The influence of government structure on the efficient allocation of public resources is examined A test developed by Brueckner is used to examine differences in the allocative efficiency of representative versus direct democracy forms of local government. The empirical results suggest that the...

The applied research reported in this article focuses on the economic impact of retirement migration on a small rural state. A hypothetical policy designed to increase the number of retirees entering the state of Maine is analyzed using the regional economic modeling system, Regional Economic...

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...

The ever-increasing spatial dimension of commuting sheds suggests that the nature of the economic impact of new job creation on the local community is changing. From a community perspective, an increasing number of any new jobs created are taken by in-commuters as opposed to in-migrants. To gain...

For updated Trade Area Analysis (TAA) of Wisconsin counties we use the sales tax data as reported by the Wisconsin Department of Revenue for 2011. Only those counties that have elected to collect the optional county sales tax are included in the analysis. Because sales tax data are used one must...

We assess the impact of an aging rural population using the Wisconsin Economic Impact Modeling System, a county-level conjoined input-output/ econometrics simulation model. Using data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Survey, we construct profiles of two household...

Public health within the United States is becoming a concern not only from the perspective of rapidly expanding health care costs but also in terms of economic productivity. Obesity and other diet-related diseases are said to becoming epidemic. At the same time, in both rural and poorer urban...

The intent of this functional research project is to apply the tools of Trade Area Analysis (TAA) to retail and service sales data for Wisconsin counties. For this analysis we use the sales tax data as reported by the Wisconsin Department of Revenue for 2009, the most current year the data are...

Using U.S. county data from 1990 and 2000, a family of spatial models examining growth in population and employment are reported. Special attention is paid to the role of microenterprises--firms with less than five employees--in predicting economic growth. Results suggest that microenterprises...

As the national economy struggles to recover from the "Great Recession" of 2008-2009 the high price of oil, and to a lesser extent natural gas, has created economic opportunities for many rural communities. The process of hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking", to remove oil and gas from rock...