Hoping to generate employment opportunities for residents, communities often offer location incentives to businesses. But many newly created jobs may go to commuters rather than local residents, resulting in higher incentive costs per local job than perhaps anticipated. In this paper we examine...

It is no secret that much of rural America is struggling economically. Despite similar employment growth rates, nonmetropolitan areas tend to have relatively higher unemployment and underemployment rates and slower population growth rates than their metropolitan counterparts.1 Additionally, over...

Many argue that tourism development is beneficial for local economies, partly because of spillover effects. Others hold that tourism jobs are lower paying, often seasonal, and can generate a host of social ills with earned income concentrated in low-income households. A Social Accounting Matrix...

Because employer-sponsored programs are the predominate means by which most non-elderly Americans are covered by health insurance, there is interest in the extent to which observed spatial differences occur because of structural differences in rural and metro economies. We examine factors...

Using data from a survey of Pennsylvania food processors, we investigate what firm-level characteristics make a processor more or less likely to buy agricultural inputs and ingredients though contracts. We find that over 20 percent of Pennsylvania processors use contracts, and over 44 percent of...

U.S. banking markets have undergone important structural and institutional changes. Overall, the sector has experienced steady consolidation through mergers and acquisitions that have resulted in fewer banks holding a greater value of the total assets. Despite consolidation, new branch offices...

Most of the discussion of regional income convergence in recent decades has operated under the assumption, either explicit or implicit, that spatial and temporal differences in regional prices (i.e., cost of living and inflation) are negligible. Using five different measures of interstate and...