Multifunctionality of agriculture is being heralded as a way to achieve food and fiber production while simultaneously providing ecological services and promoting rural development through the establishment of new enterprises. However, in order for multifunctional agriculture to achieve these...

Attracting manufacturing investment is a frequently used rural development policy. Previous research in the location literature has informed policymakers which factors are most important for attracting new firm investment. Far less is known about the interaction of birth and death of...

This paper addresses changes in capital formation by testing the importance of location factors with respect to the rate of establishment births and deaths in U.S. manufacturing, 2000–2004. A theoretical concept called “localized creative destruction” is tested as a mechanism to explain...

Most U.S. farm households have either the operator or spouse working off-farm for wages and salaries or proprietorships. Additionally, off-farm income continues to grow as a share of total household income. Little is known about how changes in local industrial composition impact off-farm labor...

This study assesses the initial economic outcomes of the Delta Regional Authority (DRA), which began funding rural development projects in the Mississippi Delta region in 2002. The study focuses on non-metropolitan DRA counties and similar counties elsewhere in the Mississippi Delta region and...

In December 2007 the U.S. economy entered a depression and unemployment surged to highs not seen in 30 years. The first part of this paper uses the most recently available data from BLS to examine the geography of the recession. We focus on the similarities and differences in the recession’s...

Small communities sometimes increase their local sales tax rate in order to maintain or expand public services. The question addressed here is what is the net effect of changing sales tax rates on revenues from sales taxes? Using both semiparametric and nonparametric regression, we find retail...

Pro-poor growth has been identified as one of the most promising pathways to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) or any subsequent set of goals aiming to reduce poverty worldwide. Related research has developed a multitude of instruments to measure pro-poor growth using absolute and...

In the canonical consumer demand problem, an agent makes a decision about quantities to consume, under the assumption that all possible varieties are available and can be accessed at zero cost. Quantities of each budget item are adjusted to achieve maximum utility subject to the budget...