Search

Erosion of agricultural croplands is a significant contributor of sedimentation to reservoirs. Here, physiographic and economic models for a large agricultural watershed (2377 square miles with 27 subwatersheds) are integrated for the reduction of sedimentation of one Midwestern reservoir. Sediment reduction and the cost-effectiveness of three agricultural best management practices (no-till, filter strip, and permanent vegetation) implementation were considered under three modeling scenarios: random assignment; the globally most cost-effective approach; and a cost-effective targeting approach. This study demonstrates how physiographic and economic data can be harnessed to yield readily comprehendible cost-effective targeting maps. Cost-effective targeting may be preferable to watershed managers for its “user-friendliness” without too great a sacrifice of the globally most cost-efficient solution.

Payment for environmental service contracts commonly require actions beyond adoption of a practice, such as undergoing specified enrollment procedures, granting consent to being monitored, and paying penalties for violations. These provisions are a bundle of attributes a landholder must accept with contract enrollment, leading to transaction costs in the contracting process. This article develops a principal-agent framework to study the links between these transaction costs and the well-known information asymmetries between the landholders and the government agency offering contracts. Using stated choice data collected from a sample of farmers, we estimate a mixed logit model to quantify the contribution of different contract attributes on contract willingness-to-accept (WTA). More stringent provisions in contracts were found to raise individual WTA by widely differing amounts across farmers, but the average effects imply that overall contract supply is sensitive to stringency. From a series of microsimulations based on the estimated model, we find that transaction costs create a significant drain on the cost-effectiveness of contracting from the agency's point of view, similar in magnitude to the inefficiency created by hidden information. Although stringent contractual terms raise program expenditures, they may be justified if they raise compliance rates enough to offset the added cost. We also simulate an implicit frontier to trace out the change in compliance needed to justify a given increase in stringency. For environmental benefits in the range of previous estimates, this analysis suggests that stringent terms would need to substantially raise compliance rates to be cost effective.

Erosion of agricultural cropland has been identified as a major source of sediment accumulating in water reservoirs. Emphasis is increasingly on finding the most cost-effective ways to control soil erosion to reduce reservoir sedimentation. In this study, biophysical and economic models for the Tuttle Creek Lake watershed in northeastern Kansas were integrated to determine if implementation of alternative cropland management strategies to reduce reservoir sediment are more cost-effective than dredging. In the Tuttle Creek Lake watershed, we found that if the marginal costs of agricultural best management practices (BMP) implementation become >$6.90/t of sediment reduction, then dredging becomes the economically preferred alternative. Meeting this cost requires that BMP in the form of filter strips and no-till cultivation are implemented in a targeted, cost-effective manner, not in a random pattern of voluntary adoption that may characterize BMP adoption in some watersheds. Although reservoir dred...

The importance of information technologies in regional economic performance is widely accepted but only widely studied in more populous regions in the United States. Local and state development practitioners and policy makers actively court and promote Information Technology (IT)—intensive industries in rural areas. Despite various promotional efforts, relatively little is known about the specific location requirements of such industries, however, especially in lower population areas of the United States such as the mostly rural Midwest. In this article, the authors examine the location choice preferences of firms in three IT industry sectors in metro, metro-adjacent, and nonmetro regions using a highly detailed data set of Kansas industries. The modeling framework combines both conditional logit and Poisson regression models. The results indicate that average establishment size, industry clustering, labor intensity, and county employment growth explain variations in industry location choice preferences across regions.

“Watershed Manager” is a spreadsheet-based model that is used in extension education programs for learning about and selecting cost-effective watershed management practices to reduce soil, nitrogen, and phosphorus losses from cropland. It can facilitate Watershed Restoration and Protection Strategy (WRAPS) stakeholder groups’ development of comprehensive watershed management plans that are required to be eligible for state and federal funding. This tool was developed to educate stakeholders about alternative best management practices (BMPs) that result in improvements in water quality and to select the combination of BMPs that yield the largest improvement in water quality per dollar spent. Users are able to estimate, optimize, and compare the economic and environmental effects of alternative management practices. WRAPS represents a citizen/stakeholder-led approach rather than a government-mandated and directed approach to watershed management. Kansas WRAPS is a state-sanctioned process whereby watershed protection and restoration plans are created and implemented. Funds, guidance, and technical assistance are provided for stakeholders to reach consensus on issues of relevance in their watershed and to design and execute a plan to address those issues. Cost-effective conservation is a way of getting the largest benefit for the dollars invested, but it is not always the most politically or socially palatable approach. Watershed Manager allows local stakeholders to cost-effectively identify politically and socially acceptable management practices. Watershed Manager has been utilized in developing cost-effective implementation plans to meet total maximum daily loads (TMDLs) for 16 Hydrologic Unit Code 8 (HUC 8) watersheds in Kansas through the WRAPS program.

Analyses of small business and the fac- tors affecting their survival are fairly common in the research literature. The level of research interest may stem from the fact that in the US, only about half of all new small businesses survive after 4 years (Headd 2003). However, research attempting to understand the phenomenon that employs data using only information from and about surviving firms may lead to erroneous conclusions regarding the factors that influence firm survival and failure. In this paper, we provide evidence that omitted information about the firms that disappear from the research data over time leads to biased coefficient estimates. Comparing the Heckman two-step estimation approach of switching regression models to a semi-parametric Cox hazard model, the Accelerated Failure Time (AFT) model, we conclude that the Cox ATF approach is the most appropriate model for firm survival analysis.

Cross-sectional time series data in a partial adjustment model are used to examine county government fiscal behavior under a “hard” tax and expenditure limitation policy, an aggregate property tax levy limit, versus a “soft” limit under Truth in Taxation in Kansas. Results indicate that under the aggregate levy limit, per capita property taxes, own-source revenues and own-source expenditures were significantly higher than under the Truth in Taxation policy where local officials face many fewer restrictions on their ability to raise the levy.

