Creative Destruction & Inter-Regional Job Reallocation during the Great Recession

By 2014, the US had regained all employment lost during Great Recession. While this marked the return to a pre-recession state for aggregate employment, preceding years reshaped the geography of the US economy, reallocating more than 3 million jobs across counties. This paper provides the rst description of inter-regional job reallocation during the Great Recession, and tests whether this reallocation was consistent with productivity enhancing creative destruction. I nd that during the recession period of 2007 { 2010, counties with lower levels of productivity lost a larger share of employment than high productivity regions, consistent with the \trimming eect" associated with creative destruction. Yet, during the recovery period from 2010 to{ 2014, high productivity counties did not grow any faster than low-productivity regions. Taken together, these results point to the need for a closer consideration of policies that aect the reallocation of rms and workers across US regions during recessionary periods.

截至2014年，美国已完全复苏大衰退（Great Recession）期间流失的全部就业岗位。尽管这标志着总就业水平回归衰退前状态，但此前数年重塑了美国经济的地理格局，在各郡县间重新配置了逾300万个就业岗位。本文首次对大衰退期间的区域间就业再配置（inter-regional job reallocation）现象进行了阐述，并检验了该再配置是否符合提升生产率的创造性破坏（creative destruction）逻辑。研究发现，在2007年至2010年的衰退期，生产率水平较低的郡县流失的就业份额高于高生产率地区，这与创造性破坏相关的‘修剪效应（trimming effect）’相符。然而在2010年至2014年的复苏期，高生产率郡县的就业增速并未快于低生产率地区。综合来看，上述结果表明有必要对影响美国各区域间企业与劳动力再配置的衰退期政策展开更为深入的审视。