Various forms of cooperation among local governments have long been advocated as means to aggregate resources and demand in rural areas so that public services and infrastructure can be improved. This research assesses the degree of multicounty collaboration in rural parts of the Tennessee...

State and local governments increasingly look to entrepreneurship as a means of stimulating economic growth. However, can the public sector play a role in promoting entrepreneurial activity—and if so, what should that role be? The authors investigate independent effects of financial and...

The sustained surge in self-employment since 2000 has largely gone unnoticed by policy makers and economic developers. Here the authors document this surge and identify variables associated with expanding self-employment. Results provide mixed evidence about the importance of capital access to...

Economic development practitioners and theorists recognize that community-based strategies offer the best opportunity for rural economic development. But, rural communities also need assistance in identifying and implementing their strategies. Two key needs are financial support and technical...

A data set for U.S. counties that includes residence status of firm owners is used to assess whether per capita density of locally owned businesses affects local economic growth, compared with nonlocal ownership. The database also permits stratification of firms across different employment size...

Community-focused agriculture has been heralded as a development strategy to induce local economic growth. This study examines county-level linkages between community-focused agriculture and growth in total agricultural sales and economic growth more broadly. Using Census of Agriculture data,...

The biotechnology industry has experienced remarkable growth since its inception, and growth prospects are strong for the remainder of the decade. In this article, the authors develop a formal model to discern factors affecting the location of biotechnology firms. The number of biotechnology...

This article reviews the literature that evaluates WalMart’s impacts on local economies. The authors first describe the methods used to account for potential reverse causality of WalMart’s store location decisions, and then they discuss the literature assessing the company’s...