-sumption base can also serve as a growth driver, especially in small towns and rural areas. Lo-cal investments may induce residents to divert expenditures into loc...

Over the past two decades, urban and regional policy-makers have increasingly looked to the arts and culture as an economic panacea, especially for the older urban core. The arts' regional economic contribution is generally measured by totalling the revenue of larger arts organisations, associated expenditures by patrons and multiplier effects. Thi...

Using an expanded shift share technique to impute international trade-related industrial job change, the extent to which structural changes in trade and defense spending appear to explain state economic performance differentials is explored. The findings show there is limited support for the “trade perimeter” argument, but strong support for the hy...

With accelerated world market integration, cities compete with each other cities as sites of production and consumption, targeting firms and households as semi-autonomous location decision-makers. Distinction may be sought in productive structure, consumption and identity. In this paper, contradictory trends towards homogenisation and distinctivene...

The product/profit cycle and new international division of labor theories hypothesize that establishments in a single industry may be undertaking different activities in different locations: innovative and developmental activities will be anchored in regions of origin, while more routine production and service functions will be dispersed to lower c...

In this paper I critique the notion of ‘the creative class’ and the fuzzy causal logic about its relationship to urban growth. I argue that in the creative class, occupations that exhibit distinctive spatial and political proclivities are bunched together, purely on the basis of educational attainment, and with little demonstrable relationship to c...

Good political economic thought and research often fail to reach intended audiences or motivate the change its creators envision because of communication failure. I present a series of techniques for strengthening the writing and oral dissemination of political economic work, drawing on writing teachers from the political and creative writing spher...

This volume discusses frameworks for policies that can help offset the polarizing effects that may be generated by the asymmetrical distribution of the costs and benefits of integration into the global economy.

Millions of people live in 'forgotten places'. But places do not forget other places. Only thinking human beings can do so. The paper charts the conscious decision-making and ideology that create forgotten places. Forgotten places are defined as communities deprived of leadership by the actions of those present and absent. Relevant actors are delin...

This article analyzes why and how economic and community development planners might target occupations as well as industries in shaping an economic development strategy. Key occupations can be identified on the basis of captura-bility, high relative employment growth rates, connectivity across industries, fit with underemployed workforce groups, an...

Our respondents—Cortright and Mayer (2004 [this issue]), Gottlieb (2004 [this issue]), and Mathur (2004 [this issue])—greatly enrich the debate over high-tech rankings, relationship to growth, and specialization. We are grateful to them both for the questions they raise about our work and for the depth of critique they bring to thediscussion. All t...

In the past few years, a number of new studies have published high-tech rankings of American metropolitan areas that are used by many business consultants and local economic development organizations to advise firms on location strategies. In this article, the authors generate their own rankings based on an occupational definition of "high techness...

Since the mid-1990s, the U.S. Pentagon has accelerated efforts to outsource weapons, battlefield and base support operations, and troop training, invoking competition-based savings and better quality. I review the arguments for and against such privatization and summarize recent Pentagon outsourcing experience. I conclude that the current enthusias...

1. From Defence to Development? Ann Markusen and Sean DiGiovanna 2. Post Cold War Conversion: Gains, Losses and Hidden Changes in the US Economy Michael Oden, Laura Wolf-Powers, and Ann Markusen 3. Spanish Defense Industrial Restructuring in the Post-Cold War Decade Antonia Casellas 4. The Polish Defense Industry: REstructuring in the Midst of Econ...

Regional analysis is increasingly populated by fuzzy concepts that lack clarity and are difficult to test or operationalize: flexible specialization, windows of opportunity, resurgent regions, world cities, cooperative competition. Many analyses rely on anecdote or singular case studies, while contrarian cases and more comprehensive and comparative...

Contemporary human geographers must work to clarify and translate new critical theory insights for a broader audience. Better evidence will both strengthen the theory-building exercise and render our insights more powerful in the real world of policy and action. In response to the critics of my original 'fuzzy concepts' paper, I welcome their sever...

