Archive

Archive for the ‘Martin Prosperity Institute’ Category

The Geography of Music Preferences

December 9, 2011 Comments off

The Geography of Music Preferences
Source: Martin Prosperity Institute (Peter J. Rentfrow, Charlotta Mellander, Richard Florida, Brian Hracs and Jeff Potter)

Music spans many styles and genres, and previous research has identified five major categories of music preferences: mellow, unpretentious, sophisticated, intense, and contemporary. Our research examines the geographic variation in these five categories of music preferences and the socio-economic factors that shape them. Our research uses factor analysis to plot music preferences across the fifty U.S. states, and employs bivariate correlation analyses to relate the music-preference factor scores with socio-economic structures, personality variables and other factors across states. We find significant geographic variation across certain types of music preferences. We also find that the geographic structure of music preference is related to key socioeconomic variables such as income, education, and occupation, as well as political preference expressed as voting patterns.

+ Full Paper (PDF

Categories: business and economics, education, Martin Prosperity Institute, media and entertainment, social and cultural issues

Effects of the Housing Boom and Bust on U.S. Metro Employment

July 15, 2011 Comments off

Effects of the Housing Boom and Bust on U.S. Metro Employment
Source: Martin Prosperity Institute

This paper examines the effects of the housing boom of the early 2000s on unemployment in U.S. metropolitan areas. A region’s share of housing units built between 2000 and 2006 has a negative effect or no influence on unemployment prior to the recession of the late 2000s, but the extent of a region’s housing boom generally increases unemployment during and immediately following the recession. Extensions to our main analysis suggest that construction-dependent regions with high shares of employment in retail and food service occupations, suggestive of a false economy supported by housing growth, were hit particularly hard by the recession.

+ Full Paper (PDF)

Categories: business and economics, housing and real estate, labor, Martin Prosperity Institute
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 363 other followers