An Empirical Analysis of Employment, Migration, Local Public Services and Regional Income Growth in Appalachia

This study develops a five-equation simultaneous system in a partial lagadjustment growth-equilibrium framework. It improved previous models in the growthequilibrium tradition by explicitly modeling local government and regional income in the growth process. It also explicitly modeled gross in-migration and gross out-migration separately in order to spell out the differential effects. The results show the existence of feedback simultaneities among the endogenous variables of the model. This finding is important from economic policy perspective because it indicates that sector specific policies should be integrated and harmonized in order to achieve the desirable outcome. Under this circumstance, looking at the direct plus indirect impacts of a change in a given policy is important.