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ABSTRACT This paper outlines a conventional method of constructing regional capital stocks using investment and depreciation data. The method was used to estimate annual capital stocks for twenty (two‐digit SIC) manufacturing industries in the nine census regions of the US. between 1955 and 1989. The novelty of the paper is the disaggregated capital stock data generated. Those data reveal that the industrial distribution of capital is becoming increasingly similar among regions of the U.S. They also show the familiar snowbelt‐sunbelt shift of manufacturing capacity. Statistical tests establish that the redistribution of regional net capital stocks between 1955 and 1989 is significant in sixteen of twenty industries and that in ten of these sectors the most pronounced shifts in capacity occurred before the early 1970s. As investment moved away from the old manufacturing heartland, the age of capital in the mid Atlantic and east north central states increased and the age structure of capital stocks became relatively youthful in the west. Age pyramids reveal that regional variations in the age distribution of capital and the average age of capital were greater in 1989 than in 1955. Models of embodied technological change claim that the age of capital is a useful surrogate of best‐practice technology.

ABSTRACTTraditional univariate shift‐share studies of employment provide an unreliable indicator of the relative performance of a region or an industry for they fail to separate the effects of output and productivity change on the demand for labor. An extended shift‐share model is proposed that overcomes this weakness and permits identification of different processes of regional development. This model is used to investigate annual employment change in twenty (two‐digit SIC) manufacturing industries in nine census regions of the U.S. between 1950 and 1986. The timing and depth of the exodus of manufacturing jobs from the snowbelt to the sunbelt is illustrated along with the business cycle performance of industries and regions. Productivity growth in the sunbelt is positively associated with rapid output expansion, whereas in the snowbelt it is associated with the loss of market share and economic rationalization.

In this paper we explore the impacts of competition on the US women's dress industry and examine the response of that industry in the form of technological change, industrial reorganization, and regional relocation. We demonstrate that women's dress producers adopted varying strategies to cope with competitive pressure at different time periods and in different places. In the 1960s, the dress industry was characterized by two main trends: technological change and domestic relocation of plants from the US northeast to the southeast and west. From the 1970s onwards, organizational changes became increasingly important as firms in core dress-production states such as California and New York externalized growing volumes of labor-intensive work. In part, the value added of this contribution to debates about industrial restructuring lies in our use of plant-level data that allow a richer understanding of the dynamics of industrial competition.