The changed and changing economy of New England

Abstract

In this paper, the authors propose to review the changed and changing economic structure of New England, and to project to the year 2000 New England's real gross regional product together with the real gross products of the region's ten component industries.

Utilizing the time series data from 1958 to 1973 provided by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, the authors found that the overall movements of expansion and contraction are surprisingly similar at the regional and national levels, but New England's economic structure of industry mix as measured by each industry's contribution to the total is different from that of the United States.

To further delineate the difference, semi-logarithmic functions were fitted to estimate the annual growth rates of the real gross products as well as the rates of shift of the industrial shares themselves.