2020 SRSA: 2020 SOUTHERN REGIONAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION
PROGRAM FOR FRIDAY, APRIL 3RD
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08:00-09:45 Session 4A: Organized Session: Opioid Crisis II-Informing Policy Choices through Regional Analysis
Location: Franklin
08:00
Understanding Rural Resiliency and Vulnerability to Prescription Opioids: A Mixed Methods Approach

ABSTRACT. Over the last two decades, deaths from opioid use disorders (OUDs) have increased dramatically to become a major public health crisis in the United States (Rigg and Monnat 2015). Prescription opioids have had the largest and longest lasting in non-metropolitan communities (Peters et al. 2019). Unlike previous drug epidemics, prescription opioids have impacted smaller communities, increasing at a faster pace in rural (623 percent) and micropolitan (616 percent) areas than in metropolitan ones (305 percent) since 1999. Prescription overdose deaths peaked in 2011, but have fallen since then in some places. There is a need to understand why some places are more resilient or vulnerable to prescription opioid overdose deaths. This paper uses Poisson models to predict 2014-16 pooled mortality rates for prescription opioids using 2000 lagged socioeconomic and drug risk factors for n=2,013 non-metropolitan counties in the conterminous United States. Based on predicted and observed values, I find 29 resilient, 31 coping, 54 vulnerable, and 34 endangered places. Mean difference tests are used to understand the unique characteristics of these poorly fitted cases. We selected four counties, one in each group, and conducted extensive interviews with stakeholders and community focus groups. We have identified several emergent themes from this corpus of qualitative data. We discuss reasons why some places have overcome high risk factors to have low prescription mortality, while other have high mortality in the absence of such risks. We conclude by discussing how the results can be used to improve statistical modeling; and offer recommendations to promote prescription opioid resiliency and coping in micropolitan and rural communities.

08:30
Regional Impacts of Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs) on U.S. Drug Overdose Deaths
PRESENTER: Elham Erfanian
DISCUSSANT: Brian Osoba

ABSTRACT. The United States is by far the biggest consumer of opioids in the world. With the explosive rise in opioid overdose mortality in the United States, efforts to curb demand and supply of prescription and non-prescription opioids have been on the rise. One such program aimed at curbing mainly the supply-side of prescription drugs in states is the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP). Theoretically, PDMPs can have a positive or negative relationship with overdose deaths. Impacts could be positive because PDMPs restrict doctor or pharmacy shopping, restricting the supply of prescription opioids in the market, hence the possibility of death by overdose. Impacts could, however, have a potentially negative effect on overdose deaths due to the effects of users substituting cheaper non-prescription drugs like heroin or black market prescription drugs. While research aimed at assessing the effectiveness of PDMPs has begun, few have adequately addressed the heterogeneity in PDMPs, and none have accounted for spillover effects to and from neighboring states. The aim of this research is to remedy these gaps in existing research. Spatial effects can be expected to arise primarily from cross-border drug acquisitions. Not accounting for spatial dependency in the data can result in incorrect impacts estimates. Therefore, in this study, using the county-level data from the NCHS database and other sources, we employ spatial econometric estimation techniques that account for and quantify these spatial effects. Accounting for these indirect effects will help inform policymakers and result in more effective policy proposals.

09:00
Panel Session: Foundations and Challenges for Informing Public Policy through Regional Analysis
PRESENTER: David Peters

ABSTRACT. *Moderator: David Peters (Iowa State University); dpeters@iastate.edu
Elham Erfanian (University of Kentucky); el.erfanian@gmail.com
Devon Meadowcroft (Penn State University); dpm5868@psu.edu
Julie Marshall (Medical University of South Carolina); marshaju@musc.edu
Frank O’Connor (Eastern Kentucky University); Frank.Oconnor@eku.edu
Brian J. Osoba (Central Connecticut State University); osobabrj@ccsu.edu
David Peters (Iowa State University); dpeters@iastate.edu
Juan Tomas Sayago Gomez (Icesi University); juantomas.sayago@gmail.com
Jacqueline Yenerall (University of Tennessee); jyeneral@utk.edu

08:00-09:45 Session 4B: Urban Economics I
Location: Oglethorpe AB
08:00
Pedestrian Crash Analysis Using Walkability and Sociodemographic Factors
DISCUSSANT: Sicheng Wang

ABSTRACT. The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between walkability, pedestrian crashes, and socioeconomic demographics in U.S. cities. While more people are choosing walking in the past decade, pedestrian travel has not become safer. Between 2008 and 2017, pedestrian crashes have increased by 35 percent nationwide. As the most vulnerable user on the road, it’s vital that research is dedicated to understanding and addressing the risks that pedestrians face. As such, the concept of walkability has emerged as a way to measure the degree to which an environment facilitates walking. One of the most recent walkability measures is Walk Score, a free online database that calculates a walkability index for any location. Using Walk Score, the relationship between pedestrian crashes and walkability is explored at the neighborhood level in a U.S. case study. The goal is to understand if pedestrian safety can be predicted by objective walkability and socioeconomic factors. The results of this research can inform public policy, infrastructure developments, and transportation equity.

08:21
How ridesourcing regulations affect urban traffic?: A New York case
PRESENTER: Sicheng Wang

ABSTRACT. The rapid growth of ridesourcing services such as Uber and Lyft is to blame for the aggravation of traffic congestion. While ridesourcing is barely regulated in most regions, New York City issued a series of laws to restrict the operation of ridesourcing services in 2018 and 2019. It is unclear whether and to what extent these regulatory approaches have influenced the congestion. In this study, we use historical street-level speed data in New York City, obtained from the Application Programming Interface (API) of the Uber Movement Website, to examine the impact of regulations on traffic. A variety of built environment indicators, including density, urban forms, availability of transit, parking, and consumer destinations, are used as control variables. The results point to the mechanism of how ridesourcing policies influence traffic, which sheds light on the smart and effective regulations of emerging mobility forms.

08:42
DO HOUSEHOLD REMITTANCES REDUCE VIOLENT CRIME IN MEXICO? EVIDENCE USING A SPATIAL REGRESSION APPROACH
DISCUSSANT: Rebekka Apardian

ABSTRACT. The consequences of the growth and spread of homicide across Mexico’s territory has been attracting attention from scholars to analyze the effects of the War on Drugs on its economy. There is a growing body of research on the effects of Mexico’s drug-related violence on its economic growth determinants. Yet, some important questions remain. For example, what is the relationship between remittances and crime? specifically, do household remittances reduce violent crime? The aim of this research work is to examine the linkage between violent crime (homicide rate per 100,000 population) and household remittances (main independent variable) at the municipal level by considering a cross-sectional spatial regression analysis that controls for the presence of spatial effects, specifically spatial autocorrelation and spatial heterogeneity, and potential endogeneity concerns. In doing so, I use different socioeconomic and demographic control variables from nationally representative data during the two-years 2010-2015 period and adopt four different regression methods: OLS, IV-2SLS, Generalized Spatial Two Stage Least Squares (GS2SLS), and Eigenvector Spatial Filtering (ESF). The exploratory spatial data analysis indicate that the data generating process do not show randomly distributed values but clustered values. Preliminary results exhibit mixed results on the effects of recipients-remittances households on violent crime but only negative and significant when considering the ESF method. Additionally, the control variables female-headed households, population without social security, schooling, and income inequality are according to the expected signs as well as significant across non-spatial and spatial regression models. Diagnostic tests suggest that the IV-2SLS method improve regression estimates by addressing endogeneity concerns, however, there is a strong presence of spatial dependence in the regression residuals relative to the GS2SLS and ESF regression results. On other hand, the spatial regression models, specifically the ESF method, not only address potential endogeneity concerns by adopting a two-step regression approach, but significantly reduces spatial autocorrelation in the regression residuals. In general, the spatial regression specification exhibits better goodness of fit than non-spatial specifications. Based on the ESF estimation results, the main findings indicate that households’ remittances might have a direct income effect whereas reducing economic stress and the likelihood of a household’s member to engage in illicit behaviors such as violent crime.

09:03
An Aggregate Approach to Quality of Life in Micropolitan Areas
PRESENTER: Amanda Weinstein
DISCUSSANT: John Winters

ABSTRACT. Rosen-Roback models rely on large samples of micro-level housing and wage data to estimate the quality of life (and quality of the business environment) in metropolitan areas. The data requirements of the methodology necessarily precludes micropolitan areas from quality of life estimations. This limits the data-driven approaches available to policymakers concerned with economic development in small towns. Thus, we develop an aggregate approach to the Rosen-Roback framework which allows us to utilize aggregate housing and wage data available across counties in the U.S. We then estimate the importance of quality of life and the quality of the business environment in predicting future population and employment growth in micropolitan areas.

09:24
Minimum Wages and Teen Employment across the Urban Hierarchy
DISCUSSANT: Amanda Weinstein

ABSTRACT. Minimum wages receive considerable attention but little consensus. This study estimates effects of minimum wages on employment of teens ages 16-17 during the 2005-2018 period. I examine effects for the entire U.S. and by metropolitan area status and population size. The full sample results indicate statistically significant negative average effects. Non-metropolitan area coefficient estimates are positive though not statistically significant. Metropolitan area coefficient estimates are consistently negative, and the effects are largest for very large metropolitan areas. Minimum wage effects on teen employment vary across the urban hierarchy. I find evidence of labor-labor substitution, especially in very large metropolitan areas.

08:00-09:45 Session 4C: Neighborhoods, Communities & Education
Location: Forsyth
08:00
Compulsory Attendance Year by Birth-Month and College Scholarship; Addressing Selection into Treatment In Merit-Aid Funding Assignment
DISCUSSANT: Huibin Weng

ABSTRACT. Compulsory kindergarten entry laws have birth date-based thresholds which cause a discontinuous change in which year students enter college. Access to merit-aid depends on which cohort students enter college. I exploit this variation in a fuzzy regression discontinuity setup to provide insight to WVU about how financial aid affects student outcomes, such as retention. I find students born into the first merit-aid cohort at a large state university are more likely to complete the required number of credits to renew the scholarship compared to those born slightly too early, suggesting a mechanism through which Promise receipt increases student retention.

08:25
General neighborhood effects and network formation: the impact of friendship on educational outcome
PRESENTER: Olivier Parent
DISCUSSANT: Kenneth Whaley

ABSTRACT. In order to accurately model and evaluate peer effects it is necessary to carefully analyze the mechanisms through which peers affect individual behavior.

In this empirical illustration, we analyze the impact of friendship network on academic performance using data from wave I of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Harris et al., 2009). The prevalent economic literature evaluating how students' behavior are impacted by their socio-economic environment has mainly been empirically tested from this database (Calvo-Armengol, Pettachini and Zenou, 2009, Card and Giulanio, 2013, Goldsmith-Pinkham and Imbens, 2013, and Hsieh and Lee, 2016). It contains a nationally representative sample of more than 90,000 adolescents and their health-related behavior for grades 7–12 accross 132 schools.

Using the same dataset, Hsieh et al. (2019) underline the importance of modeling the effects unobserved characteristics on friendship formation. They show that larger differences between individual unobserved effects decreases the probability of friendship ties. However by relying only on unobserved homophily, they do not capture unobserved heterogeneity that could explain individual variations in the propensity to make friends. Even under the assumption of dyad independence, Graham (2017) underlines that estimates will be biased if the unobserved random heterogeneity is not properly estimated.

