The portion of the South known as the Black Belt lies at the heart of what was once the cotton-and-tobacco plantation region and retains a large black population. Despite the Black Belt's high poverty rates and relatively slow economic growth, its large net loss of blacks to urban areas over the...

The role of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in increasing the education and economic well-being of rural Blacks is not, perhaps, as clear today as in the past given the abolition of formal segregation in public education. This paper presents evidence that HBCUs still play a...

Using Alabama county data from 1980 and 1990 censuses and store opening dates, this paper presents an econometric study of the impact of the presence of Wal-Mart on black-white income and unemployment differentials. It is posited that Wal-Mart changes the competitive nature of the labor market...

Intellectual appeal and simplicity of use has led to the widespread application of the spatial hedonic model in assessing regional quality of life. Yet, the traditional spatial hedonic approach contains numerous assumptions, which typically are untested. Violation of the assumptions in practice...

We analyze the impact of economic development policies and highway infrastructure improvements on growth of per capita income and jobs in Michigan counties. The policies considered for analysis have significant impact on growth outcomes. However, this effect is non-linear. Significant...

This study uses modeled Small Area Estimates data to analyze the labor market influences on child poverty rates in local areas. These data support analysis of small geographic areas as well as at different points of the business cycle. Statistical tests appropriate for data with geographic and...

This paper examines the role of social capital--the set of supportive interpersonal interactions that exists in the family, community, and school--in promoting educational achievement. Employing data on public school students from the National Education Longitudinal Survey (NELS) and other...

Urban sprawl has been criticized for its disproportionate impact on the environment. Yet urban areas are in fact less land-intensive than recent rural development patterns. Residential first-movers into such virgin areas may spark waves of ensuing development without incorporating the true...

Nancy White's Presidential address on amenities and migration outlines her ideas on land use and migration from Lewis and Clark to the present day.

Aggregate and average human capital per worker in each of the 50 United States are estimated using microdata from the Annual Demographic File (ADF) and outgoing Rotation Groups (ORG) of the Current Population Survey for 1976-2000 and 1979-2000, respectively, and are compared to one another and...