Rural economies in the United States and Canada are characterized by incomes persistently below those in metropolitan areas and both unemployment and underemployment rates continuously above those in major urban economies. Other socio-economic comparisons also indicate an adverse relationship....

Rural economies in the United States and Canada are characterized by incomes persistently below those in metropolitan areas and both unemployment and underemployment rates continuously above those in major urban economies. Other socio-economic comparisons also indicate an adverse relationship....

Despite the large sums of money spent to ostensibly support rural areas since the 1930s, a framework for assessing U.S. and Canadian rural policy is conspicuously absent, and thus there is little basis for assessing effectiveness of public policy and public expenditures in this area. The purpose...

This paper investigates the relationship between market potential and the spatial variation in the number and the average size of firms. We adapt the canonical model of the New Economic Geography to demonstrate this relationship and to derive an empirical specification suitable for estimation...