This paper analyzes the economic impact of plant-parasitic nematodes in the U.S. potato industry, focusing on how both unanticipated and anticipated yield losses affect producer decisions, market outcomes, and welfare. We use a modified Cournot model and estimate a system of supply and demand equations using Three-Stage Least Squares (3SLS). We simulate scenarios to measure how varying levels of nematode infestation influence producer profits and consumer surplus in the short-run and the long-run. Simulations suggest that reducing nematode damage could yield substantial gains in output and consumer welfare particularly in concentrated markets where strategic producer behavior amplifies these effects. Our findings underscore the need to account for both biological uncertainty and market structure when evaluating pest impacts and designing policy responses.

This study investigates the economic impacts of agricultural Working Lands Easements (WLE) and New Reserves (NR) in a Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP), and provides an example based in Thurston County, Washington. We analyzed the effect of varying levels of WLE inclusion in the County HCP, focusing on direct economic impacts, restoration costs, livestock production costs, tax revenue, and employment multipliers. The baseline assumption was that all funding for NR sectors would be locally sourced, displacing other local spending. Results show that scenarios with higher agricultural WLE inclusion generated significantly greater economic impacts, including higher direct economic impacts, tax revenue, and job creation, as compared to scenarios with minimal or no WLE involvement. When external funding for NR sectors was introduced at 15% and 25% levels, the economic impact of these sectors increased, suggesting the importance of securing non-local funding to enhance conservation efforts without adversely affecting the local economy. The study highlights the potential synergies of mandated habitat conservation and rural economic development, emphasizing the need for aspirational policy interventions that deliver economic benefits while achieving conservation goals. These findings provide insights for policymakers designing habitat conservation strategies that support both farm-based economic opportunity and environmental stewardship.

This study spatially extends the USDA's Food Dollar framework, analyzing food expenditure distribution across regional economies. Using regional SAMs and county-level data, we estimate farm shares, industry contributions, and food dollar multipliers. Results reveal significant geographic disparities, with processing shares ranging from over 25% to under 20% and farm shares ranging from 10.2% to 12.9%. The food dollar contributions and multipliers also show geographic diversity and indicate varying densities of food supply chains throughout the United States. These insights support place-based policies strengthening local food systems may be in place, and their existence may be effective in promoting food sector-based regional economic development.

This article analyzes and compares changes in liquor sales across urban and rural markets that occurred in response to COVID-19 pandemic and the associated shutdown policies. The data includes every liquor sales transaction, by type (retail store vs. bars and restaurants), month, and location in the State of Idaho. The data facilitates an analysis of the differential dynamic effects of COVID-19 on sales through retail and wholesale (i.e., bars and restaurants) market channels differentiated by urban and rural regions, estimated at the individual-outlet level. Controlling for persistent seasonal fluctuations in liquor consumption, retail liquor sales surged during the peak of the stay-at-home policies, while bar and restaurant sales declined markedly. As bars and restaurants began to reopen, substantial differences occurred between urban and rural areas, including the persistence of reduced sales to bars and restaurants. This suggests that statewide pandemic policies, which were more focused on addressing conditions in urban areas, may have benefitted from greater regional differentiation tailored to idiosyncrasies of rural populations.

Eating a diet high in fruits and vegetables is associated with a reduction in the risk of chronic diseases such as obesity, cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, asthma, depression, and mental illness, yet few low-income adults meet these recommendations. Nutrition incentive programs have emerged over the last decade to offer incentives to food-insecure households to purchase more fruits and vegetables. Although the goal of the program is to increase the consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables, defenders of nutrition incentive programs increasingly want to document economic impacts of their programs but often lack the resources to do so. Rather than these programs spending their scarce resources on conducting studies, this research created a rigorous, yet easy to use tool that U.S.-based practitioners operating nutrition incentive programs can use to estimate the economic impact of their programs, including incentive redemptions at both farm-direct and brick-and-mortar businesses.

This paper introduces and describes the Tapestry regional economic data and modeling project. Tapestry is an open source set of data generating algorithms, harmonization bridges, data organizing procedures and data models. It is also a database that provides access to Tapestry also represents a collaborative environment where researchers can use and improve data generating algorithms and methods. Tapestry represents many types of regional economic data and models, but ultimately it is designed to generate inter-regional social accounting matrices for every county in the United States.

We propose a method that incorporates specific business needs and community goals to identify community assets that most constrain local economic development. Access to a managerial workforce was the most common highly ranked constraint, but the set of most constraining assets varies across communities. Thus, a one-size-fits-all development policy is not appropriate. We also find that constraint rankings are highly correlated among communities that share tourism potential, that share energy resources, or that rely upon production agriculture. Development practitioners may craft a suite of development policies, each tailored to communities of a given typology.

