Economic Integration and Convergence: U.S. Regions, 1840-1987

Abstract

Despite the recent inroads made by models of interregional trade based on external" economies, the analysis of the long-run trends in U.S. regional specialization in agriculture manufacturing, wholesale trade, retail trade, services, and all economic activities indicate that" these trends are more consistent with explanations based on the neoclassical Heckscher-Ohlin" model. Furthermore, while the long-run trends in U.S. regional industrial structures do not" explain all the variations in regional income per capita, they played an important role in causing" U.S. regional incomes to diverge and then converge between the nineteenth and the twentieth" centuries.