The Circular Economy (CE) is a driver of change and regeneration at a global level, and especially for rural areas. However, there is a missing link regarding the CE in municipalities, i.e. at the macro level encompassing the built environment, which is even more pronounced concerning rural...

The purpose of this article is to investigate the drivers and barriers to broadband adoption/use by food and drink micro-business owner-managers based in remote-rural Scotland. This study adopts a mixed methods approach consisting of 141 questionnaires involving rural restaurants, which is then...

Sustainable territorial development seeks to balance economic growth, social well-being, and environmental preservation across spatial contexts. In fragile and resource-constrained regions, achieving this balance remains particularly challenging. With the growing diffusion of artificial...

As a fundamental tenet of socialism with Chinese characteristics, pursuing common prosperity for all entails reducing urban-rural disparities while simultaneously increasing rural household income. This study utilizes interview and survey data from the "Chinese Thousand Villages Survey"...

The reallocation of production factors, particularly labor, is central to understanding economic development and household welfare. This paper investigates how the transfer of farmland, a fundamental shift in factor endowment, affects rural household financial vulnerability, with a specific...

How do institutional barriers to migration shape fertility in developing economies? We analyze the staggered removal of institutional barriers to rural-to-urban migration across 283 Chinese cities. We find that reducing these frictions led to a significant and persistent increase in fertility in...

This study examines the role of financial infrastructure in shaping child health outcomes in rural India, with a particular focus on whether access to rural banking mitigates the adverse effects of agricultural income shocks. Using data from the National Family and Health Surveys (NFHS), I...

This paper leverages quasi-experimental variation from store openings and 1.5 billion grocery transactions to causally estimate the distance elasticity of grocery expenditures (−1.47) and the spatial extent of local consumption areas (approximately 16 minutes of car travel time). We embed...

We show that mobile connectivity transforms household livelihoods in ways that foster food market integration in WAEMU countries. Using cross-sectional data on nearly 60,000 households and 146 food products traded across 5,000 enumeration areas in eight member states (2018-2019), we combine...

Wo Schulen, Kommunalverwaltungen und Krankenhäuser schließen, zieht sich der Staat aus der Fläche zurück. Dieser Rückzug kostet nicht nur gut bezahlte Jobs und Zukunftsperspektiven, sondern auch Vertrauen in den Staat, insbesondere in strukturschwachen Regionen. In diesem Beitrag zeige ich,...

Mobility of Care (MoC) encompasses all trips made for unpaid care work, including caregiving and domestic responsibilities. Previous studies have shown the prevalence of the MoC in daily mobility, its disproportionate impact on women, and its key characteristics. However, research has mostly...

Urban-to-rural return migration has become an increasingly important force reshaping rural livelihoods in China. Yet existing research on returnee entrepreneurship often assumes that migrants can transfer trans-local networks and resources accumulated during migration back to their hometowns and...

Welfare services such as healthcare, elderly care, and education are key to ensuring quality of life generally, and vital for rural communities across urbanizing countries. While these sectors are largely tax-financed, several countries have established quasi-markets to achieve competition...

In recent decades, tourism has evolved into one of the largest, fastest-growing, and most dynamic industrial sectors, encompassing various complementary businesses across diverse fields. The pivotal role of local knowledge in shaping tourism services and products in rural areas cannot be...

This article delves into the proliferation of dacha as a second / temporary country residence for urbanites in Russia. The phenomenon is viewed from a socio-cultural and economic perspective, uncovering the reasons behind their popularity among Russian city dwellers­. These reasons are related...

Twenty years have passed since the first eastern enlargements of the European Union (EU). This paper assesses the impacts of EU accession on agriculture and rural regions of Central and Eastern European countries and identifies the reasons behind differences in country performance. Results...

This paper investigates the potential of the fairly recent phenomenon of entrepreneurial lifestyle migration, in the context of rural Algarve (Portugal) from the perspective of lifestyle migrant entrepreneurs (LMEs) and their socioeconomic contribution to the development of rural areas. The...

We investigate labor exchange teams in rural communities, which are prevalent in many developing countries. We show theoretically that these teams are beneficial to employers, who can outsource the monitoring of workers. Team members are incentivized to exert a high level of effort because any...

This report identifies the unique technological challenges and opportunities faced by various Azerbaijani communities when using digital tools and services, particularly in rural areas. The findings will support the Government of Azerbaijan in its design of the interventions necessary to create...

This study examines the complex relationships between rainfall shocks, agricultural productivity, and rural economic activity in Rajasthan, India's largest state. Using district-level agricultural data from 1990 to 2015, enterprise surveys from 2010 to 2016, and household consumption data from...

Siddique et al. (2024a) report massive effects of a mobile phone-based health awareness campaign in a randomized field experiment conducted in rural Bangladesh and India during the COVID-19 pandemic. Both awareness and compliance with preventive COVID-19 measures were higher when the information...

The 2nd Preparatory Action on Smart Rural Areas in the 21st Century (Smart Rural 27 project) was launched by the European Commission on 21 December 2020 with the aim to "prepare Member States and rural communities to the implementation of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) post-2020 as well as...

The purpose of the 'Support for Smart Villages in the CAP Strategic Plans' report carried out in the framework of the 2nd Preparatory Action - Smart areas in the 21th century - is to provide an overview on how Smart Villages concept has been programmed in the 2023-2027 CAP Strategic Plans (CAP...

The Preparatory Action on Smart Rural Areas in the 21st Century (Bis), was running from December 2020 to May 2024 and aimed to prepare Member States and rural communities for the implementation of Smart Villages within the Common Agricultural Policy post-2020, as well as other EU policies which...

Smart Villages is a relatively new concept that was first formulated by the European Commission - at the initiation of the European Parliament through the EU Action for Smart Villages in 2017. The 1st Preparatory Action on Smart Rural Areas in the 21st Century (called Smart Rural 21 project,...

While agriculture remains a key source of livelihoods in rural Africa, employment in other economic sectors is gaining in importance. However, details of the labor conditions are under-researched. Here, we examine labor conditions in different sectors of the rural economy using survey data from...

We examine the impact of rural road connectivity on economic and social outcomes in the context of India’s PMGSY, the world’s largest rural road program. Using a novel village-level survey explicitly designed around PMGSY’s rollout, we exploit quasi-random variation in road placement to...

Bundesweit stehen viele Unternehmen vor großen Herausforderungen bei der passenden Besetzung offener Stellen. In der regionalen Betrachtung zeigt sich, dass die Fachkräftesituation in ländlichen Regionen angespannter ist als in städtischen Regionen. Zuletzt konnten in dünn besiedelten...

A bi-directional relationship between poverty and mental health may create a vicious cycle, wherein economic hardship and psychological distress reinforce each other. We examine the short-term dynamics between income fluctuations and mental well-being using 17 months of weekly financial diaries...

I investigate the intra-household labor and resource allocation consequences of an employment guarantee targeting rural households in India. The guarantee insures household earnings, replacing women as added workers and shutting down a motive for saving. Despite sizable program-job take-up, the...