Gordon Mulligan

Professor, Geography & Regional Development

1976: Ph.D., Geography, University of British Columbia
1972: M.A., Geography, University of British Columbia
1969: B.Sc., Mathematics, University of British Columbia

FAX: (520) 621-2889
E-mail: mulligan@email.arizona.edu

Harvill Building, Box #2
Tucson, AZ 85721
USA

Curriculum Vitae

Research

Gordon Mulligan teaches and researches in economic geography and regional science. His very diverse interests include: location theory, spatial competition, consumer travel behavior, hedonic pricing in housing markets, interregional migration, regional well-being and quality of life, urban cost of living, public facility location, urbanization and city size, economic base studies, urban crime, population-employment adjustment models, spatial justice and location conflict, and growth in micropolitan centers. Mulligan has published papers in some twenty-five different international journals and has served on numerous editorial boards. He is past coeditor of the Journal of Regional Science and past book review editor of the Annals of Regional Science. Moreover, Mulligan has served as both councilor and chairperson of the North American Regional Science Council and remains very active in a wide variety of regional science professional activities. He especially enjoys working with undergraduate students on applied research projects.

Project Involvement

• exploring how demographic and economics forces during the late 20th century affected population growth in the worldÕs very largest cities (having populations of one million or more); the worldÕs urban-population center of gravity is shown to shift to the south and east during the time period 1950-2010; however, not all of these nearly 600 large cities experienced their logistic growth pattern at the same time so growth clubs can be identified that have distinctive location coordinates
• analyzing the employment and population growth experienced by emerging metropolitan centers in the U.S.; more than 500 of these micropolitan places are distributed throughout the nation and their recent growth has depended upon such factors as their economic specialization, their location, and their access to both natural and human-made amenities; the economies of many of these places, especially in the West, are supplemented by high levels of both private and public forms of non-earnings income
• studying the spatial distribution of implicit prices for housing in the Tucson area; when purchasing, households actually buy a bundle of attributes that can be placed into various general categories: e.g., structure (living space, quality of construction), site (lot size and orientation), and location (quality of the school district, access to shopping); implicit prices for these characteristics are shown to vary geographically in Tucson and can be estimated by various methodologies
• quality of life, or social well-being, is known to vary a lot throughout the U.S.; however, very little is known about how different QOL measures (for income, housing, education, etc.) interrelate, and how these measures continuously adjust over space and time; research at the state level during 1970-2000 shows how present levels (and degrees of equality) of these measures not only depend upon past levels but also upon location of the state (i.e., unobserved variables) and distances separating states (i.e., spatial autocorrelation); alternating periods of geographic convergence and divergence are shown to have occurred during the recent past