08:50
Local Wealth and the Market for Homes Near Racially Diverse Schools
DISCUSSANT: Olivier Parent

ABSTRACT. Moriarty Graduate Paper Competition

I analyze mortgage loans and home values from 2000-2014 to study housing markets and household sorting in neighborhoods near racially diverse schools. Using a national sample of over 3,600 middle schools, I construct a measure of school demographic diversity and estimate how home values and mortgage loan amounts change as diversity increases. For identification I isolate variation in school demographics associated with the quasi-random timing of rental housing development under the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program. I find that mortgage values rise by nearly 6.7%, holding median home values constant and controlling for changes in local income levels and home buyer socioeconomic characteristics. The magnitude of the effect is consistent for white, black, and Hispanic home buyers, and coincides with a decrease in home values of 2.5% near diversifying schools. The effect is reversed for white home buyers near diverse schools in low-income areas, who borrow less for housing holding home values constant. I present two explanations for these findings, both which shed light on neighborhood wealth, down payment ability, and the consequences of household sorting over local amenities.

08:00-09:45 Session 4D: Economic Growth & Development II
Location: Chatham
08:00
Impacts of anti-poverty programs on land use change – the case of NREGS in India
DISCUSSANT: Eduardo Almeida

ABSTRACT. Starting with the ‘green revolution’ in 1960’s India has witnessed increasing agricultural growth and consequent changes in land use patterns towards agricultural use and urbanization (Tian et al., 2014). Population growth, rising incomes, and changes in climate are among the many factors that are attributed as causes of land use change. However, the changing economic incentives for resource exploitation along with evolving institutional set-up is the primary force behind the dynamic nature of land use change (Lambin et al., 2001). There has been a growth in the multitude of policies aimed towards resource conservation. Concurrent with these policies many anti-poverty programs have been implemented, for example Bolsa Familia and Bolsa Floresta in Brazil, and the Kalimantan Forests and Climate Partnership in Indonesia. Given the increasing pressure of population growth and consumption demand on natural resource utilization especially in the developing world, and rising number of poverty reduction programs in those countries, it is important to understand how these forces interact to affect how land is utilized. In this paper, we study how the Indian workfare program, National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) affects land cover. NREGS aims to reduce uncertainties in employment faced by primarily landless households during lean agricultural seasons in rural India. The scheme generates employment by undertaking development of public works. Thus, the effect of NREGS is two pronged – decreasing poverty and building village infrastructure catering to the needs of its residents (Ministry of Rural Development, GOI, 2007). Changes in land use patterns could thus be shaped by consequent changes in economic incentives for households to allocate or exploit land for various purposes like agriculture, grazing, or timber and fuelwood consumption.

We use the MCD12Q1 Combined Land Cover Type geospatial dataset, obtained from MODIS NASA, which provides a classification of land cover type according to various classification standards. We estimate impacts of NREGS program implementation on type of vegetation, for example whether a piece of land is forested or is an agricultural land, using a difference-in-differences (DID) framework as applied to five years of pre-treatment and one year of post treatment data. Impacts of the program are expected to vary by land use type and by access to markets. We focus our analysis to estimate the impacts of NREGS on land classified as woody savannas and croplands. Woody savannas are thinly forested areas which are usually not protected. We also consider travel time to nearest towns with 50,000 or more population as a proxy for market access and estimate heterogeneous treatment effects. We find robust negative effects of the program on woody savannas for those districts (administrative unit of program implementation) that are in the middle quartiles of travel or access time. Since a thickly forested area corresponds to higher access times, the results for woody savannas are, as expected, significant for districts in the middle quartiles of time taken to access nearest towns. The corresponding fall in proportion of area classified as woody savannas is 2.2 percentage points due to implementation of NREGS. We conclude that changes in local demand for primary forest resources like fuelwood and non-commercial timber due to the program are driving our results. In our next set of analyses, we will test for the presence of spatial autocorrelation in our data and estimate program effects for administrative subdivisions which are smaller than districts. Given the scope of NREGS as the largest workfare program in the world, its effect on land use change, would have implications on our understanding of anti-poverty programs and their effects.

08:25
Regional absorptive capacity: what patent citations data can tell us?
PRESENTER: Beatriz Almeida

ABSTRACT. Absorptive capacity is a key concept when it comes to the innovative performance of firms and regions, as it is the mechanism by which they are able to identify, assimilate and exploit knowledge spillovers. Regions that have a higher ability to absorb or learn from external knowledge are more likely to innovate, which makes them more competitive in the context of the knowledge economy. Patent citations are increasingly used to measure knowledge flows over time and space, since that a citation indicates that the inventor used that specific knowledge developed in another region or firm to create new knowledge. This paper proposes a new measure for the absorptive capacity of regions using patent citation data. In addition to employing a new measure for the variable, this paper aims to analyze determining factors for regional absorptive capacity. Also based on data from patent citations, regional lock-in measures, the appropriateness of patents in the region, generality, originality, degree of specialization in high technology patents and patent quality are created. Those variables are employed to analyze whether the type of knowledge generated and absorbed by the region impacts its absorptive capacity. The results show that regions with greater level of basic knowledge and that are leaders in certain technological areas, are more capable of absorbing external knowledge.

08:50
Measuring Phase Transitions in Regional Economies: Economic Cycles, Industry Restructuring and Adaptation
PRESENTER: Timothy Slaper
DISCUSSANT: Seunghoon Oh

ABSTRACT. This paper applies several constructs from Complex Adaptive Systems theory to understand several phenomena in regional economies.

We define and use new performance measures for marking phases of an economic recovery – peak, trough, return-to-peak and transformative growth – to assess the presence and extent of regional industry transformation over the business cycle. One unanswered question in the economic resilience literature is whether the ability to adapt following shocks can be foreseen. Expressed another way, does the experience of industry transformation and adaptation to new conditions in an earlier period of growth portend adaption in a subsequent period.

A corollary to this question is the structural effects of the business cycle and the nature of structural change between inflection points of the performance curve. We hypothesize that there is a clear difference in the nature of industrial from the trough of the recession to the return-to-peak recovery and the subsequent period in which the region’s performance measure may or may not have returned to long-term-trend. From a CAS perspective, the return-to-peak is the point between two phases in the economic cycle.

Using a time series of industry employment by region from 2002 to 2018, we find four phases: growth 2002-2007, drop 2007-2010, recovery 2010-2014 and growth transformation 2014-2018. We apply a contribution to performance measures which assesses individual industry participation in a region’s response to a shock together with a dissimilarity index to measure changes in a region’s industrial mix. Using U.S. counties as the geographic unit of analysis, we find little change in the return-to-peak industrial structure from the former peak, but material change in structure following the return. This may reveal an important transition phase in economic performance. We also find a small but statistically significant relationship between prior growth restructuring and post-recovery transformation.

09:15
Public Transportation Investment and Regional Growth: A Panel Data Analysis on The Impact of Transit Authority Revenues on Agglomeration Economies in Ohio.
DISCUSSANT: Timothy Slaper

ABSTRACT. An investment in transportation infrastructure contributes to regional growth and promote agglomeration economies. There has been many papers that suggest positive effects of road and highway networks improvement on urban agglomeration. Recently, planning and urban economic researchers focus on the impact of public transit on agglomeration. Ohio has the 14th highest demand for public transit services. However, the state’s financial support has not matched such high demand. The quality of transit services and the infrastructure has been degraded in most cities and towns in the state. In response to the detrimental effects, the government decided to double the funding by 2025. Thus, I am motivated to see whether the increase in funding would be justifiable based on economic impacts. This research analysis investigates how operating revenue of the transit authorities influence employment growth in the service area. I estimate panel data econometric models based on the financial and employment data between 2009 and 2016. The results suggest that the revenue for fixed-route operation brings positive effect on the number of jobs. However, demand-response operation funding is only positively correlated with employment in smaller towns. In addition, regions with fixed-route services have a better labor outcome than areas that have only demand-response services. These imply that fixed-routes generally contribute to agglomeration economies, while demand-response routes specifically support small community economic growth. The research’s contribution is that it compares transit authority coverage areas in a state at a macro level and addresses the role of a state government in public transit.

08:00-09:45 Session 4E: Hazards & Disaster I
Chair:
Location: Johnson
08:00
Salience of Hazard Disclosure and House Prices: Evidence from Christchurch, New Zealand
DISCUSSANT: Iqra Naz Raja

ABSTRACT. In 2010 and 2011, Christchurch, the second-largest city in New Zealand, was struck by a sequence of destructive earthquakes that caused massive liquefaction and widespread damage to the city’s infrastructure and residential dwellings. To facilitate the recovery and rebuild of the city, residential land was divided into three Technical Categories (TCs) based on the expected liquefaction performance in future significant earthquakes. I estimate the impacts of the earthquake sequence and the TC zoning on property values. Using monthly transaction data from 2000 to 2018 in the City of Christchurch, I find that the inherent liquefaction hazard was not capitalized before the 2010-2011 earthquake sequence. The earthquake sequence prepared the market for a price change to liquefaction hazard. The area-wide TC zoning clarified the relative liquefaction hazard and reinforced the price change; in the long-run average property values declined significantly by 20 percent in TC3, the area most liquefaction hazard-prone, while property values declined by 7 percent in TC2, the area second most liquefaction hazard-prone. In 2018, seven years after zoning, the price difference between TC3 and TC2 is still as significant as 10 percent. Moreover, I find that property values increased with distance to the residential red zone (the area where liquefaction damage was beyond economical repair and was cleared off) the most in TC3 after the earthquake sequence.

08:30
Flood Disaster Risk Financing Analysis using RS & GIS
PRESENTER: Ather Ashraf
DISCUSSANT: Jaeho Jung

ABSTRACT. In Pakistan several disasters caused by multiple environmental hazards have resulted in significant human, economic and social casualties over the past decade. The calamities have claimed more than 80,000 lives since 2005 and have affected nearly 50 million inhabitants. However, according to UNDP these incidents ' financial and economic damages are projected to have reached US$ 25 billion so far. Most areas of the country are vulnerable to disasters as it has not been possible to address the building of existing and new risks. Mainstreaming disaster risk management into preparation for growth may reverse the current trend of increasing disaster effects. When countries take decisive action, they will be able to save lives and property. Nevertheless, developing countries like Pakistan lack the tools, experience, and knowledge to weigh in their investment decisions the potential impacts of disasters. Effective financial disaster risk management is key policymaking for world governments, including that undergoing significant threats to such hazards and have inadequate ability or resources to handle the financial impacts of these disasters like in Pakistan. There are a wide variety of strategies across the globe to protect individuals and Governments by developing flood insurance policies that provide wide coverage for flood damage and costs, but this is far from absolute. In this research, the assessment of disaster risk financing has been analyzed using modern Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping software as a tool along with the processed information. The overall objective is to delineate zones for identifying appropriate Disaster risk financing (DRF) strategies. The outcome will assist the government in choosing best-suited DRF strategies and to make decisions for infrastructure development and rehabilitation. It will also assist in involving development banks to handle the financial disaster budget.

