Rural areas in the United States, like in other OECD countries, rely heavily on manufacturing as a source of income. Taking stock of previous studies on the impact of trade and FDI liberalization on manufacturing industries, this study presents a model with heterogeneous firms in the context of...

Pesticides are an important farm input both in terms of cost and in terms of their impact on crop yields and quality. With freer trade in agricultural output, differences in cost of production, yield and quality can have a large effect on competitiveness. Thus there is an increased demand by...

Economic development practitioners and theorists recognize that community-based strategies offer the best opportunity for rural economic development. But, rural communities also need assistance in identifying and implementing their strategies. Two key needs are financial support and technical...

Purpose – For many farm families and operators across the OECD countries, off‐farm income has become a major determinant of their well‐being. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the potential role of off‐farm employment as a risk management tool among farm operators....

This article reviews the development and future of the Farm Credit System (FCS) as a government sponsored source of credit for American agriculture. While agriculture is now a minor sector of the U.S. economy, and there is considerable competition for the FCS from other lenders suggesting no...

This paper determines how individual, relative to community, social capital affects individual migration decisions. We make use of nonpublic data from the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey to predict multidimensional social capital for observations in the Current Population Survey. We...

Consistent with predictions from the literature, we find that higher levels of in-migration dilute multiple dimensions of a community's level of social capital. The analysis employs a 2SLS methodology to account for potential endogeneity of migration.