The idea that prices differ by place is a well-known economic concept. Most consumers could easily identify that a day in New York City would cost more than an identical day in rural Texas. To quantify these price differences, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) publishes regional price parities (RPPs) . By using a weighted average of goods and services across places in a given year, RPPs allow...

For the most part, high-income places 40 years ago remain high-income today, and low-income places 40 years ago are still relatively low-income. This blog post looks at how little change there has been in how places rank by income over the last several decades. There are a few exceptions, and those metros that have climbed the ranks might offer lessons for economic development strategies and place...

Geographic inequality has widened over the past four decades. The gap in incomes between richer places and poorer places has grown. Strikingly, geographic income inequality continued to climb in recent years even though many measures of overall income and wage inequality have narrowed somewhat as wage growth has been strongest for lower-wage workers . Rising geographic inequality suggests that...

Today, the U.S. Department of Commerce is announcing the Regional Economic Research Initiative (Regional Initiative), a new data initiative to improve our nation’s understanding of local regional economies and their ability to compete. The importance of place has often been overlooked in favor of other ways of studying and growing the economy, which has contributed to the concentration of economic...