The purpose of this paper to provide added insight into clustering as it pertains to the United States organic sector. I identify clusters of United States certified organic operations by showing how a formal definition of spatial clusters can emerge from an estimated model that accounts for...

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of clusters of certified organic operations on county-level general economic indicators in order to assess the potential of organic clustering as an economic development tool. We first identify clusters of organic operations using the Local...

This paper investigates the certified organic handler sector, a specialized component of the middle part of the farm-to-table marketing chain, and documents the impacts of firm agglomeration (or firm clusters) on firm-level performance or firm-level decisions. After accounting for endogeneity in...

This paper estimated the fiscal impact of a job creation tax credit, a proposed incentive for establishments participating in the Indiana enterprise zone program. State unemployment insurance files were utilized with GIS to obtain enterprise zone data. Labor demand and labor supply were...

Conventional measures of gross domestic product (GDP) fail to account for the effect of economic activity on the environment. Integrated environmental-economic (or 'green') GDP is calculated using a data-envelopment-analysis (DEA) framework. For this purpose a dynamic cross-country technology is...

This paper evaluates the impact of increasing concentration of the livestock sector on the economic welfare of rural Illinois. A pooled time-series, cross-sectional model is developed to study the dynamics of structural changes in hog production for the period 1981-1997. The model tests the...

In this study, we examine the association of urban-to-rural migration with the deterioration of labor market in urban sector due to the globalization of markets and production. Two measures of the relative impacts of globalization on urban and rural labor markets: changes in rural-urban real...

Farm operators are an integral part of some rural economies. The businesses they operate often hire seasonal and full-time employees and purchase goods and services from local farm implement dealers, input suppliers, and financial institutions. Farm household spending on food, furniture and...

We synthesize recent case studies on rural poverty in six Latin American countries, plus two thematic studies. We find that the return to education in farming is surprisingly small; land redistribution increases total farm output, but has mixed effects on income; and urban economic growth...

Identifying target industry sectors for community economic development is a complex problem. The Community-Business Matching (CBM) Model is a tool that assists in identifying desirable industry sectors for sustainable economic development. The framework of the model is based on two measures,...