09:00
Hurricanes and an evidence of adaptation in local government finance
PRESENTER: Jaeho Jung
DISCUSSANT: Huang

ABSTRACT. Compared to the extensive studies on the socio-economic damages of hurricanes, the research about the impact of hurricane on the local government finance is relatively limited. Hurricanes can negatively affect tax revenue in local governments by damaging taxable properties, disrupting local businesses, or labor market. Because tax revenues are used to provide essential public services, the potential fiscal impacts of hurricanes could threaten the welfare of households and impede economic development. Given these potential impacts of hurricanes, it remains unclear whether local economy and government adapt to hurricane impacts or not. The adaptive adjustments could be ex-ante investments for future disaster preparation or ex-post changes in behavior. Decisions for the adaptive behaviors is either dependent on the past experiences or on the projections for future disasters. In general, adaptation to hurricane incidents occur at the local level. For example, households or firms move away from hurricane risks. Homeowners purchase more home insurance while some of the insurance firms reduce expenditures. Local governments can take actions to protect their infrastructures, and millions of dollars are spent to help local communities mitigate damages from future hazards such as hurricanes and storms. Historically, local governments in the United States have heavily relied on the property tax revenue because of its stability. However, hurricanes may affect the property tax revenue by reducing the number of taxable properties and the property value. A volume of studies provides empirical evidences that the taxable properties such as housing, farmlands, or production facilities are often damaged by hurricanes or that the values of taxable properties decrease after the hurricane incidence. To the best of our knowledge, it remains unknown whether local economy and local governments in hurricane prone areas respond to these potential impacts of hurricanes on the property tax revenue. We attempt to fill in this knowledge gap in this paper. In the analysis, we use United States’ county-level revenue data and socio-economic data, and county level hurricane records obtained from Spatial Hazard Events and Losses Database for the United States (SHELDUS). We primarily focus on the hurricane impact on the share of property tax in total tax revenue. We choose to focus on the share of property tax for two reasons. Firstly, county governments are highly dependent on property tax. Secondly, existing empirical studies suggest a significant impact of hurricanes on taxable properties, which directly affects the tax base for the property tax revenue. Based on the belief that counties that are more hurricane prone are more likely to take adaptive actions, we use the number of hurricanes in the history as a measure for the likelihood of experiencing another hurricane. We include an interaction term of average frequency of hurricanes in the history and the current number of hurricanes to see if prior exposure to hurricanes have any effect on the current impact of hurricanes. Similar approach has been applied to the studies on climate change. We employ post-matching fixed effect estimation to identify evidence of adaptation. Matching address the systematic difference between the counties with and without hurricane incidence. Even though hurricane is random in nature, its spatial distribution is highly concentrated, which could potentially generate sorting among households/firms and induce different government behavior. We therefore pre-process our data using propensity score matching to construct two groups of counties that are similar in their socio-economic characteristics. The two groups of counties are exposed to different numbers of hurricanes and we analyze the changes in share of property tax before and after the hurricane exposures. Using the matched sample of counties that are balanced in terms of social, and economic characteristics before exposed hurricanes, we run fixed effect regression. The estimation results suggest that compared to the counties that experience a rare hurricane, hurricane-prone counties see an increase in the share of property tax mainly due to the significant decrease in the sales tax revenue. However, the counties that had frequent hurricanes in the past experience less increase in the property tax share. This is partly because the negative impact on sales tax revenue is mitigated, and partly because the other tax revenue increases. Since the tax rates do not vary frequently, the changes in tax revenues may come from the changes in local economic structures. The empirical results suggest that revenue diversification can be one way to mitigate the fiscal impacts of hurricanes.

10:15-12:00 Session 5A: NE-1749 Organized Session: Rural Health Care
Location: Forsyth
10:15
Rural Healthcare Providers: Preliminary Survey Findings
PRESENTER: Maria Kuhns
DISCUSSANT: Alison Davis

ABSTRACT. Across the U.S., 162 rural hospitals have closed since 2005. Access to healthcare continues to be a challenge for rural populations already facing the challenges of aging population, out-migration, and opioid addiction.

Public health and rural researchers continually seek answers to providing health care in rural areas. While telemedicine proves to be a promising solution, lack of broadband access slows the adoption of technology for rural health care centers. Researchers and policy makers have turned to creating a health care provider workforce best adapted for rural practice. Curran & Rourke (2004) list rural located medical schools, admission of rural students, and rural oriented medical curriculum and learning experiences as ways to encourage graduating physicians to choose rural areas.

Despite initiatives by universities and government to encourage health care providers to pursue careers in rural areas, MacDowell et al. (2010) found that over three quarters of rural hospital CEOs reported physician shortages. Despite student loan forgiveness incentives, lower cost of living, and strong community capital, physicians still disproportionately choose urban settings over rural.

To address this challenge, in 2015, the USDA Economic Research Service conducted a survey on rural community wealth and health care provision. The motivation of the study stemmed from a desire to address the limited access to healthcare services in rural areas and a lack of research investigating how rural communities and their assets affect recruitment and retention of healthcare providers. The survey targeted rural community leaders, health facility administrators, and health care providers in 150 rural small towns across nine states in three regions – the Lower Mississippi Delta (AR, LA, MS), Southern Great Plains (KS, OK, TX), and Upper Midwest (IA, MN, WI).

The two-part survey generated 341 key informant responses from community leaders and healthcare administrators and 928 responses from health care providers. Following the discovery period and brief initial findings, the survey was shelved for later analysis.

In 2020, University of Missouri researchers are collaborating with USDA ERS to analyze the data and create an easy-to-access report of the findings (Economic Information Bulletin). Outcomes of the survey data analysis could provide conclusions about the potential economic impacts of rural healthcare and what key elements attract healthcare programs as well as strategies for effective recruitment and retainment of healthcare providers. The data will be assessed regionally to compare geographical and policy differences in promoting rural healthcare. Particular interest will be shown to identifying outcomes of regional planning authority investments like the Delta Region Community Health Systems Development Program – Technical Assistance Pilot Program.

10:30
Access to Rural Health Care and Labor Productivity
DISCUSSANT: Sarah Low

ABSTRACT. There has been much written and discussed in the popular press and academic literature about the growing crisis in access to health care in rural America.  While it is true that consolidation across health care providers have come at the expense of service providers in rural areas, the impact this restructuring has had on rural economies is not well understood.  While a number of economic impact studies of hospitals, and their closures, have well documented the multiplier effects in terms of jobs and income, there is limited evidence that limited access has impacted the overall performance of rural economies.  This study explores the impact of access to health care on worker productivity use rural U.S. county data.  A variable parameter approach is used to capture the indirect linkage of access to health care to labor productive through health outcomes.  Labor productivity is a function of health outcomes, which in turn may be affected by access to health care.  Special attention is paid to spatial proximity to health care. 

11:00
Economic Targeting with Inclusion of Potential Automation Impacts: Focus on the Health Care Sector
PRESENTER: Thomas Harris
DISCUSSANT: Steve Deller

ABSTRACT. Labor markets world-wide have been concerned as to the potential impacts of digital technologies on many occupations. Numerous studies have investigated the potential impacts of digitalization as to replacement of human workers and producing increases in unemployment and decreases in labor participation. However digitalization impacts occupations in two ways. These two impacts are destructive or transformative.   Destructive digitalization potentially would substitute for human labor while transformative effects would potentially complement labor. Following procedures outlined by Fossen and Sorgner (2019), impacts of digitalization on occupations will be classified as Rising Star, Collapsing, Human Terrain, and Machine Terrain occupations. Digitalization impacts on Rising Star occupations are categorized as having low destructive and high transformative impacts.  Collapsing occupations realize high destructive and low transformative impacts. Human terrain occupations have both low destructive and transformative effects from digitalization. Lastly, machine terrain occupations realize both high transformative and destructive impacts.  However most economic development initiatives are focused on economic sector targeting. Using an industry by occupation matrix and Social Accounting Matrix model, the degree of impact of digitalization by economic sector will be estimated. Digitalization impacts will be estimated for the three metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas in Nevada to determine differential impacts of digitalization by regions. Additionally, the Health Care Sector will be analyzed to determine differential impacts of digitalization on the Health Care Sector and yield information as to potential programs that could be developed to capture the transformative impacts of digitalization while mitigating the potential destructive impacts of digitalization.

11:30
The Future of Emergency Medical Services (EMS): A System in Crisis
PRESENTER: Alison Davis
DISCUSSANT: Thomas Harris

ABSTRACT. While national headlines recount the stories of rural hospitals in crisis, the unknown future of Emergency Medical Services (EMS) in rural places has quietly created its own headline. The ability to operate ground emergency services, around the clock, has been affected by two significant issues in rural places: the availability of trained workforce and a decreased tax base due to the outmigration of population and industry. This study explores the recent trends and the urban/rural differences in the provision of ambulance services.

10:15-12:00 Session 5B: Climate
Location: Franklin
10:15
Extraction, Analysis and Simulation of Climate Change patterns
PRESENTER: Ather Ashraf
DISCUSSANT: Sandy Dall'Erba

ABSTRACT. With all critics and suspicions, it is the fact of the day that climate change is an evolving force that has some major and horrific impacts. Multiple lines of logical confirmation demonstrate that the atmosphere framework is warming and could be worsened if we could not be able to take align our current decision in respect of climate change scenarios. Climate change may refer to an adjustment in normal climate conditions, or in the time variety of climate inside the situation of longer-term normal conditions. The cause of climate change is an alteration in Earth’s energy balance; numerous elements both natural and human can cause changes in Earth's Energy Balance. As changes occur in the energy of the sun reaching the Earth, it changes in the reflectivity of the atmosphere and the surface of the Earth and in the greenhouse effect, which influences the amount of heat retained by the Earth's atmosphere. Researchers have sorted out a record of Earth's atmosphere which demonstrates that climate change before the Industrial Revolution in the 1700s can be clarified by regular causes, for example, changes in sun-based vitality, volcanic discharges, and characteristic changes in greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations. However, recent research shows that common causes do not clarify most observed warming, particularly warming since the mid-twentieth century. Rather, it is greatly likely that human induce causes are the prevailing reasons for that warming. In this context at present, global climate models (GCMs) considered a reliable tool for understanding attributions of past climate change and anticipating what must come. GCM usually related to climate estimating, understanding the atmosphere and anticipating climate change. Pakistan is contributing about only 0.34 percent of greenhouse gases which are the reason for climate change, but it is one of the countries which are confronting the more worsen climate change effects. It is the need of the time to analyze and simulate such a system to predict what the future has for Pakistan, and how we can mitigate climate change impacts. This study would be a great help in analyzing and defining the best GCMs models and the most appropriate downscaling techniques for the best climate projection of the Pakistan region. In this research, different downscaling techniques used to extract global climate models (GCMs) and project them on a regional climate scale to test the current climate change behavior and simulate the patterns and effects of climate change on Pakistan.

10:40
The U.S. Interstate Trade Will Overcome the Negative Impact of Climate Change on Agricultural Profit

ABSTRACT. Climate change will increase the occurrence of droughts as well as their impact on agriculture. However, this paper demonstrates how domestic trade will overcome the adverse effect of drought on U.S. agricultural profit. Based on recent trade flow data of agricultural commodities and detailed drought records, our gravity model highlights that exports increase if more drought happens in the destination state and inversely if in the origin state. As a result, the general equilibrium agricultural profit depends on both local and trade partners’ weather conditions. Projections suggest that trade will act as a $14.5 billion adaptation tool in the future.

