What's New - May 2002

Site of the Month: Cluster Mapping Project

We at EconData.Net are strong advocates of using industry clusters as a lens for organizing one's analysis of regional economies.  The published classification systems for employment data (the old Standard Industrial Classification Code and its new successor, the North American Industry Classification System) don't always to a good job of revealing the linkages among industries or the structure of regional economies.  Analysts have been left to develop, ad hoc, their own definitions of industry clusters. Now comes Harvard Business School's Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness (headed by Michael Porter) with a national set of economic profiles that illustrate the composition of state, metropolitan, and regional economies according to the Institute's definitions of industry clusters.  You'll find the data generated by the "Cluster Mapping Project" at:
http://data.isc.hbs.edu/isc/index.jsp

This site is a model of how to organize data for easy access and straightforward comparisons. You can examine data for individual states, metropolitan areas or BEA economic regions directly from the main menu.  You also can easily develop cross sectional comparisons for any of 40 particular industry clusters.  Cluster and regional data include a number of very useful indicators, including patent rates, employment and average wage growth rates, and location quotients.

To gain access to this resource, which is currently free, you have to accept a "click-wrap" license agreement (the terms are spelled out at http://data.isc.hbs.edu/isc/cmp_user_agreement.jsp).  The authors assert some pretty strong ownership rights over their compilations of  publicly available data from County Business Patterns and the US Patent and Trade Mark Office (albeit aggregated up into its own cluster definitions).  While some may find such assertions of ownership a bit over-reaching, this site is worth taking a look at, if only to see one possible example of how clusters can be defined.

Another portion of the project's website provides a series of state economic profiles documenting the overall performance and the composition of each state's economy. These profiles were prepared for the National Governors Association's Initiative “State Leadership in the Global Economy”.
http://www.isc.hbs.edu/stateprofiles.htm

New Links Added

In honor of the recent observance of Earth Day, EconData's May new links feature a number of different sources of data on environmental quality from the federal government.  

Council on Environmental Quality
Links to Sources of Environmental Statistics
Links to on-line sources of environmental data in ten topic areas.
http://ceq.eh.doe.gov/nepa/reports/statistics/links.html

Department of Housing and Urban Development
Environmental Maps (E-Maps)
Query-based tool for mapping major environmental impacts in relation to federally-sponsored housing activity.
http://www.hud.gov/emaps/

Environmental Protection Agency
Where You Live
Access to environmental quality data by zipcode, and additional databases.
http://www.epa.gov/epahome/comm.htm

Enviromapper
Access to several on-line environmental quality databases.
http://www.epa.gov/enviro/html/em/index.html

AirNow
Current and historic air quality data for states and areas.
http://www.epa.gov/airnow/where/

New Study of State Level Income Equality

Are the rich getting richer?  A new report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute suggests that income disparities have widened in 45 of the 50 states in the past two decades.  This report--"Pulling Apart"--uses data from the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey to estimate the income distribution in each of the 50 states (computing average and total income by quintiles) and reviews long-term trends in inequality.  See how your state ranks on measures of equality/inequality, and whether yours is one of the five states where income has not become more unequally distributed in the past two decades.
http://www.cbpp.org/4-23-02sfp.htm

Post-Secondary Education Opportunity

This site offers an extensive collection of data and analysis on postsecondary educational activity, by state. Topics covered include state appropriations for higher education, financial aid, completion rates, admissions selectivity, interstate migration and many others.  Data tables available by topic, state, spreadsheet, and newsletter archives. While many data tables and archived newsletters are available for free, some are only available to newsletter subscribers.
http://www.postsecondary.org/home/default.htm

Internet Activity and E-Commerce Measures

Tracking the rate of adoption of the Internet by businesses, governments and households is an important indicator of New Economy capacity.  Two new rankings address this issue.  The Progressive Policy Institute offers its ranking of state government policies to encourage and support electronic commerce. PPI's list of the Best States for E-Commerce is available at:  
http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?knlgAreaID=107&subsecid=294&conte

Yahoo Internet Life developed a ranking of "America's Most Wired Cities" based on various dimensions of Internet use (e.g., percent households online, domains registered per 1,000 businesses, quality of local government sites). This listing, datelined May 2002, shows how 86 metropolitan areas stack up for Internet use and activity.  These rankings are on line at:
http://www.yil.com/features/feature.asp?Frame=false&Volume=08&Issue=0