Abstract To comprehend spatial change and counsel policies that might alter or enhance the consequences for societies, economic geographers develop and test causal theories. In much late 20,century scholarship, actors have been displaced by processes – causal roles are ascribed to such undertheorized phenomena,as “learning” and “networks.” I call f...

to the Pacific Northwest Economic Conference for the opportunity to give some of these ideas as the Tiebout lecture in April of 2000; and to Bill Dermody, Anne Discher, Michael Leary and Greg Schrock for research assistance.

In this note, I address two frontiers where we, as regional scientists, can raise the visibility and impact of regional science and enlarge the community of scholars in our fold. The first is the resurgence of regionalism as a phenomenon and policy arena. My argument here is that many politicians, practitioners and citizens are actively debating th...

In the past few years, a number of new studies have published high-tech rankings of American metropolitan areas that are used by many business consultants and local economic development organizations to advise firms on location strategies. In this article, the authors generate their own rankings based on an occupational definition of “high techness...

Working Paper #256, Project on Regional and Industrial Economics. For presentation at the

By 1970, the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War legacies had provoked new forms of scholarship and novel approaches to regional and industrial planning. Bennett Harrison was a key figure in the shift from regional science toward a politically committed scholarship that incorporated new radical and institutionalist theories with creative empirical an...

Commitment to regional policy analysis and counsel has long been a hallmark of leadership in regional science. In this article, the author traces the rise and disillusionment with development economics and its concern with backward regions, the emergence of deindustrialization as a regional challenge, opposing trends toward devolution and nation bu...

Commitment to regional policy analysis and counsel has long been a hallmark of leadership in regional science. In this article, the author traces the rise and disillusionment with development economics and its concern with backward regions, the emergence of deindustrialization as a regional challenge, opposing trends toward devolution and nation bu...

Defense industrial complexes in leading Cold War nations have downsized and reallocated resources to other productive activities in the 1990s. In this paper, we analyze the experience of two key countries - the US and France. Comparing the two countries, we find similar outcomes in budgetary retrenchment and large firm restructuring but marked diff...

Regionally concentrated post-cold war military spending cuts offer an opportunity to compare regional conversion across countries. The authors briefly lay out the challenge and distinguish regional from national and industrial conversion strategies. Several factors facilitate or impede region-level conversion efforts: regional contextual factors—de...

This paper asks whether regional capabilities and coalitions can shape economic development outcomes in a period of intense structural adjustment. Rapid cuts in defense procurement spending with their associated closure of facilities and elimination of millions of defense-related jobs since the end of the Cold War offer an opportunity to probe diff...

American-made weapons are the most coveted in the world. But soon, the "Made in America" label may be hard to find. Defense megamergers across borders are creating a handful of global corporations capable of stockpiling the world's weapons, drawing on hightech parts and expertise from dozens of countries. Governments are left with two choices: eith...

As military procurement spending fell by more than 50 percent in the 1990s, mergers and Pentagon policies altered the defense industry in unexpected ways. More than 40 firms were joined to form the big fourLockheed Martin, Boeing McDonnell Douglas, Raytheon Hughes, and Northrop Grummanand a new round of transnational mergers may be on the horizon....

Silicon Valley has been admired and much emulated as an American version of a new industrial district based on its heavily networked, small-firm, innovative electronics sector. This industrial structure has been argued to give the region a uniquely cooperative, flexible, and dynamic structure. Based on field research and data analysis, we argue tha...

In this article, in response to the Dinc and Haynes comment, the authors correct their published formulation of the import/export disaggregated dynamic shift-share analysis used to characterize differential metropolitan employment growth rates in the United States. The empirical results of the analysis and the inferences drawn from them in their 19...

Metropolitan areas across the United States are quite differentially positioned to benefit from greater international market integration. The authors hypothesizefzat because cities possess quite diverse industrial mixes, their stakes in national trade regimes and appropriate strategies for responding to altered trade opportunities will differ subst...