11:05
The Differential Impacts of Climate Change in the US-MX Border Region
DISCUSSANT: Harvey Cutler

ABSTRACT. The US-Mexico border region and regional economic impacts of climate change are two regional science areas that have taken importance in the last decades. This study, integrating these two different areas into one coherent research question, aims to examine the differential climate change impacts on local economies alongside the US-Mexico border. The US-Mexico border creates a unique geo-economic region that is 3,155 kilometers long and covers a variety of ecosystems and economies. In recent years, the changing climate in the US Southwest and Northern Mexico has become a growing concern when it comes to economic growth. This arid/semi-arid region relies critically on the monsoon season and irrigation to sustain economic growth. However, new climatology studies have shown that the climate in the region has been changing towards a pattern unfavorable to vegetation growth and agriculture, for example, shorter and delayed monsoon season [Pascale et al. 2017]. At the same time, agriculture plays an essential role in vitalizing the geo-economic region alongside the border. This study focuses on both the agricultural sector and other non-agricultural sectors (commerce, manufacturing, and mining). We rely on municipality/county level-data to decipher the impact of climatic variabilities (temperature and precipitation) on local wage income in the border region. We matched US counties and Mexico municipalities in the border region for the period of 2005-2017 and assembled a panel data of over 60 cross-sectional units (county or municipality). We consider two alternative methods for identifying climate change impacts on local wage income. First, we compare two standard two-way fixed effects models with the same specification for US counties and Mexico municipalities, respectively. Second, we take advantage of the boundary discontinuity effect to identify the differential climate change impacts directly. Pairs of a US county and a Mexico municipality are matched based on the closest geographical distance. The model regresses the difference in wage income alongside the border on border region climatic variables and other section-wise border-related factors. The estimation results directly reveal the magnitude of how climate change is driving the difference in economic performance as measured by sector-specific wage income alongside the border. The preliminary results show that climatic variability has a more significant effect on the Mexico side, which is consistent with some of the recent Mexico-US migration studies (e.g. Feng et al. 2010). Feng et al. (2010) find that climate change-driven crop yield fluctuations have been an important factor in the growing Mexico-US migration. Sector-wise, the preliminary results suggest that the agricultural sector is the most affected among all, followed by manufacturing, mining, and commerce. This study contributes to the interdisciplinary nexus of climate change, environment, economic growth, and migration. We advance the existing literature [e.g. Hoch and Drake 1974, Feng et al. 2010, Moore and Diaz, 2015, Neumann et al. 2015, Nuñez et al. 2017, Wang 2019] by focusing on one of the largest border regions worldwide. The results can shed light on both the public debate concerning the US-Mexico border and the policymaking in promoting binational economic integration.

11:30
Estimating the economic value of updated precipitation forecasting models due to "better" commuting decisions
PRESENTER: Harvey Cutler
DISCUSSANT: Iqra Naz Raja

ABSTRACT. Each year the U.S. federal government makes significant investments in improving weather forecasting models. Although the primary purpose is saving lives, forecasts are also used by a variety of decision makers on myriad economic problems. Commuters are one important user group, making daily decisions about when to leave for work based, in part, on expected road conditions. When workers account for potential weather delays, economic losses due to missed work time are reduced. In this paper we quantify some of the economic benefits of updated weather forecasting models by looking at how "better" forecasts improve commuter decisions about when to depart for work.

Our research begins by comparing the accuracy of 12-hour ahead "rush hour" forecasts from three generations of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) models for approximately 200 MSAs. We exploit the fact that when NOAA introduces updated models, both the current and new version run for several months. We compare forecasts from each model to observed weather data. Model "improvements" occur when the updated model provides a more accurate forecast than the previous version, for example, predicting observed rainfall when the previous model did not.

Previous research shows that even slight precipitation can increase individual commuting times by several minutes. We leverage this work to estimate the number of minutes of work that are saved when commuters have better weather forecasts that allow them to arrive at work in a timely fashion by departing from home earlier. We aggregate average work-time saved per commuter across all commuters in an MSA, and then across all MSAs in each of the eight BEA regions. This provides an estimate in the number of FTEs "saved" in a year for each region. Economic impacts are then estimated via reductions in labor supply in computable general equilibrium models built specifically for each region under each forecasting regime. Overall, we find that improved precipitation forecasts provide a fairly small reduction in economic losses due to missed work time, but the value of these gains still exceeds the annual investment in the specific forecast modeling endeavor.

10:15-12:00 Session 5C: Firm Location & Markets II
Location: Chatham
10:15
The Capital Purchase Program’s Effect on Firm Dynamics over the Business Cycle
DISCUSSANT: Becca Jablonski

ABSTRACT. Using census data on county level business dynamics I estimate the impacts of the Treasury Department's Capital Purchase Program on firm entry, firm exit, employment expansion, and employment contraction following the 2008 Financial Crisis. The Capital Purchase Program bought stock in banks to shore up risky assets and ideally induce banks to extend new loans to credit worthy households and small businesses. If the Capital Purchase Program made banks more likely to provide credit to local firms and entrepreneurs, counties should have seen improved firm entry and employment expansion and decreased firm exit and employment contraction relative to untreated counties. Using synthetic control methods I estimate the direct and spillover effects of a county having a bank receive Capital Purchase Program funds on local business dynamics in the seven years following treatment. The estimates show the CPP had small impacts on firm entry, but caused moderate improvements in long run firm exit, expansion, and contraction behavior.

10:40
The Role of Young Firms in Economic Growth
PRESENTER: David Shideler
DISCUSSANT: Terry Rephann

ABSTRACT. As competition for expanding and relocating businesses has increased, more communities, particularly rural communities, are turning their attention to business creation strategies. Policies focused on supporting and enabling entrepreneurs appear promising, as asset-based economic development strategies, but they are not without risk: half of businesses will fail in the first 5 years (according to the Small Business Administration). Given this reality, it is important to understand how startup and young firms affect economic growth. This paper addresses the question of the role that young firms play in job creation, whether this role changes by location, and if the worker characteristics employed by the young firms influence any impact young firms might have.

To address these questions, the researchers use the U.S. Census Bureau’s Quarterly Workforce Indicators data to create three variables of interest: the share of private employment in firms less than 1 year old (startup employment share), the share of private employment in firms 5 years old or younger (young firm employment share), and the share of employees (25 years of age and older) at young firms (5 years old or younger) with education attainment of at least a bachelor’s degree (young firm knowledge intensity). These variables, measured in 2010, are regressed against private employment growth between 2010 and 2017.

After controlling for the knowledge intensity across mature firms, demographic characteristics, and economic conditions (all measured in 2010), the results suggest that young firm employment share and young firm knowledge intensity positively and significantly impact regional employment growth. These results suggest that regions experience more employment growth when there exists a higher proportion of young firms employing highly educated workers.

11:05
Single Sales Factor Apportionment as An Economic Development Incentive: Evidence from An Elective Program for Manufacturing Firms in Virginia
DISCUSSANT: Jonas Crews

ABSTRACT. Corporate tax apportionment can play a significant role in determining the income tax liability of corporations with operations in multiple states. Over the last twenty years, most states have moved from an equal weighting of three factors (i.e., property value, payroll, and sales) to single sales factor (SSF) apportionment, which weights total national tax liability by the proportion of total firm sales occurring in the taxing state. This paper examines characteristics of firms that elected to use a new voluntary program of single sales apportionment for manufacturing in Virginia and compares them to other firms in manufacturing and other firms that received discretionary economic incentives from the state (e.g., targeting characteristics and estimated tax expenditure per job created). It also presents an ex post econometric analysis of policy adoption on firm employment, taking into consideration firm selection effects. Empirical results show that single sales election is related to corporate tax liability, firm size, and relative shares of sales in the state compared to property and payroll. Furthermore, single sales factor apportionment is positively related to subsequent firm employment. Because of its design, elective SSF is relatively well-targeted at high multiplier, export-base firms. However, its cost per job compared to other job creation economic incentive programs is also high.

11:30
AGRICULTURAL MANUFACTURING LOCATION DECISIONS IN COLORADO: IMPLICATIONS FOR RURAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT POLICY
PRESENTER: Becca Jablonski
DISCUSSANT: Kevin Duncan

ABSTRACT. Many rural areas face unique challenges that put them at a competitive disadvantage relative to urban areas. State and Federal policies in the U.S. promote opportunities for value-added agriculture (manufacturing) to create and retain wealth in rural places. In order to inform policies that might attract agricultural manufacturing firms to rural locations, this research explores agricultural firm location decisions using a case study of Colorado. First, this research creates a unique dataset of agricultural manufacturing firms in the State of Colorado and uses these data to assess if the traditional factors associated with neoclassical firm location theory (e.g., wages, tax rates, population) are correlated with agricultural manufacturing firm locations. Second, we conduct in-depth interviews with selected food manufacturing firms located in Colorado’s heterogeneous Western Slope. Results suggest a behavioral framework (where assets other than profit increase welfare) may better explain how agricultural manufacturing firms choose to locate in rural places. We recommend bottom-up policies that allow communities to promote entrepreneurship and take advantage of location-based comparative advantages to attract agricultural manufacturing firms to rural Colorado.

10:15-12:00 Session 5D: Hazards & Disaster II
Location: Johnson
10:15
Identifying Effective Factors in Physical Vulnerability to Flood, Case Study of White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia
DISCUSSANT: Bijeta Bijen Saha

ABSTRACT. Flooding is considered as the major natural disaster in the state of West Virginia. According to FEMA (2019), since 1954, thirty severe floods have occurred in West Virginia. One of the most destructive floods in this state occurred in June 2016 which affected 12 counties, leaving 23 fatalities and 1200 damaged buildings. Most of the damage was in Greenbrier County, particularly in town of White Sulphur Springs. During this event, 111 homes and 14 businesses were destroyed in this town. The main focus of this study is to identify the significant factors which affect physical vulnerability in time of flood by analyzing the devastated residential buildings located in 100-year flood zones of White Sulphur Springs. Vulnerability, alongside hazard and exposure, are three components of natural disaster risk. International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UN/ISDR) describes vulnerability as “the conditions determined by physical, social, economic and environmental factors or processes, which increase the susceptibility of a community to the impact of hazards” (Birkmann, 2006). Probing physical characteristics of the residential buildings, the main purpose of this study is to detect which characteristics of buildings are more effective in physical vulnerability to floods. The required data of totally or partially damaged buildings will be extracted from West Virginia tax assessment data. Applying machine learning (Random Forest method) to this acquired data, the paper will investigate if there is any correlation between the variables (physical characteristics of the buildings such as age, number of stories, foundation, etc.) and the intensity of damage on the building. Spatial analysis and visual interpretation will be done using GIS. The results can show if the physical variables are as effective as the natural variables (flood depth, geomorphology, etc) in damage estimations.

10:40
Impact of the Florida Red Tide Events on Recreational Fishing in the Western Florida
DISCUSSANT: Anahita Mahmoudi

ABSTRACT. Algal blooms occur when natural algae in lakes, rivers, and coastal zones are stimulated to grow out of control by elevated levels of nutrients in the water. Algal blooms that produce dangerous toxins that are detrimental to the plants, animals, people, and ecosystems in the affected areas are known as harmful algal blooms (HABs). Several types of naturally occurring HABs exist in the Gulf of Mexico, including those caused by the marine dinoflagellate Karenia brevis (K. brevis), commonly known as red tide. These events often occur in the ocean and nearshore coastal waters as K. brevis thrives in high-salinity waters. Excessive use of fertilizer in agriculture, anthropogenic change in land-use, combustion of fossil fuels, and discharge of human waste are all potential causes of nutrient enrichment, i.e. increase in concentrations of nitrogen (N) and phosphate (P), in coastal areas that can increase the intensity and longevity of HABs (Heisler et al., 2008). Red tide can cause respiratory distress and skin irritation in humans and marine animals, contaminate shellfish, cause fish kills, create dead zones in the water, and reduce economic activity associated with commercial and recreational fishing, other marine industries, and tourism (Adams et al, 2018).

