Over the past decade, the welfare evaluation of local economic development activities has become increasingly sophisticated. Projected or realized gains have been broken down by wage levels, household income levels, and race. However, relatively little attention has been paid to the distribution of gains by gender. In parallel, the gender literature has recognized the distribution of economic development activity by income group but not by vacancies. The authors present an evaluation approach—the job chains model—that combines the two. Occupations with a high proportion of women are identified and isolated at each wage level. The authors estimate the proportion of job chain vacancies induced by new “female” jobs and their welfare impacts. Findings suggest that women are underrepresented in welfare gains associated with both male and female high-wage jobs. The applicability of the authors’ approach for evaluating alternative industrial targets is demonstrated.

We present a simple reproducible methodology for constructing regional capital stock data, which we apply to Israel. We find that capital deepening has been sigma-convergent since 1985. This process is “inverted” since capital stocks and capital–labor ratios in the richer center have been catching-up with their counterparts in the poorer periphery. We explain this phenomenon in terms of fundamental changes in regional policy. Despite this, regional wages have not been sigma-convergent because other wage determinants have been sigma-divergent.