The objective of this study was twofold: (1) to identify nontraditional sources of data that can be used to monitor economic activity in rural areas, and (2) to test the relationship between such data and trends in traditional measures, such as income and employment.

The objective of this study was to explore a new method of analyzing the performance of substate economies. A major limitation of conventional analyses of economic diversity and growth is the reliance on static measures of economic structure. Such measures do not capture the patterns of growth...

The expanded role of state governments in economic development has increased their need for a wide variety of economic, demographic, and marketing information. Many state governments have responded to these needs by developing systems to deliver economic and related information to state and...

Evaluating the economic conditions of local economies is an important input to the decisions of policymakers, firms, and individuals. General impressions of the condition of national or state economies obtained from aggregate data often mask important substate differences in economic...

This study illustrates the usefulness of consumer expenditure data for analyzing urban/rural differences in expenditure patterns. The primary findings are that when the effects of income, children, home ownership, aging, and college education are held constant, rural households spend a...

Policies to counter the growing discrepancy between economic opportunities in rural and urban areas have focused predominantly on expanding manufacturing in rural areas. Fundamental to the design of these strategies are the relative costs of production and productivity of manufacturing in rural...