This paper uses in situ observations of K. brevis abundance and a quasi-experimental, difference in difference (DID) model to measure the adverse economic impacts of changes in recreational fishing activity associated with red tide occurrences along Florida’s western coast. We combine data from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission's Fish and Wildlife Research Institute (FWRI) harmful algal bloom (HAB) monitoring database and the Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP) data published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries to compare the average change in number of trips taken to fishing sites that have experienced a red tide event nearby, with number of trips taken in appropriate comparison sites. This paper attempts to provide quantitative evidence on the local impact of a red tide event on recreational fishing, by considering the implied cost in terms of reduced number of fishing trips. This method produces a credible counterfactual for determining the causal effect of red tide events on recreational fishing, providing results relevant for informed decision-making regarding the prevention or mitigating of red tide events.

11:05
The Impact of a chemical spill on the long-term economic growth of a region
PRESENTER: Samuel Taylor
DISCUSSANT: Rebecca Hill

ABSTRACT. Much of the existing research on migration and population change relates to large “discrete” time events, such as the outbreak of a major war, or the occurrence of a major natural disaster. This research seeks to apply similar thinking to a man-made disaster, especially where other socio-economic conditions may have pre-conditioned an area to population loss, and thus a major event may represent a final “tipping point” resulting in outmigration or negative population change. Examined in this research is the 2014 water contamination of the Elk and Kanawha Rivers in West Virginia due to a chemical spill. This relatively short-duration event impacted the water quality in nine counties in the Kanawha River Valley near Charleston, West Virginia. To examine the impact of the chemical spill on the population in the affected counties, this research utilizes a synthetic control method, and includes techniques for isolating the impact of this event versus other negative socio-economic events in the region. Typically, the “cost” of these types of accidents is based on the actual cost of cleanup and repair, but if a long-term effect is the loss of workforce and tax base of a community, the impact will be greater than the pure repair cost. This study can help policymakers and regulators put a value on the environmental oversight and regulation needed to prevent these types of accidents. Preliminary results suggest that the contamination of the Elk River led to a loss of population in the impacted counties which could have long-term consequences for economic growth.

11:30
Estimating the Reduction in Freeze and Frost Losses to Agriculture associated with Improved Weather Forecasts
PRESENTER: Rebecca Hill
DISCUSSANT: Samuel Taylor

ABSTRACT. Weather forecasts are used by many different groups, and previous research suggests that weather information generates broad-reaching economic benefits to the U.S. economy (Macauley, 2005). Each year significant government investments are made to provide and improve weather forecasting, given the increased focus in government accountability, policy makers, citizens and other stakeholders are interested in documenting the economic benefits of these investments. In partnership with NOAA’s Global Systems Division we estimate the potential economic benefits of past improvements to the High Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) weather forecasting model, specifically to the reduction in frost and freeze losses in agriculture.

Our research initially translates how improvements in weather information can affect the behavioral decisions of agricultural producers. Improved weather information is only valuable to producers if they use and take actions based on the improved information. We focus on freeze and frost losses in high value agriculture crops because producers can implement effective measures to protect their crops from losses that can occur due to freeze or frost if given advanced notice. Crop protection measures must be put into effect ahead of the freeze or frost thus making weather forecasts important in the producer’s decision to protect their crops.

We use federal crop insurance indemnity payments as a proxy for losses, using the United States Department of Agriculture’s Cause of Loss dataset. Federal crop insurance policies are purchased by producers and pay indemnities when the farmers yield, or revenue falls below pre-specified levels and cover many of the specialty crops that are prone to freeze or frost losses. We narrow down the thousands of observations of freeze and frost indemnity payments into only instances where the weather forecast would potentially make an impact on the producer’s decision and crop losses. For example, when temperatures get below a threshold crop loss will still occur even when preventative measures are taken. Once we narrowed the dataset down to the events where the weather forecast was theoretically important in producer decision making, we narrowed further to identify those events where the currently running HRRR model missed the freeze forecast and the newer model (which was running on NOAA computers but not available to the public) correctly predicted the freeze. If this was the case, we assumed that if farmers had this correct information, they could have reacted to protect their crops from freeze damage. We aggregate these potentially reductions in crop losses across the 8 BEA regions, and using CGE models for each region evaluate the economic benefits from the improved weather forecasts.

References: Molly Macauley (2005): “The Value of Information: A Background Paper on Measuring the Contribution of Space-Derived Earth Science Data to National Resource Management” Resources for the Future. Discussion Paper 05–26

10:15-12:00 Session 5E: Public & Fiscal Policy I
Chair:
Location: Oglethorpe AB
10:15
Tax Benefits and Regional Development: Evidence from Colombia
PRESENTER: Luis Galvis

ABSTRACT. This document aims to evaluate the impact of tax incentives granted to companies on regional development by studying the Paez Law in Colombia. This law was promulgated to attract firms to the region affected by the earthquake and the avalanche of the Paez River in 1994. This is a particularly interesting natural experiment since the law arose from an unexpected shock and numerous municipalities that were not directly affected by the disaster were covered by its benefits. This allows us to differentiate the effect of tax exemptions from other factors related to the tragedy, such as property damage and aid to the victims. The causal effects are identified by comparing the municipalities that are beneficiaries of the law, affected and not affected, with a group of synthetic controls built on the trajectory balancing methodology. The results indicate that exemption policies had no major effects, either on local public finances or on the quality of life. In a complementary exercise, the effect of the Quimbaya Act of 1999 is evaluated, finding similar results. This Law benefited the municipalities affected by the Coffee Belt earthquake.

10:40
The effects of intergovernmental transfers on inter- and intra-regional income disparities

ABSTRACT. This paper investigates the effects of intergovernmental transfers on inter- and intra-regional income disparities. We explore the step-wise increase in the amount of grants transferred by the Brazilian central government to municipalities to infer a causal relationship between local revenue and economic growth. We find that more public funds increase the economic growth of municipalities within the most impoverished region of the country (Northeast). In contrast, there is no effect in municipalities within the wealthiest region (Southeast). That is, intergovernmental transfers help regional convergence. Nonetheless, we find that the wealthiest municipalities are driving these faster growth rates in the Brazilian Northeast. These results suggest that intra-regional inequalities increase with intergovernmental transfer.

11:05
Minority Depository Institutions: Why So Few — After 150 Years? New News — Poor and Risky Performance Is Not the Answer!
PRESENTER: Jiayi Xu
DISCUSSANT: Diogo Baerlocher

ABSTRACT. In 1865, the first minority bank in the United States was established. Over time, depository institutions owned or controlled by minorities, known as minority depository institutions (MDIs), have grown in number. Yet, one hundred and fifty years later, they still account for only 2.8 percent of all banks. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, we examine whether MDIs locate offices in lower-income communities and those that are predominantly minority. Second, we examine the role and performance of MDIs from the perspective of whether their disproportionately small role in the banking industry is due to their relatively poorer and riskier performance as compared to non-MDIs, controlling for the household-income level and poverty rate of the local communities in which they operate. Based on our empirical results, we find that a MDI is highly likely to be located in a community in which the largest share of the population is minority and one in which income and poverty are worse compared to national averages. When we consider both MDIs and non-MDIs located in the same communities, which controls for common factors affecting both types of banks, MDIs generally, in contrast to many previous studies, show no sign of underperformance or greater riskiness.

14:00-15:45 Session 6A: NE-1749 Organized Session: Growing Up in Rural America: How “Place” Shapes Adolescent Choices and Adult Economic Outcomes
Location: Forsyth
14:00
Born to Serve? How Rurality, Economic Opportunity, and Civic Engagement Impact the Decision to Join the Military
PRESENTER: Craig Carpenter
DISCUSSANT: Mindy Crandall

ABSTRACT. Despite the importance of military service, little is known about the factors that cause a person to enlist. There is evidence that military service increases college going (Bound et al 2002), and earnings especially for officers, reservists and African-Americans (Hirsch et al 2003).  On the other hand, there is evidence that combat deployment increases premature mortality by increasing tobaccos use (Bedard et al 2006), that combat deployment increases likelihood of opioid abuse by increasing injury-related chronic pain, psychological trauma, and cheap opium supplies (Cesure et al 2019), and that combat deployment increases domestic violence (Cesure 2016).  Thus, understanding the causes of military enlistment has implications for many interconnected aspects of community well-being, including health outcomes and labor markets outcomes.

 

We develop a unique dataset by matching restricted Social Security Administration microdata on place of birth with American Community Survey respondent microdata and show that place of birth characteristics impact the likelihood of military enlistment. Being born in a rural county increases likelihood of enlistment substantially. By contrast, rurality of place of residence does not predict likelihood of enlistment. Furthermore, we show that being born in a county with higher measures of civic engagement decreases likelihood of enlistment. Lastly, we find a “U-shaped” relationship between economic opportunity in one’s place of birth and likelihood of enlistment. These results are consistent with the theory that individuals enlist in the military to seek economic opportunity (Dean et al 2020). We conclude with early results that examine the interaction between place of birth, the decision to enlist, and later life economic and entrepreneurial outcomes.

 

Future research topics include exploring how these relationships vary across eras of service and birth cohorts, as well as utilizing policy shocks to civic engagement and economic opportunity to estimate the extent to which local policy impacts military enlistment and associated outcomes.

14:30
Community influences on youth educational aspirations in rural, resource-dependent places
PRESENTER: Mindy Crandall
DISCUSSANT: Craig Carpenter

ABSTRACT. Rural communities in forested regions across the US are in the midst of a transformation driven by a complex mixture of economic, policy, and demographic dynamics. While many studies have explored the effects schools, communities, and local economies have individually on youth aspirations, little attention has been paid to how these items may be interrelated and work together to influence the next generation of workers, entrepreneurs, and community leaders. This research illuminates the relationships between school characteristics, community perceptions, economic restructuring, and young people’s aspirations in traditionally forest-dependent communities using data from a survey of over 2,000 middle and high school students in northern Maine and coastal Oregon.

 

Maine and Oregon present interesting case studies as both regions have a history of resource dependence and a high degree of local attachment to the outdoors and the rural quality of life. Our conceptual framework incorporates the influences that the educational system, community, and local economy play on individual youth aspirations for future education goals. We expect that youth in the region are attached to place and the forest around them, but also heavily influenced by the local perceptions of a limited economic future. This paper summarizes analysis of survey responses from students in five communities in Coos County, Oregon and five communities in Piscataquis and Northern Somerset Counties, Maine to further our understanding of rural youth aspirations, decisions about human capital investments, and the potential impact that community-level factors have on individual expectations.

 

Preliminary results show 82% of youth respondents want to pursue post-secondary education. Girls and students with high grades had significantly higher educational aspirations. Rural youth respondents were asked how much they agreed or disagreed with multiple belief statements in order to measure school perceptions and community perceptions. Positive relationships were found between school perceptions and engagement with youth educational aspirations. Efforts to improve school environment and better engage students with school and community activities may improve educational aspirations. However, higher youth perceptions of their communities were negatively associated with educational aspiration, supporting prior studies describing emotional attachments to family and rural life. These finding highlight challenges rural youth may face where their aspiration for post-secondary education may be in conflict with a desire to remain in their community. We conclude with recommendations that may help rural areas of natural resource dependence grappling with uncertain economic futures maintain school viability and working-age populations, which are essential to community persistence.

