MIT Architecture

Several authors contend that changes in the organization of auto assembly are resulting in a spatial reconcentration of employment in the Midwestern United States. Hypotheses about spatial reconcentration do not take into account the structure of the auto parts industry and the extent that changes in assembly warrant a spatial reorganization of parts production. Using location and employment data for auto parts production, this analysis reveals that the current distribution of auto parts manufacturing varies by product, market, and corporate strategy.

Persistant poverty has long been one of America's most pressing and intractable problems. According to some estimates, by 2003, almost twenty-five percent of the America's countries had per-capita incomes below one half the national average, high unemployment, low labour force participation rates, and a high dependency on government transfer payments - all measures of economic distress.

High tech industries are thought to precipitate structural change in local economies through the creation of backward and forward linkages and new firm spinoffs. Case studies of high tech firms and products indicate interindustry linkage development is closely associated with product type and organizational structure of firms. Three product configurations, one-of-a-kind, customized and standardized, generate differing levels of linkage and spinoff potential.

The twentieth-century history of the Swiss watch industry illustrates how cultures and industrial production systems experience great difficulty adapting to external change at different points in time. The current emphasis on production networks - unique reservoirs of potential technological innovation realized through cooperation rather than competition among firms - lacks a detailed appreciation of historic networks, and in particular their fragile character in times of economic turmoil.

As the Chicago Housing Authority's "Plan for Transformation" reached its 10th anniversary, a substantial body of research has emerged to assess the city's major effort to redevelop its public housing stock and improve the lives of the public housing population. This report is not a formal evaluation of the Plan for Transformation itself, but is instead a review of more than eighty pieces of published literature about the Plan. It is intended to provide readers with a critical overview of the processes and the outcomes affecting families and neighborhoods impacted by the Plan.

As the adoption and harmonisation of international public sector accounting standards and guidelines strengthen, decision-making processes and definitions assumed in establishing accounting best practices become more critical objects of study. Especially for countries in the global South that are making efforts to converge with such international guidelines, a review is warranted of the creation of the UN's System of National Accounts (guiding the derivation of GDP, for example) and the International Federation of Accountants' public sector accounting standards.