Research strategies in regional political economies: Theory and evidence from the Pittsburgh SMSA

Marxian and "neo-Schumpeterian" regional political economics, two similar research programs, both suffer from problematic connections between regional and macro political economics, and from an ambiguous relation to value theory. This dissertation attempts to develop an empirically relevant, value-theoretic approach to regional studies that addresses this short-coming and bears out the similarities between the two research strategies.;Chapter One distinguishes between regional political economics and mainstream theory on methodological grounds. The historical and dynamic nature of political economics contrasts with universal and static, neo-classical theory, and avoids the fallacy of misplaced concreteness inherent in the neo-classical conception of space.;The neo-Schumpeterian regional political economics, discussed in Chapter Two, subsumes growth pole and product life cycle theory. Since this theory gives innovation the leading role in the regional, industry, and macro economies, the measurement of the rate and significance of technological change is crucial. Without a theory of value, this is difficult, at best; and neo-classical price theory does not sit well with neo-Schumpeterian dynamic disequilibrium.;Chapter Three concentrates on the conditions under which the Marxian labor theory of value, interpreted using the "monetary expression" of value or the "value of money," may be applied to metropolitan labor market areas, or SMSA's. A measure of surplus value transfers via the formation of market value and the transformation of value into price is developed, and data for the Pittsburgh SMSA reported in Chapter Five. Using the Pittsburgh SMSA, Chapter Five demonstrates the empirical relevance of a value-theoretic regional model; that evidence exists to make the model operational, if not to test it.;Chapter Four develops a regional crisis theory by following the implications of Chapter Three. Much of the received Marxian regional economics derives from the spatial effects of the falling industry rate of profit. Spatially intensive and extensive accumulation emerge as a dialectical unity comparable to the polarized and homogeneous growth of neo-Schumpeterian theory.