We often use the term rural very loosely when discussing public policy. Rarely do we describe explicitly the kinds of places we have in mind for particular programs and craft precise eligibility requirements that deliver the programs to those places without expensive leakages to other,...

State governments that have elected to make investments to increase the availability of affordable broadband service in rural areas and low income urban neighborhoods should organize their efforts around a strategy that encourages and leverages locally- driven initiatives, rather than follow a...

Poverty is not evenly distributed across the American landscape. At the county level of aggregation, poverty is overwhelmingly a rural problem, with the most remote rural places at the greatest disadvantage. 1 Although research has shown that “place matters†in poverty outcomes and...

Although all land use is local, few problems require the more urgent attention of state legislators than that of land use. How land is used has important economic, social and environmental consequences that may affect all residents of a state. States must take on more active roles as...

Tax and expenditure limitations (TEL) on state and local governments have been passed with the presumption they will limit the growth of government, raise government efficiency, and increase direct democracy by requiring voter approval of tax increases. Both the popular press and the academic...

Reports of worrisome economic trends and deficiencies in rural areas typically spawn pronouncements on the need for rural economic development. Such reports often highlight: declining employment in primary economic sectors, high unemployment, a lack of jobs for young workers and a consequent...

Concern among state legislators about rural development and rural land use is not new. In many states, agriculture remains an important feature of the economic, cultural, and political landscape. As rural incomes, populations, and prosperity have declined, states have adopted a variety of...

We develop a coupled model of regional migration and lake ecology to study the influence of ecological-economic interactions and relative time scales on transient and asymptotic dynamics. Cross-scale interactions fundamentally change system dynamics by eliminating steady states that are present...