Identifies and assesses three types of industrial districts that exist as alternatives to the "new industrial district" model, to remark on the limits of a locally targeted development strategy. Industrial districts are defined as sizable and spatially delimited areas of trade-oriented economic activity with a distinct specialization. "Sticky place...

Public sector labs do not appear to have generated as much regional business spinoff as universities and research-intensive businesses. This difference may be explained in large part by the disparate capabilities for and attitudes toward new-firm incubation on the part of parent institutions and other anchor tenants. We believe that federal lab per...

Big firms, long arms, wide shoulders: the 'hub-and-spoke' industrial district in the Seattle region, Reg. Studies 30, 651-666. Rapidly growing regions exhibit distinct varieties of industrial district structure. One variant is the hub-and-spoke form, where an industry and its suppliers cluster around one or several core firms. The hub-and-spoke dis...

After World War II, policies to promote industrialization—both to substitute for manufactured imports and to encourage exports based on unskilled labor—often successfully complemented regional polices to better distribute economic activity. The recent shift toward high technology, however, has strongly favored major urban areas, undermining efforts...

New industrial districts occur in a number of forms, some of which are not subsumable under the flexibly specialized, locally embedded, and endogenously driven model based on the Italian case. In this paper, we critique the industrial districts literature, focusing on the role of the state, interdistrict mobility of labor, nonlocal externalities, a...

The recent shift toward high technology has strongly favoured major urban areas, undermining efforts at regional decentralization and stabilization. Furthermore, countries are increasingly abandoning top-down regional policy and passing on responsibility for development to provincial and local levels, setting off vigorous interregional competition...

This paper presents a method for inferring regional economic structure and prospects from key informant interviews. It describes assumptions which must be made and steps to be taken in moving from individuals to establishment, firm, and industry aggregations. A technique is offered for mapping core relationships among firms and other regional and e...

American federalism is a unique political structure, especially in its capacity for managing regional economic development. Multiple and often competing development goals — equity, efficiency, democracy, and long term economic vitality — are demanded of it. The system performs relatively well at providing access for democratic participation and eng...

The state may be a major shaper of industrial geography, especially in developing countries. Defense procurement offers an opportunity to study its role. In locating military industrial facilities, we hypothesize that the state is responding to different priorities than would civilian firms--strategic concerns (protection, secrecy), proximity to mi...

Since World War II, America's economic landscape has undergone a profound transformation. This economic restructuring, the authors argue, is a direct result of the rise of the military industrial complex (MIC) and the formation of a new industry based on defence spending and Pentagon contracts. This book chronicles the dramatic growth of this vast...

Laments the high proportion of government expenditure on defence, and proposes a new economic order for the US. There has in the past been massive investment in aerospace, communications and electronics, known as the "ACE complex' at the expense of civilian industry. A policy of "dual use' has been adopted to promote domestic availability of high-t...

In the debate on the incidence and dynamics of new industrial complexes, technological innovation has been treated as exogenous, and endogenous entrepreneurial growth forces have been stressed at the expense of state actions, interregional interactions, and geographical transfers of capital and labor. In this paper it is argued that technological p...

This paper addresses the task of converting military facilities to civilian uses, differentiat ing demand side from supply side approaches. We distinguish four alternative models of conversion from military to civilian use, each organized around a different target: converting the company, converting the community economic base, converting the worke...

The export potential of services has been assessed without regard to forward and backward linkages. Yet regional service sector growth is often associated with three factors: the displacement of manufacturing functions into service establishments, the marketing role of manufacturing-displacing imports, and locational shifts toward customer sites. M...

Colorado Springs is an unusual site for an aerospace complex. Poised on the abrupt junction of the High Plains and the Front range of the Rockies, flecked in winter by snow on the mesas and backed by the stark flank of Pikes Peak, it is totally unlike typical high-tech sites such as New England, Los Angeles, and Seattle. Yet something remarkable ha...

Everyone knows that New England is really Old New England1-the quintessential traditional industrial region that made a successful transition to high-technology manufacturing and services. Highly urbanized, the first region of the United States to experience the Industrial Revolution, it successfully reversed a long-run industrialization trend: fro...