Many agricultural-based communities in the Great Plains region of North America face declining rural populations and shrinking market size to levels eventually insufficient to maintain their functions. In response, rural communities often pursue a variety of business recruitment and retention...

Despite the large sums of money spent to ostensibly support rural areas since the 1930s, a framework for assessing U.S. and Canadian rural policy is conspicuously absent, and thus there is little basis for assessing effectiveness of public policy and public expenditures in this area. The purpose...