This analysis examines how a local skills gap is related to entrepreneurial outcomes at the regional level in the USA. We develop a novel measure of a regional skills gap using education, comparing the educational attainment of the population with the education requirements of jobs in the region. We hypothesize that an educational mismatch, specifically overeducation, drives new establishment births. This positive effect of overeducation is even higher in high-amenity, non-metro counties, mainly in the Mountain West. To the extent that entrepreneurship generates broader economic growth, this suggests an especially promising strategy for development in some rural regions. Overeducated communities rich in natural resources are primed for entrepreneurship. By measuring a skills gaps based on the match between the education level of the local population and the education required by employers, we quantify the extent of educational mismatch across US counties. We find that overeducated places (more people with a bachelor’s degree than would be predicted by the existing employers) are more entrepreneurial, especially if they are rich in natural amenities and rural. Our results imply the importance of place-based economic policy, highlighting how local context matters and may ultimately determine the success of any given strategy.

The concept of community resilience has garnered a great deal of attention in the past decade and many theoretical constructs have been proposed to model resilience, including the community capitals framework. However, while the community capitals framework has been developed theoretically and subcomponents have been quantified, little research has attempted to address the community capitals framework as a whole and test how well the theorical constructs fit together. Using a structural equation model, we empirically investigate the community capitals framework and test how variables identified in the literature combine to predict community resilience. We find that, while many variables in the theoretical literature perform poorly, the overall framework provides a compelling avenue for addressing economic resilience.

This analysis introduces a conceptual framework for economic enfranchisement and studies its effect on an individual's likelihood to set strong financial goals. A conceptual and empirical model is developed to investigate how economic enfranchisement influences an individual's likelihood to set a goal and the strength of that goal. The empirical analysis employs an ordered probit to account for the two-stage goal-setting and goal strength decision process. Results show that economic enfranchisement has a significant effect on an individual's likelihood to set financial goals where more enfranchised individuals are more likely to set strong goals than their disenfranchised counterparts.

OBJECTIVE: COVID-19 and the associated policies created a large shift in alcohol sales. A change in availability and consumer preferences caused a shift from wholesale to retail sales in many areas. This study estimates the magnitude of the changes in wholesale and retail sales, and the persistence of these changes. METHOD: Highly detailed sales data are used to analyze trends in distilled spirts sales during the COVID-19 pandemic in the state of Idaho. A total of 810,000 unique observations that cover 58 types of distilled spirts are used in a regression analysis to find the determinants of distilled spirts sales. RESULTS: In March 2020, there was a 27.2% increase in sales compared with the previous March because of a 42.3% increase in retail sales and a 41.1% decrease in wholesale sales. Increased sales continued until August 2020. The regression analysis shows changes in demand during 2020 varied by the type of distilled spirits; demand increased more for distilled spirts types with higher ethanol early in March 2020, but from April to July demand increased more for expensive distilled spirts with a lower ethanol level. CONCLUSIONS: Examination of the types of distilled spirts purchased during the early stages of the pandemic shows us that consumers bought different types of distilled spirts for various characteristics, such as price and ethanol level. We find that consumers initially purchased cheap distilled spirts with high alcohol content. By August, distilled spirts sales were similar to previous years. These results will be useful to policymakers in determining the effects of distilled spirts restrictions.

Objective: COVID-19 and the associated policies cre-ated a large shift in alcohol sales. A change in availability and consumer preferences caused a shift from wholesale to retail sales in many areas. This study estimates the magnitude of the changes in wholesale and retail sales, and the persistence of these changes. Method: Highly detailed sales data are used to analyze trends in distilled spirts sales during the COVID-19 pandemic in the state of Idaho. A total of 810,000 unique observations that cover 58 types of distilled spirts are used in a regression analysis to find the determinants of distilled spirts sales. Results: In March 2020, there was a 27.2% increase in sales compared with the previous March because of a 42.3% increase in retail sales and a 41.1% decrease in wholesale sales. Increased sales continued until August 2020. The regression analysis shows changes in demand during 2020 varied by the type of distilled spirits; demand increased more for distilled spirts types with higher ethanol early in March 2020, but from April to July demand increased more for expensive distilled spirts with a lower ethanol level. Conclusions: Examination of the types of distilled spirts purchased during the early stages of the pandemic shows us that consumers bought different types of distilled spirts for various charac-teristics, such as price and ethanol level. We find that consumers initially purchased cheap distilled spirts with high alcohol content. By August, distilled spirts sales were similar to previous years. These results will be useful to policymakers in determining the effects of distilled spirts restrictions.

The current coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic has exposed the sensitivity of tourism- and hospitality-dependent regional economies to external shocks. While the negative impacts of external shocks on these economies have been widely studied, the resiliency of these tourism- and hospitality-dependent regions to recover from such shocks is less well understood. In this study, we model how dependency on tourism and hospitality activity influences regional economic resiliency. Using US county-level resiliency data, we find that, overall, greater dependency reduces rates of resiliency. Allowing for spatial heterogeneity in the underlying relationship, we do find pockets within the United States, where greater dependency enhanced economic resiliency. This latter result suggests that the location and nature of the tourism and hospitality industry matter and blanket generalizations might lead to incorrect policy interpretations.

