Poverty is not evenly distributed across the American landscape. At the county level of aggregation, poverty is overwhelmingly a rural problem, with the most remote rural places at the greatest disadvantage. 1 Although research has shown that “place matters†in poverty outcomes and...

Spatial equilibrium models rely on migration to arbitrage away differences in utility across locations net of moving costs, where remaining differences in wages and rents reflect the compensating differentials related to site-specific amenities. Recent refinements to the spatial equilibrium...

Economic analysts have expressed significant interest in the transition of the industrial base towards knowledge-intensive production. A central aspect of this transition is the growth and development of industries that provide the technological and scientific foundations for what is often...

Conventional wisdom argues that tourist expenditures and recreation activities generate demands for traded goods and services, and create jobs and income for local residents in counties endowed with rich natural amenities. However, more recent studies have suggested that regions with high levels...

Studies on welfare programs in the United States have identified three types of welfare migration (employment, benefit, and amenity-related). This paper introduces a fourth type of migration induced by welfare time limits. After a welfare-dependent family runs out of benefits, it is possible for...

We often use the term rural very loosely when discussing public policy. Rarely do we describe explicitly the kinds of places we have in mind for particular programs and craft precise eligibility requirements that deliver the programs to those places without expensive leakages to other,...

The study examines the impact of local Enterprise Zones (EZs) on commercial and industrial property values. Currently, 43 states have established EZ programs to target development incentives to economically distressed areas. While there is a substantial body of literature analyzing the...

State governments that have elected to make investments to increase the availability of affordable broadband service in rural areas and low income urban neighborhoods should organize their efforts around a strategy that encourages and leverages locally- driven initiatives, rather than follow a...