Steven H. Murdock

The Socioeconomic Impact of Resource Development: Methods for Assessment.

Large-scale industrial and energy-development projects are affecting the social and economic climate of rural areas across the nation. This creates a need for extensive planning information, both to prepare for the effects of such developments and to meet state and federal environmental-assessment requirements. This book examines alternative methods of modeling the economic, demographic, public-service, fiscal, and social impacts of major development projects. The authors provide a synthesis of the conceptual bases, estimation techniques, data requirements, and types of output available. They focus on models that address multiple impact dimensions and produce information at the county and subcounty levels. They also look at the kinds of data each model produces in each impact category. 366 references, 1 figure, 7 tables.