15:00
Growing Up in Rural America: How Place Shapes Education, Health, Family and Economic Outcomes
PRESENTER: Shelley Clark
DISCUSSANT: Sarah Low

ABSTRACT. Social and economic trends in rural America have deteriorated in rural America relative to urban America over the last 50 years (Ziliak, 2018). Rural households are increasingly vulnerable to chronic poverty and rural households are avoiding or not able to use the main traditional pathways out of poverty (education, marriage, work). Rural men and women, for example, are lagging their urban counterparts in obtaining college education, and marriage rates are declining faster for rural families and for those with least education. Employment rates are declining for all, but have plummeted for rural men with no high school degree

 

In this paper we review the research on the influence of the place a person grows up on the choices they make in early adulthood and on their family dynamics, education, economic well-being, and health over the life course. We first briefly discuss how family structures differ in urban and rural areas and how these differences manifest themselves in the lives of rural children and in the early family formation observed in rural areas. We note that economic restructuring has led to changing labor markets in rural areas and gender roles which have also affected children and families.

 

We then review the studies of how rural upbringing affects the educational aspirations of rural adolescents and their ultimate educational attainment, and we discuss and assess the research that links rural upbringing to individual migration decisions in early adulthood. We then focus on how place of origin affects adult economic outcomes related to employment and income. We pay particular attention to the research of Chetty and collaborators who use a number of sources of big data to explore the effect of where a person grows up on a variety of economic, education, family and health outcomes. In their study of how adult income rank is related to the place children lived when they were in their teens, Chetty et al. (2014) find large differences in upward intergenerational income mobility of low-income children across commuting zones and counties in the United States. They found that these differences were related to social and economic characteristics of places, including family structure, race, segregation, school quality and income inequality. Chetty et al. (2014) find that, on average, adolescents who grew up in rural areas experienced more upward income mobility than urban adolescents. More recent examinations of their data suggest that certain place characteristics (such as local inequality and school quality) have different effects on intergenerational upward mobility in rural and urban places, and that some of the rural advantage can be explained by remoteness from larger metro areas (Weber et al. 2018). Subsequent research by Chetty and his collaborators explores the role of place in educational attainment, life expectancy, and teen pregnancy, among other outcomes.

 

We conclude the paper by identifying some ways that the findings from the research might be useful in policy guidance and by suggesting some gaps in the research on the influence on one’s life course of growing up rural.

14:00-15:45 Session 6B: Migration
Location: Franklin
14:00
Immigrant perception, poverty and political insights
DISCUSSANT: Annie Lee

ABSTRACT. This paper aims at evaluating the effects of the political influence on the perception of Venezuelan immigrants in Colombian regions. To explore this, we estimate a model to find the correlations between political perception and importance of the right-wing parties in different departments. Then we use information from twitter to evaluate the type of perception by department and political perception. Our results show a positive correlation between the prevalence of right-wing parties and the negative perception and discrimination against Venezuelan immigrants in Colombian cities.

14:30
Migration in a System of Cities: Social Network Analysis of an Agent-Based Model of Zipf Cities

ABSTRACT. An agent-based model of inter-regional labor allocation based on a model of endogenous firm formation is analyzed using social network analysis. In the underlying agent-based model, agents with heterogeneous preferences for leisure and income make utility maximizing regarding their own job choice set: stay with their current firm, work at a firm a friend works at, or found a new firm. To model cities, firms are place-bound while agents can migrate between regions. Agents migrate when they choose to work in a firm located in another region. Previous work on the model has been able to qualitatively replicate the highly skewed city-size distributions that are empirically observed. The work presented examines migration networks among regions; cities are nodes and migration between cities are arcs. The focus of the current analysis is on the system of cities, with the flows between cities being the focus of analysis.

15:00
Can Immigration Save the Legacy Cities? A Case Study of the Erie Economy
DISCUSSANT: Keith Waters

ABSTRACT. Legacy cities are those older industrial cities that have been prone to both job and population loss over the past several decades. While some cities have been successful at renewal, many others have not. Both the city and county of Erie has been losing population and jobs for several decades. One reason that population decay has not been more rapid is the increasing immigrant population. This paper is a first foray into the reinvigorating effect the immigrant population has on the Erie economy.

15:30
Can legal status help the undocumented immigrants achieve the American Dream? Evidence from the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program
PRESENTER: Jia Wang

ABSTRACT. This paper examines the housing tenure choices of undocumented immigrants following the largest immigration policy overhaul in recent years. Our identification exploits the discontinuity in program criteria of the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) initiative, which provides temporary work authorization and protection from deportation for high school educated youth. We design a difference-in-differences approach that compares DACA-eligible to DACA-ineligible, likely undocumented individuals before and after the program’s implementation. We find that households headed by eligible individuals are more likely to be homeowners and that the effect varies depending on demographic characteristics. We also find that eligible households have higher mortgage payments and improved housing quality. Taken together, our results suggest that even temporary authorization can increase investments in housing among qualifying immigrants, which brings potential benefits to millions of children in these homes.

14:00-15:45 Session 6C: Housing & Real Estate Markets
Location: Oglethorpe AB
14:00
It’s the Smell: How Resolving Uncertainty about Local Disamenties Affects the Housing Market
PRESENTER: Gary Cornwall
DISCUSSANT: Matthew Gnagey

ABSTRACT. The Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island was, at one point, the largest landfill in the world covering nearly 2,200 acres and receiving nearly 30,000 tons of waste per day. This four-mound landfill was closed in stages, with the north and south mounds being capped in April of 1997. While its eventual closure was inevitable, the precise timing was uncertain. As a result, we leverage the timing of the closure announcement as a shock to examine the effect that resolving this uncertainty surrounding this disamenity has on nearby residential property market. Counterintuitively, the announcement of the removal of the disamenity produced by the landfill (i.e., its smell) actually decreased home prices by as much as 15%. This fall in prices was the result of a large shift in the supply of homes on the market, with weekly home sales nearly doubling shortly after the closure. While the (dis)amenities literature often views local external effects through the lens of demand, our results suggest that resolution of uncertainty can be a powerful driver of the real estate market increasing supply and making previously illiquid homes substantially more liquid.

14:21
Are Improvements to Outdoor Recreation Access Capitalized into Home Values?
DISCUSSANT: Beau Sauley

ABSTRACT. This study identifies the capitalized value of improvements to outdoor recreation access by estimating the impact on home values near improvements to trail access points. We use repeat sales and a property fixed effects model in conjunction with time-varying data on trail accessibility. We find that convenient and local access to trails is highly valued in an urban community. Furthermore, as public policy improved and expanded the trail network we find some evidence that the capitalized value of trails has increased. This research provides estimates of the benefits gained from improving access to open space, which is critical for justifying public expenditures on purchasing open space and building or renovating access points.

14:42
When the Levy Breaks: How Failing Renewal School Levies Affects Housing Prices
DISCUSSANT: Robert Carey

ABSTRACT. School districts in Ohio rely on tax levies voted on by the residents to increase their funding. Failure of a renewal school levy detracts money from a school's budget, but also lowers the tax burden on residents. It appears the decreased perceived value of the education system has a larger impact on home prices than the lower tax burden. Using a newly developed spatial regression discontinuity design approach, this paper finds failing a renewal school levy leads to a decrease in the price of homes by $10,500, comprised of a direct effect of $7,300, and a lasting indirect effect of $3,200.

15:03
Schools, Property Tax Relief, and Residential Development: The Effects of SC Act 388 on Housing Value
DISCUSSANT: Tyler Morin

ABSTRACT. In June 2006, the South Carolina governor signed a bill to provide property tax relief to state residents. Among other provisions, Act 388 of 2006 aimed to reduce the tax burden on property owners by adding a homestead exemption with regard to school operating millage for properties classified as owner-occupied primary residences equal to 100 percent of fair market value, thereby restricting school districts from raising general fund revenue through taxation of owner-occupied homes. In order to compensate school districts for lost revenue, the act implemented an additional one percent statewide sales tax. Revenue from this sales tax was to provide funding to be distributed to each school district to be determined in each year based upon the previous year’s distribution and a formula including the 135-day average daily membership (135 ADM, a measure of enrollment), with a minimum guaranteed reimbursement of $2.5 million. Additionally, the act placed a cap on reassessment, limiting the growth in assessed property value to 15 percent per five-year reassessment cycle.

Act 388 might be anticipated to have a positive effect on home values in South Carolina, as it effectively lowers the cost of owning a home in the state. This analysis will examine housing values within South Carolina counties located within metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs); it will utilize an interrupted time series to estimate the impact of Act 388 on home values, holding constant for MSA economic growth and other factors. The analysis will indicate whether such a tax policy does indeed attract new homeowners to the state, all else equal, or whether other factors outweigh the cost savings, such as the amenity value of high-quality schools.

15:24
Trailer Park Woes: Market Decisions for American Manufactured Housing
DISCUSSANT: Christopher Yencha

ABSTRACT. It’s been 18 years since the collapse of the new manufactured homes market. This semi-durable good has an estimated life span of 22 years, yet total sales figures show that they are not being replaced at an adequate rate, despite population estimates remaining constant. Perhaps the unique market structure of manufactured homes may be the issue. Unlike site-built homes, many do not have access to mortgages, are considered depreciating assets, and are often titled as personal property rather than real property. In many ways, it similar to automobiles with access to financial instruments and legal protections. This is concerning as nearly 20 million Americans live in manufactured homes as their permanent residence. Due to their low purchase price, manufactured homes have become a popular alternative for affordable homes, most notably in rural areas. Despite this, there is little in the economic literature about manufactured housing. This study attempts to look at the demand factors driving millions of Americans to choose manufactured homes over traditional substitutes including rental and site build homes. The data covers all manufactured homeowners within the American Housing Survey from 1997-2017. I use a nested logit model to estimate the factors of demand for the home buyer’s decision in purchasing a manufactured home. In addition, the model considers what factors impact a home owner’s decision to enter the market over maintaining an existing home and as well as whether to buy a new or used manufactured home. To my knowledge, this is the first paper to consider the difference in purchasing new and used manufactured homes.

14:00-15:45 Session 6D: Public & Fiscal Policy II
Location: Pulaski 2
14:00
Cold Bacon: Co-Partisan Politics in Brazil
PRESENTER: Diogo Baerlocher
DISCUSSANT: Nikita Lopatin

ABSTRACT. This paper provides evidence of alignment effects between the executive and legislative branches of the central government. We use detailed data on Brazilian intergovernmental grants whose allocations are determined by legislators. The executive branch cannot interfere with the destiny and volume of grants, but it can control the pace of transfers. We group the data into municipalities and estimate the effects of the share of aligned legislators associated with a municipality on the average time to receive grants. We show that legislators politically aligned to the executive branch transfer resources to their constituencies nine months faster than unaligned legislators. To achieve a causal interpretation of these results, we use an exogenous variation in the share of elected aligned legislators caused by the phased-in introduction of electronic voting. Our findings regarding how political alignment affects the speed of transfer are consistent across different periods and alternative definitions of the dependent variable.

