Maureen Kilkenny

A Century of Research on Rural Development and Regional Issues

Rural North America has undergone a major economic transformation over the past century due to labor-saving technological progress, reductions in transport costs, and rising household incomes. The results are greater rural economic diversity, selected rural population decline, increased rural--urban interdependence, emergent exurban areas, and amenity-led rural growth. We summarize key research insights and provide a selected review of the economics literature over the past 100 years with a focus on this economic transformation of rural places, its implications for rural communities, and key modeling innovations and applications. The many important contributions by agricultural economists are highlighted. Copyright 2010, Oxford University Press.

Reciprocated community support and small town - small business success

This paper presents an empirical test of the significance of reciprocated community support, in contrast with traditional economic factors and unilateral support, in the success of small businesses in small towns. The central hypothesis is that entrepreneurs who make non-market contributions to their community and whose community supports them, are more likely to consider their businesses to be successful. Logistic regression is used to analyse survey data from over 800 small businesses in 30 small towns of the state of Iowa (USA). The authors found that the interaction effect of an entrepreneurs service to the community, reciprocated by community support of the business, is the single most significant determinant of business success among dozens of indicators and characteristics of the respondent, the business, and the small towns in the sample. In addition, it was found that business people who feel successful expect to expand. These findings are relevant to rural development. The expansion of existing...

Economics of location:: a selective survey

We present a selective survey of the main results obtained in spatial economic theory. Our focus is on firm location. We start with the simplest location problem and proceed to recent models of industrial location in general equilibrium. The middle section is a review of what has been accomplished in the literature on spatial pricing and spatial competition. We conclude with a discussion of recent models of economic geography which explain the uneven spatial distribution of economic activity.

Rural/Urban Effects of Terminating Farm Subsidies

A rural-urban interregional computable general equilibrium (CGE) model is constructed to simulate the effects of terminating farm subsidies on household incomes, employment rates, farm and non-farm sectoral activity, regional costs of living, and other economic indicators. The magnitudes of the effects depend on regional factor and goods market segmentation. Robust short-run implications are that ceasing farm subsidies would cause rural nonfarm (particularly household service sector) employment to fall and lead to lower household income. On the other hand, rural manufacturing activity expands and the cost of living falls relative to urban. Urban employment, household income, and land rents rise. Although termination of farm subsidies causes a decline in rural real product, the urban real product gain outweighs rural losses.

Keystone Sector Identification

This chapter presents a new method for identifying key sectors in communities, where sectors are defined broadly to include churches, clubs, associations, and public institutions as well as different types of businesses and industries. We describe and apply new ways to (1) quantify the local community structure, (2) describe the various roles, (3) identify the keystone sectors in a community. We adapt methods of graph theory and social network analysis to the analysis of a local econmic system.

A Classroom Experiment about Tradable Permits

This article describes an experimental market designed for undergraduate classes in agricultural economics, environmental economics, public finance, or rural development. The experiment is a series of double-oral auctions that demonstrate private and social costs, externalities and market failures, and the efficiency of tradable permits relative to Pigouvian taxes. The novel feature is the non-pecuniary way that the negative production externality is mimicked in the classroom experiment. Details, instructions, and suggestions for how to tailor the experiment for different classes or purposes are included.

Explicitly Spatial Rural-Urban Computable General Equilibrium

Rural areas are by definition remote, sparsely populated, and dependent on natural-resource-based industry. Rural remoteness and low density have critical implications for rural firms and households. On the plus side for businesses, rural firms avoid high urban wages, rents, and other congestion costs. Also, they have a competitive edge (low transport costs) in serving rural customers. On the negative side are higher costs of transporting inputs from, and outputs to, urban markets. On the plus side for households is the bucolic environment. On the negative side is the distance that must be travelled to collect the same

International charity under asymmetric information

International charity is often subject to moral hazard and adverse selection problems. We show that the burden of informational asymmetries are borne by the most needy countries, even when charities design incentive contracts which limit the rents that some countries can extract.

The New Rural Economy: Discussion

The papers in this session examined the extent to which rural areas in the United States have participated in the new economy by producing or using electronic technologies. The first paper described counties that have attracted high technology firms. The second measured adoption of advanced technologies by small manufacturers. The third compared metro and Nonmetro deployment of digital telecommunications infrastructure. The evidence suggests that distance may still matter. Rural areas remain disadvantaged. Alternatively, the real culprit is low population density rather than remoteness.

Welfare and Food Assistance at the State and Sub-State Level: A Framework for Evaluating Economic and Programmatic Changes

Welfare and food stamp program changes may affect local economies, and economic changes may affect local program participation. In this paper we outline a model of these interactions. First we highlight key changes in the programs and report recent program and labor market participation patterns in metro and non-metro portions of the Midwest and the state of Iowa. Then we describe computable general equilibrium (CGE) model equations that formalize the types of choices being made and discuss the regional economic impacts that can be simulated. In the process, we raise several related research questions.