This report provides a spatial representation of hospital geography in Iowa and of the decisions of patients to patronize hospitals. It begins with a brief analysis of hospital proximity and hospital proximity’s relationship to population distributions and existing hospital capacity. This is...

T.W. Schultz (1975) proposed that returns to human capital were highest in economicenvironments where technology, price or production shocks were common and managerial skillsto adapt resource allocations to those shocks were most in need. We hypothesize that variationin returns to human capital...

Sometimes authorities are unable to identify rapidly the origin of a tainted product.In such cases, recalls or warnings often apply to all suppliers, even to those thathad not contributed to the contamination. Traceability enables more targetedrecalls by identifying more specically the product's...

The Iowa Board of Nursing licensing database for Registered Nurses (RNs) contains information on Registered Nurses who have renewed their licenses including age, race, gender, education, and location of employment. It also contains comparable information on nurses who opted not to renew at the...

This paper provides a brief review of readily available labor force and employment data for the United States and local areas. Labor force and employment terminology, geographic parameters, and strengths and weaknesses of available data sets are discussed.[...]

A sample of Iowa farm couples is used to evaluate whether off-farm labor supply decisions respond to permanent and transitory components of farm income. Off-farm labor supply of both spouses declines in response to increases in permanent farm income. Farm wives also reduce off-farm labor supply...

Considerable controversy exists regarding the costs and benefits of growth in the meatpacking and processing industry in the rural Midwest. This study uses proprietary datafrom the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Longitudinal Database (LDB) to investigate theeffects of this industry on social and...