14:25
Credit Constraints and Spillover Effects of Financial Market Liberalization: Case of Colombia
PRESENTER: Nikita Lopatin
DISCUSSANT: Diogo Baerlocher

ABSTRACT. Using updated measures of sectoral external finance dependence adapted to fit the Colombian economy, we show that financial liberalization as a result of the US-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement in 2012 increased exports by firms in financially vulnerable sectors more than firms in less financially dependent sectors, with a one-unit increase in financial vulnerability associated with an 18\% increase in firm exports. Intuition would dictate that exports to the US should increase following lower tariffs; in fact, we see relatively higher exports in vulnerable sectors for Colombian exports to other countries, not exports to the United States, indicating that we should not credit lower tariffs for this effect. Rather, the financial development encouraged by the agreement had spillover effects. Reduction in the capital controls, financial market liberalization, and growth in the FDI increased export opportunities elsewhere.

15:00
Tax Increment Financing and School Funding: Unraveling Equalization in Oklahoma
PRESENTER: Cynthia Rogers
DISCUSSANT: Nikita Lopatin

ABSTRACT. Abstract: This research explores the complex connections between Tax Increment Financing (TIF) and state education funding. TIF is a popular vehicle for funding local economic development projects. TIF mechanisms can redirect local property tax revenues away from state and local education funding. The extent to which TIF utilization contributes to school funding problems is an unknown and unexplored area of research. We address this gap by investigating the direct and indirect connections between TIF implementation and state school aid funding in the State of Oklahoma. Our analysis shows that TIF reduces funding available for education funding and creates a beggar-thy-neighbor situation where some school districts can use TIF to get more state aid at the expense of other school districts.

15:35
The Natural Rate of Structure Depreciation: Decoupling Capital Gains and Maintenance Improvement from Property Value Variation
DISCUSSANT: Cynthia Rogers

ABSTRACT. This paper, motivated by the observations that the land of a property does not depreciate, along with taking into account the capital gains from housing boom and bust cycles, provides a novel approach to separate housing structure depreciation and capital gains on land into two distinct components that make up overall changes in property value. This analysis is further developed by distinguishing between the natural rate of structure depreciation (the rate that would occur in the absence of maintenance) and the effects of maintenance on structure value over time. We utilize this approach to estimate the natural depreciation rate of housing structure value and homeowner’s maintenance technology of single-family detached housing in the New York metropolitan area using data from the American Housing Survey. This method estimates the natural rate of depreciation of structures to be roughly 9 percent per year; this shows a significant, and often overlooked economic cost is associated with real estate ownership due to value loss from structure depreciation and maintenance expenses.

14:00-15:45 Session 6E: Regional Impact Analysis I
Location: Johnson
14:00
Economic Contribution and Impact Analysis of the 2019 Flood’s Disruption of the Oklahoma-McClellan-Kerr Navigation System
PRESENTER: Katie Welch
DISCUSSANT: Margaret Bock

ABSTRACT. The 2019 flooding of the Arkansas River basin forced closure of the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas Navigation System (MKARNS) until late fall. Oklahoma’s eight ports serviced by the MKARNS transport 6.2 million tons of goods annually, valued at 2.2 billion dollars. These ports support the manufacturing and agricultural sectors of 13 mid-western and western states. Chemical fertilizers, grains and soybean, and iron make up for most of the tonnage. Sources estimate that the disruption cost 2 million dollars per day. The MKARNS is still operating below full capacity due to the ongoing repair of the system’s channels damaged by the flood. The unfortunate series of events provides an opportunity to gauge the direct and indirect economic impacts of the flood disruption on Oklahoma’s economy, and the economies of the states that rely on the OK-MKARNS transportation services. We conduct an economic contribution and an impact analysis of the effects the disruption has had on the region’s economies, focusing particularly on the region’s manufacturing and agricultural sectors.

14:25
(Federally-Funded) Country Roads: The Impact of the Appalachian Development Highway System on Mortality
DISCUSSANT: Kelsey Conley

ABSTRACT. The economic effects of highways and roads are vastly understudied, particularly from a causal inference perspective. Specific attention to federally funded rural roads and highways is even more sparse given implicit endogeneity concerns about road placement decisions for the sake of rural development and market exposure. Hoping to fill this gap in the literature, this study aims to examine the impact of the Appalachian Development Highway System (ADHS), one of the largest and most expensive federal infrastructure projects in the United States, on health outcomes in the region. Specifically, utilizing geo-coded vital statistics data from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), this study hopes to uncover the causal link between ADHS segment construction and mortality outcomes since construction began in the late 1960s to the present day.

14:50
Decomposition of Native American Earnings
PRESENTER: Kelsey Conley
DISCUSSANT: Katie Welch

ABSTRACT. Over the past five years Native American population and the number of Indigenous people pursuing small business ownership have increased. Historically, the number of self-employed Native Americans have been lower than other racial groups, but American Indian and Alaska Native-owned firms grew by 15.3 percent from 2007 to 2012 (US Census Bureau). Even more recently (2014 to 2019), the number of Native American/ Alaska Native women-owned firms grew by 26 percent; a growth rate faster than other women-owned business and businesses overall. However, amidst a climate of increased minority-owned businesses in the United States, not much is known about Native American entrepreneurship. Using American Community Survey (ACS) data along with quantile regressions and Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition, this study will compare self-employment earnings and wage earnings of Native Americans, and examine how Native American business owners’ characteristics, local attributes, and industry sectors influence self-employment earnings. These findings will provide insight to the current state of Indigenous entrepreneurship and aid in policy decisions for Native communities who are often characterized as having high poverty and unemployment rates.

16:15-18:00 Session 7A: Organized Session: Regional Data and the Federal Statistical System: New directions
Chair:
Location: Franklin
16:15
Hybrid Panel Session
PRESENTER: Kyle Hood

ABSTRACT. In this hybrid panel session, we have asked some experienced and accomplished researchers in urban/regional economics and regional science to discuss the future of regional research and what this means for regional scientists’ data needs. There will be 6 panelists: One presenter from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) and five outside panelists. The BEA presenter will provide a summary of ongoing projects at the BEA to expand our regional data portfolio, while the other panelists will each give a brief presentation that focuses primarily on one of the following questions:

 

1.            How have evolving methods and theories in Regional Science and Urban/Regional Economics changed the data needs of researchers?

2.            How have evolving methods and theories in Regional Science and Urban/Regional Economics changed the data needs of forecasters?

3.            How can alternative data (such as administrative data or “big data”) and/or new data collection efforts be combined with existing data to fill in data gaps in Regional Science and Urban/Regional Economics?

4.            How can alternative data, new data collection efforts, and existing data be used to construct new regional aggregates and indices?

5.            How can alternative data, new data collection efforts, and existing data be used to better inform forecasts?

 

Each of these presentations will have a time limit of 5 minutes except the BEA presenter who will have 10 minutes. We encourage a short slide presentation. Then the remainder of the session will be dedicated to questions from the audience to the presenters and suggestions for new or improved data products. This will present an excellent overview of data gaps in the regional field as well as current plans to fill them. The BEA will be able to get valuable feedback to determine possible future research directions. Participants from other statistical agencies can also use the time to inform the panel and audience about new products being developed in their agencies.

 

Panelists:

John Connaughton, University of North Carolina-Charlotte

Sarah Low, University of Missouri-Columbia

Michael Lahr, Rutgers University

Michael Hicks, Ball State University

Matthew Fannin, Louisiana State University

Mahsa Gholizadeh, BEA

 

Chair: Kyle Hood, BEA

 

Organizers: Kyle Hood, BEA; Mahsa Gholizadeh, BEA

16:15-18:00 Session 7B: Economic Growth & Development III
Location: Chatham
16:15
The Long and Winding Road: Roads, Politics and Growth in Colombia.
PRESENTER: Luis Quintero
DISCUSSANT: Andrew Crawley

ABSTRACT. What is the effect of a massive nationwide road infrastructure construction and improvement program on GDP and inequality of cities in a developing country, especially one with a uniquely difficult geography? Furthermore, what explains the differences between the optimal road layout and those actually observed? This paper addresses these questions using a data on the universe of municipalities in Colombia for the last 25 years in the context of a 3 generation of concessions projects that intervened 4463 km of roads, 23% of the national road network, and affected nearly all of the national territory. Our empirical analysis calculates the hypothetical least cost paths between locations as an instrument to address the endogeneity of road construction and route selection, in addition to precolonial routes from Duranton (2015). Our preliminary results show that road construction and improvements increase the GDP of the municipalities, although the effect is small in magnitude and favors those municipalities focused on agriculture. Also, we quantify the gap between the least cost and actual roads and find that political influence and corruption measures are associated with these inefficiencies. This study builds the first dataset that tracks the individual new roads and road improvements in Colombia, and uses satellite technology to determine travel times and corresponding market access measures.

This work extends the current literature in several ways: First it measures the impact of infrastructure on inequality and GDP, expanding the current research of Donaldson (2018), Baum-Snow et al. (2017), and Duranton and Turner (2012) among others; Second it sets grounds for the study of the causal effects of infrastructure in Latin America, which is an understudied matter. Finally, we take into account the political forces involved in road building, which could lead to inefficiencies and waste of resources especially in weak institutional environments.

16:40
A Thematic Approach to Regional Economic Development
PRESENTER: Andrew Crawley
DISCUSSANT: Bienvenido Cortes

ABSTRACT. All economies have spatial pockets of growth, areas that drive a country forward generating new capital and output. Equally, they have areas that struggle to grow economically and are challenged by physical endowments and social dynamics. Regional economic development policies have sought to better address these challenges, particularly in peripheral regions, by focusing limited resources on a set of priorities. Traditionally these activities have focused on either industrial development (prioritizing sectors) or place-based approaches, (prioritizing endogenous human capital and the promotion of innovation). Both have merits and have been widely analyzed within academic literature as well as practical policy settings. However, to date neither approach has a clear or objective way of being adopted in practice and there remains significant criticism surrounding implementation and performance. To this end, this paper proposes a new approach to regional economic development that attempts to bring together sector and place-based strategies through the use of thematics. By connecting new measures and existing diagnostics we demonstrate how a region may identify emerging industrial themes based on their existing sectors, their labor pool, and their innovative capacity. By connecting often disparate heritage industries to new niche growing areas, a region might adapt to global and regional trends. To demonstrate this new approach, it is applied to the US state of Maine.

17:05
Business Cycles, Industry Mix, and Micropolitan Areas: The Case of the Plains Region
DISCUSSANT: Luis Quintero

ABSTRACT. Recent studies have examined business cycles at the national, regional or state-level (Gascon and Haas, 2019), and the metropolitan area level (Arias, Gascon, and Rapach, 2016). These studies identify and measure the impact of various factors on regional business cycles. A general finding is that industrial composition or diversity has been a consistently important determinant of regional differences in sensitivity to business cycles or employment shocks. This current study follows earlier literature and extends this investigation by focusing on economic activity at another disaggregated level: the micropolitan statistical area. By definition, a micropolitan statistical area consists of one or more counties with at least one city with more than 10,000 but less than 50,000 people. The study applies fixed effects model on a sample of micropolitan areas in the seven states comprising the Plains region for the 1970-2017 period. In addition to local characteristics of micropolitan areas, the study uses a recent economic vitality index called the “Most Dynamic Micropolitans” developed by researchers at the Walton Family Foundation (Devol, Crews, and Wisecarver, 2019) to analyze relevant relationships and possible policy implications. References: Arias, Maria, Charles Gascon, and David Rapach, “Metro Business Cycles,” Journal of Urban Economics, Vol. 94, July 2016, 90-108. Gascon, Charles and Jacob Haas, “The Role of Industry Mix in Regional Business Cycles,” Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Regional Economist, 4th Quarter 2019. Devol, Ross, Jonas Crews, and Shelly Wisecarver, “Most Dynamic Micropolitans,” Walton Family Foundation, February 2019.

