Some 1,128 rural new business entrepreneurs in Arkansas, Maine, Michigan, and North Dakota were interviewed to determine the role of displaced workers in starting businesses. The study compared displaced workers and other entrepreneurs, looking at business characteristics, operator...

Manufacturing is moving into the exurban countryside, away from central cities and their suburbs. However; manufacturing firms remain attracted to markets, labor, and transportation facilities and, therefore, tend to avoid remote areas. Increasing numbers of firms and employment are locating...

In 1988, the federal government passed the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act. Previous to this action, several states approved their own laws requiring advance notice of plant closings and mass layoffs. Implementation and enforcement of advance-notice laws have been weak and...

State economic development is in a state of ferment at mid-decade, but analysts are not certain about the direction of changes going on. This article uses a national survey of state development agencies to explore three possible scenarios: that states are losing interest in economic development,...

Morales and colleagues deserve credit for extending traditional economic analysis by using anthropological field data and applying midlevel economic tools to policy analysis. However, their analysis is problematic because it exaggerates how many benefits would be lost if the Maxwell Street...

Strickland and Burr at once proclaim the utility of generally employeeless and undercapitalized sole proprietorships for women having few work options and assert that enough of these small businesses grow big that the group as a whole benefits the national economy. They miscast the first...

EDQ introduces a new format to the Forum section in this issue. Periodically an article is submitted to us that raises important policy or methodological issues that have generated sharp responses from external reviewers. We believe that the debate that has taken place between the authors and...

Attracting retirees has been promoted as an economic development strategy for rural communities. Implicit in efforts to attract retirees is the assumption that retirees will continue to migrate at the same rate, bringing with them relatively high incomes and relatively low demands for services....

This article focuses on the initial application phase of the Empowerment Zone/Enterprise Community (EZ/EC) program. It considers characteristics of the legislation, administrative rules, and guidelines for implementation that applied to first-round applicants for EZEC designation. The article...

U.S. cities have become more self-reliant in developing and maintaining economic development activities in their communities. Several authors have labeled cities that are aggressively creating economic development opportunities as "entrepreneurial. " One tool used by many entrepreneurial cities...