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...

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...

Large discount retail stores (or “big box†stores) generate both costs and benefits to local communities that are unevenly distributed across local employees, shoppers, other businesses and government. While these impacts affect communities across the urbanrural spectrum, the hardest...

Although all land use is local, few problems require the more urgent attention of state legislators than that of land use. How land is used has important economic, social and environmental consequences that may affect all residents of a state. States must take on more active roles as...

Tax and expenditure limitations (TEL) on state and local governments have been passed with the presumption they will limit the growth of government, raise government efficiency, and increase direct democracy by requiring voter approval of tax increases. Both the popular press and the academic...

Counterurbanization pressures in remote amenity-rich regions present a host of land use and development planning issues. In the work reported here, we identify, examine and spatially analyze residential housing characteristics, land ownership, land developability, nat-ural and human-built...

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...