Editing Economic base analysis (section)

==Example and methodology==
Economic base ideas can be easy to understand, as are measures made of employment. For instance, it is well known that the economy of [[Seattle, Washington]] is tied to aircraft manufacturing, that of [[Detroit|Detroit, Michigan]], to automobiles, and that of [[Silicon Valley]] to high-tech manufacturing. When newspapers discuss the closing of military bases, they may say something like: "5,000 jobs at the base will be lost. That's going to hit the economy hard because it means a loss of 10,000 jobs in the community."

To forecast, the main procedure is to compare the region with the nation and national trends. If the economic base of a region is in industries that are declining nationwide, then the region faces a problem. If its economic base is concentrated in sectors that are growing, then it is in good shape.

Methodologically, economic base analysis views the region as if it were a small nation and uses notions of relative and comparative advantage from international trade theory ([[Charles Tiebout]] 1963). In a sense, the activity is macroeconomics "written small", and it has not been of much interest to urban economists in recent years because it does not get at within-city relationships. The analysis usually takes US growth patterns as a given. The fates of regions are determined by trends in the national economy.