This paper discusses the benefits and costs of antitrust intervention in agriculture. We argue that over the long run, fixed costs have increased and marginal costs have decreased, which has created a tension between lower food prices and having a large number of farms. As opposed to policies of most industries, agricultural policy seems to place more importance upon producer surplus instead of consumer surplus, which runs directly counter to the goals of antitrust laws. While protecting small farms may potentially be an appropriate use of other policy instruments (such as the Farm Bill), using antitrust laws to break up large agricultural firms and/or protect small farms may result in higher food prices, which is regressive and exacerbates inequality. Furthermore, the application of antitrust law for the purpose of raising food prices and producer surplus is antithetical to its historic purpose.

This paper examines the buy local movement using social interactions. Social interaction arises if some consumers have preferences for local economic output due to altruism toward local producers and/or because of local amenities that benefit the community. This introduces an incentive for some consumers to advocate for localism and convert other consumers to buy locally. However, when there are competing communities, global efforts to buy more local products leads to lower utility from consumption and, under some scenarios, no increases in local production. This paper analyzes the benefits and costs of buying locally under various types of localism and market structures.

This paper analyzes the economic effects of the 2012 change in liquor policy (Initiative 1183) in Washington State in the United States. This policy increased the availability of liquor but also increased taxes on liquor in Washington. This research provides some evidence that the quantity of liquor sold in both Washington and Idaho increased, suggesting that availability/convenience effects can outweigh tax/price effects. Furthermore, the cross-border spillover effects are isolated to the nearest store to the border.

Globodera pallida, Pale cyst nematode (PCN), has become a major problem for the U.S. potato industry as a whole and the Idaho potato industry in particular. PCN is estimated to have reduced the amount of lands in potato production by just over 1233 ha in 2016 in Idaho. This study estimates the economic impact of PCN on the Idaho economy by using a customized Input-Output Model. PCN was found to have significant negative impacts on total agricultural output in affected areas that can only be partially mitigated by the substitution of alternative crops in the affected areas. Including indirect and induced effects, the economic impact of PCN on the Idaho economy in 2016 was calculated to be $30.38 million in economic output. These losses were only partially mitigated by an increase of $4.83 million in total output from producing other rotational crops in the affected area. However, the net impact of the PCN infestation on output of the Idaho economy was estimated to be a loss of $25.56 million. Globodera pallida, el nematodo de quiste pálido (PCN), se ha vuelto un problema importante para la industria de la papa de los EUA en general, y en particular para la industria de la papa de Idaho. Se estima que el PCN ha reducido la cantidad de tierras en la producción de papas justo por encima de 1233 hectáreas en 2016 en Idaho. Este estudio estima el impacto económico del PCN en la economía de Idaho mediante el uso de un modelo diseñado de ingreso-egreso. Se encontró que el PCN tiene impactos negativos significativos en la producción agrícola total en las áreas afectadas que solo pueden ser parcialmente mitigados mediante la substitución con cultivos alternativos en dichas áreas. Incluyendo los efectos indirectos e inducidos, el impacto económico del PCN en la economía de Idaho en 2016 se calculó en $ 30.38 millones en la producción económica. Estas pérdidas se mitigaron solo parcialmente con un aumento de $ 4.83 millones en producción total mediante la producción de otros cultivos en rotación en el área afectada. No obstante, el impacto neto de la infestación del PCN en la producción de la economía de Idaho se estimó en una pérdida de $ 25.56 millones.

What constitutes a “good business climate” is often couched in monolithic and diametrically opposed terms of low taxes versus high public services. However, there is likely considerable heterogeneity across firms in their preferences for the trade-off between higher taxes and the public services they provide. Using a novel primary data set of firm expansion and relocation decisions, this analysis investigates how firms in relatively high-paying sectors express their preferences for a variety of local “business climate” attributes relative to firms in lower-paying sectors. The findings show evidence that firms in low-wage sectors view a “good business climate” differently than firms in high-wage sectors.

Regional economic resilience can be defined as an economy's ability to withstand and recover quickly from shocks. The ability to measure resilience is necessary to developing our understanding of what influences resilience. In this paper, we develop a new, two-dimensional quantitative measure of resilience using observed differences between expected and actual employment in a region following a shock and distinguish the response to the shock from random variation. We demonstrate one application of this metric to US county-level employment data to compare county responses to the 2007-2009 national recession and discuss how different regions of the United States responded to the shock of the Great Recession in terms of resilience.

Given the growing interest in local food systems and the complexity of modeling the economic impacts of such systems, the Local Food Impact Calculator (LFIC) was created to provide a simple but methodologically sound tool to assist practitioners. In this paper, we cite four examples, along with discussion of each, to illustrate both the use and application of the calculator, as well as to provide additional insights into using the calculator. Readers will learn that economic impact analysis provides information about industrial linkages in the local economy, and how to understand the implied multiplier's value from the LFIC in the context of their local economy. When used carefully, the LFIC can be a useful tool for use in community conversations around local foods.