This research introduces an industrial targeting system intended to improve local decision making related to selection of targets for business recruitment. The Plains Economic Targeting System (PETS) consists of a series of econometric equations that match industry input and market requirements with community characteristics to generate a probability of new business location over a given time period. The system matches location requirements for 78 industry sectors to local characteristics for 414 counties in six Great Plains states. Further, the coefficients generated for a given county are transformed into marginal impacts, providing important information relating to local policies that can improve the probability of attracting a given industry. Copyright 2002, Oxford University Press.

One of the important objectives of forest management planning is to enhance the beneficial economic impacts of resource policy decisions. Input-output is one of the common tools planning analysts use to assess economic impacts. This paper presents procedures whereby the county data files for the Micro-IMPLAN input-output modeling system can be adjusted to create economic models at a finer level of geographic specificity than county-based models. Models specified to the minor civil division level can permit closer evaluation of resource policy impacts on regions defined by resource-base rather than administrative or political boundaries. North. J. Appl. For. 16(3):129-136.

This article discusses the use of regional economic modeling techniques to determine the household income distribution impacts associated with various economic sectors. Determining the distributional characteristics of economic sectors requires identifying the relationship between aggregate factor income change and its distribution to local households. Social accounting matrix analysis provides an analytic framework to track the flow of income from local productive activities to households differentiated by income category. Its use is illustrated with an analysis of alternative economic development strategies for a rural region. To the extent that local economic develop ment policy can differentially influence the level of local productive activity, it becomes possible to assess who benefits by economic growth. Incorporating information related to income distribution allows local policy makers to move beyond the pursuit of aggregate economic growth to incorporate additional objectives that are important to overall regional development.

Typically, primary survey data is necessary to gauge the scale of local tourism. This paper proposes an alternative method for generating county-level estimates of employee compensation attributable to tourism based on secondary data sources. The procedure used principal components and cluster analyses to establish regions matched by tourism structure. Minimum requirements was then used to estimate the share of employee compensation attributable to non-local demand. The procedure was applied to Wisconsin counties to estimate tourism shares attributable to travelers and recreational home owners. The principal components analysis showed that Wisconsin tourism is driven by variable combinations of three components: urban tourism, outdoor-based activities, and natural parks/specialty tourism. Minimum requirements generated county-level estimates of non-local demand for disaggregated tourism-sensitive business sectors. Tourism shares ranged from approximately 3 percent of total employee compensation within the urban clusters to about 10 percent in the nature and parks clusters.

The purpose of this paper is to present a methodology to measure some of the economic impacts of state highway programs. State departments of transportation (DOTs) need such a methodology for a variety of reasons, including long-term highway planning as well as advising state policymakers concerning the economic impacts of highway programs. The specific objectives of this study are: (1) describe a procedure to measure the output, value added, and employment impacts of specific types of highway and bridge improvement, and (2) illustrate an application of the model using data from Kansas. The objectives of the research are accomplished with input-output modeling. An 11-step procedure is described for adjusting the Kansas IMPLAN input-output model so that it is capable of measuring economic impacts for specific types of highway and bridge improvement. The model is illustrated using data from a recently completed study of the Kansas Comprehensive Transportation Program (CTP), which included expenditure of $5.24 billion on state highway system projects. Data from this study are used to demonstrate the calculation of output, value added, and employment impacts for five different highway and bridge improvement categories.

Estimating Tourism's Share Of Local Income From Secondary Data Sources Abstract: Typically, primary survey data is necessary to gauge the scale of local tourism. This paper proposes an alternative method for generating county-level estimates of employee compensation attributable to tourism based on secondary data sources. The procedure used principal components and cluster analyses to establish regions matched by tourism structure. Minimum requirements was then used to estimate the share of employee compensation attributable to non-local demand. The procedure was applied to Wisconsin counties to estimate tourism shares attributable to travelers and recreational home owners. The principal components analysis showed that Wisconsin tourism is driven by variable combinations of three components: urban tourism, outdoor-based activities, and natural parks/specialty tourism. Minimum requirements generated county-level estimates of non-local demand for disaggregated tourism-sensitive business sectors. Tourism shares ranged from approximately 3 percent of total employee compensation within the urban clusters to about 10 percent in the nature and parks clusters.

Entrepreneurship (small firm entry) within a defined technological regime is examined using regional, establishment, and industry characteristics in metro, metro-adjacent, and non-metro regions in the state of Kansas, USA. The results show a distinct variation in small firm entry across regions. The variation is explained by the quality of the labour force, industry clustering, establishment size, labour intensity, county establishment growth rate, and the presence of an interstate highway. The contribution of this paper is the empirical examination of the validity of claims that entrepreneurship in technological regimes is more prevalent in the metro region and decreases with increasing remoteness.

The use of Information Technologies (IT) has changed the economic landscape in urban and rural areas alike. Future economic prosperity may depend, in part, on the relative extent regions can attract, grow and hold IT-intensive industries. In this article, IT-related and e-commerce-intensive industries' direct employment generation performance was examined in urban and rural areas of Kansas between 1990 and 2003. The results indicated that IT-producing and -using industries have been growing faster in metro-adjacent and non-metro area counties than in metro counties. The presence of larger firms and higher population densities significantly enhanced IT-producing and -using industry employment growth. Contrary to expectation, an increasing share of knowledge workers in the labour force was found to hinder IT-industry employment growth in rural areas. e-Commerce industries faired poorly outside of metro areas.

This book presents new evidence concerning the influential role of context and institutions on the relations between knowledge, innovation, clusters and learning. From a truly international perspective, the expert contributors capture the most interesting and relevant aspects of knowledge economy.