The way in which the economic base of regional economies influences the viability of the communities that serve them has been a subject of inquiry for several decades. Many previous studies have been static in nature, thereby failing to capture the influence of changes in the base through time....

Throughout the second half of the 20th Century, urbanization, new technologies, rapid labor-saving productivity growth in primary industries, and improved highways combined to create large-scale rural-urban functionally integrated regions. These forces have raised the stakes for regions in their...

We measure the impact of the removal of a railway transportation subsidy on the adoption of technology for Western Canadian farms, using a unique combination of Census and freight rate data. We exploit the large regional variation in these one-time freight rate increases in order to identify...

Place-based or geographically-targeted policy has been promoted as a way to help poor regions and the poor people who live there. Yet, such policy has often been attacked by economists as slowing needed economic adjustments, redirecting resources to lower productivity regions, and supporting...

The strong U.S. real income gains and reductions in poverty during the 1990s were largely erased in the following decade, which contained two economic recessions and tepid job growth otherwise. Areas most affected by weak U.S. economic performance could be expected to also have experienced the...

Despite the attention given to international trade in discussion and analysis of the economic struggles of many regions across the U.S., it is unclear whether international trade shocks impact local economies more and differently than shocks originating from within the domestic economy, thus...

Despite the attention given to international trade in discussion of the economic struggles of many U.S. regions, it is unclear whether international trade shocks impact local economies more, or differently than shocks originating within the domestic economy. A challenge in making this...

Place-based or geographically-targeted policy has been promoted as a way to help poor regions and the poor people who live there. Yet, such policy has often been attacked by economists as slowing needed economic adjustments, redirecting resources to lower productivity regions, and supporting...