16:15-18:00 Session 7C: Innovation & Entrepreneurship I
Location: Pulaski 2
16:15
Talent Agglomeration in the United States: An Analysis of U.S. Census Microdata
PRESENTER: Marian Manic
DISCUSSANT: Heather Stephens

ABSTRACT. This study takes advantage of U.S. Census micro data from 2009 to 2018 to evaluate the spatial agglomeration of talent across U.S. regions. We identify “talent” based on the academic field of the individuals’ undergraduate education, which started being reported in the ACS Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) data sets in 2009. Specifically, we investigate the agglomeration propensity of STEM fields (with a focus on the computer, natural, and engineering sciences fields) relative to everything else. Surprisingly, previous research has not looked into measuring the degree of talent agglomeration based on higher education fields such as STEM. Recent studies that consider the impact of talent on regional economic development simply assert that such individuals sort themselves in cities with higher degrees of agglomeration without actually measuring the extent of and differences among clusters of academic fields. Thus, this study aims to fill the gap in the literature regarding the empirics of talent concentration. Further, we identify the individual-specific and location-specific characteristics contributing to the regional concentration of individuals with higher education degrees. To measure the regional heterogeneity of talent agglomeration, we examine talent in line with the vast literature on industry concentration, calculating location quotients as well as the concentration index based on Ellison and Glaeser (1997).

16:50
Industries, Occupations, and Entrepreneurship in Rural Regions
PRESENTER: Heather Stephens
DISCUSSANT: Timothy Wojan

ABSTRACT. Previous research suggests that entrepreneurs can contribute to higher levels of economic growth in rural areas. However, entrepreneurship in certain industries may be more beneficial to growth than others. Other research has linked industrial and occupational diversity to entrepreneurship and regional growth, especially in urban areas, due to the cross-fertilization of ideas. However, the relationship between industrial and occupational diversity and entrepreneurship in rural areas is less clear. Using detailed industry-level self-employment data, we examine whether entrepreneurs from certain industries or occupations may contribute more to regional growth. Additionally, we analyze the impact of industrial and occupational diversity on entrepreneurs in rural areas, in order to understand why some regions have more self-employment than others. Overall, our analysis can help rural regions better target scarce resources to support regional prosperity.

17:25
Mapping Innovation: Results from the 2018 Annual Business Survey
DISCUSSANT: Marian Manic

ABSTRACT. The Annual Business Survey (ABS), first collected by the Census Bureau in calendar year 2017, includes information on innovation and innovation-related activities from more than 800,000 firms. This is the largest sample of self-reported innovation ever collected in the US that opens new opportunities for deriving precise innovation rate estimates at the substate level. The first empirical challenge is determining which question responses best differentiate substantive innovation from imitation and continuous improvement. The alternatives are assessed with respect to various outcome measures in the ABS as well as comparing responses from unit businesses that were also surveyed in the 2014 Rural Establishment Innovation Survey (REIS). REIS derived a normative measure of substantive and incremental innovation using latent class analysis of innovative behaviors not available in ABS data. The second empirical challenge is addressing the geographic ambiguity presented by firm-level data. For multi-unit firms, innovation orientation will usually be attributed to headquarter locations. Innovation on the ground may be under-reported for those areas lacking headquarter facilities. Alternatively, the innovation rate may be over-reported if areas contain large numbers of non-innovative branch plants. Innovation rates computed for metropolitan and nonmetropolitan portions of states, for both unit and multi-location firms, should indicate potential directions of bias.

16:15-18:00 Session 7D: Regional Impact Analysis II
Location: Johnson
16:15
Data requirements and methods for assessing the economic contributions of aquaculture activity
PRESENTER: Robert Botta
DISCUSSANT: Allison Bauman

ABSTRACT. Florida’s aquaculture industry is extremely diverse, producing approximately 1,5000 species or varieties of fish, plants, mollusks, crustaceans, corals, and reptiles for food and non-food markets. The industry is expected to grow due to a suite of factors, including increased demand for seafood products, and newly established recommendations by the state government to promote improved aquaculture development. Currently, Florida’s aquaculture industry is dominated by ornamental fish aquaculture for non-food use, and molluscan aquaculture food use. Despite its place in Florida’s economy, the economic contributions of aquaculture are unknown. Estimation of the total economic contributions of aquaculture is quite difficult due to the lack of accurate and representative economic data. Additionally, the data that are available is unreliable due to the aggregate nature. Accurate data on total revenue and detailed expenditure patterns are both necessary to conduct economic contribution analyses that are representative of the aquaculture industry as a whole and its sub-sectors. Available data on molluscan aquaculture are used along with input-output data for Florida’s economy, available from IMPLAN©, to estimate the total economic contributions of the molluscan aquaculture industry in Florida, providing a framework for data collection and analysis that can serve as an example for conducting similar analyses for other aquaculture sectors and regions. Such analyses will provide a clearer understanding of the role of the aquaculture industry in the state’s economy.

16:50
Value-Added Food and Agriculture Sector and Rural Wealth Creation across the U.S.
PRESENTER: Allison Bauman
DISCUSSANT: David Christafore

ABSTRACT. Supporting rural communities and economies requires investing in a broad range of assets (i.e., financial, physical, human, intellectual, natural, social, political, and cultural) that comprise a community’s wealth (e.g., Arrow et al., 2012; Pender et al., 2012; UNU-IHDP, 2014). A comprehensive assets-based approach to understanding wealth creates opportunities for stakeholders to consider their comparative advantages before selecting appropriate community economic development strategies (Dumont et al., 2017).

Robust food systems have been cited as an opportunity for some communities to build wealth through leveraging their assets (e.g., Dumont et al., 2017; Schmit et al., 2017). One reason is that the induced innovation model of agricultural development argues that technologies for particular industrial sectors are developed endogenously in different places, reflecting local factor endowments (Hayami & Ruttan, 1971). Additionally, historically rural economies have relied on goods-producing sectors such as farming, mining, and manufacturing, which are still major rural industries in terms of production and revenue (Cromartie, 2017). Accordingly, Congress and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) have supported opportunities for food systems development in rural communities through programs and policy initiatives. As one example, the Value Added Producer Grant (VAPG) program, which was started in 2001, today includes specific mandates for local and regional food system activities. Between 2001 and 2015 the program provided a total of 2,345 grants to farmers and ranchers—a total value of $318 million. Preliminary evidence suggests that farmer participation in the VAPG program resulted in greater firm survival and increased jobs (Rupasingha, Pender, & Wiggins, 2018).

Our research examines: What is the relationship between the value-added food and agricultural sector and stocks of wealth and their interactions? To do this we define the value-added food and agricultural sector broadly. Our definition builds on Lu and Dudensing (2015, pg. 4), and the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service definition of food value chains (Diamond et al., 2014). Further, we consider local ownership of food and agricultural sector firms as one key feature of this sector given the role of locally owned firms in community well-being and the greater likelihood of these firms creating value chains with other food system partners (e.g., Clark and Record, 2017; Clark and Inwood, 2015; Fleming and Goetz, 2011). Wealth is defined to include a community’s assets net of liabilities, importantly encompassing financial, natural, and built assets, as well as intangible assets such as social capital and human capital (Pender et al. 2014).

We use the National Establishment Time Series (NETS) database to examine value-added initiatives across the supply chain, including food and agriculture manufacturing. NETS is a unique dataset in that it can provide information regarding local ownership.

To define the stocks of community wealth, we use asset indices developed by Jablonski et al. (2018), which include social capital, cultural capital, financial capital, socio-political capital, natural capital, and human capital. These are used as regressors to explain the variation in value-added variable outcomes. In separate models, and to serve as robustness checks, we define the value-added variable outcome as: 1) total locally owned value-added businesses per 10,000 pop; 2) total locally owned value-added business employment per 10,000 pop; and 3) total locally owned value-added business sales per capita.

We first regress the value-added outcome variable on the asset indices, state level fixed effects to capture unobservable differences in state factors that may affect value-added outcomes, the Rural Urban Continuum Codes (RUCC), median income, and population. The model is estimated for the full sample and for separate samples distinguished by metro (RUCC 1, 2, and 3) and non- metro (RUCC 4 through 9) counties. Given that we believe that the relationship between community assets and the dependent variable will vary depending on levels of other stocks of assets (i.e., their interactions), we also incorporate additional pairwise interactions. These models are estimated using Ordinary Least Squares (OLS).

There are several potential concerns with our approach, which could lead OLS to produced bias results. One, is that we are omitting variables from our model specification and that omission might be driving the relationship between the capitals and locally owned value-added food and ag businesses. A likely omitted variable is one that captures the spatial dependence among the counties. To address this potential issue, we estimate a Spatial Durbin model. Other potential concerns are that it is possible that value-added food and ag businesses locate in areas with high capitals, rather than the other way around and we are simply capturing correlation and not a causal relationship. To address these potential issues, we use an instrumental variable (IV) estimation approach to validate the interpretation of the results. Instrumental variables approaches, such as those of Jha and Cox (2015), Lewbel (2012) and Partridge, et al. (2017), will be investigated.

Preliminary OLS results demonstrate the importance of the interaction effects of community assets, though in some cases they reflect complementary relationships and in other substitutions. While substitution relationships appear more prevalent, we do see complementary relationships between a number of capitals (e.g., built and human, cultural and financial, cultural and human). Preliminary results from our Spatial Durbin model suggest a statistically significant spatial relationship between counties. Further disaggregation of the results will allow us to evaluate how location along the rural-urban continuum changes the resulting impacts of community wealth stocks on local- owned value-added food and agricultural business establishments, employment and sales. Results provide valuable information for policymakers and economic development stakeholders interested in understanding the relationship between value-added food and agricultural businesses and community assets, and the conditions that might support food systems-led wealth creation.

17:15
The Impact of Land Use Regulations and Natural Amenities on County Growth
DISCUSSANT: Randall Jackson

ABSTRACT. With rising incomes and the gaining popularity of remote work, places with attractive weather and landscapes have become a prime destination for relocation. However, places possessing more attractive natural amenities also tend to have more stringent regulations on land use. These regulations combined with the increasing attractiveness of high amenity places could result in exceedingly high increases in house prices that price out recent college graduates and entrepreneurs, limiting growth. We explore this relationship at the county level by regressing different measures of county growth on an interaction between the natural amenities of a county, as measured by the USDA Natural Amenities Scale, and the stringency of the land use regulations of a county, as measured by the Wharton Land Use Regulation Index.

17:40
Regional Impacts Assessments, Regional Purchases, and Regional Input-Output Modeling Frameworks
PRESENTER: Randall Jackson
DISCUSSANT: Kelsey Conley

ABSTRACT. Correctly formulating final demand scenarios for regional input-output impacts specifications can be challenging even for experienced practitioners. Although the mathematical formulations presented in textbooks and journal articles are seemingly straightforward, their simplicity belies a number of potential pitfalls for analysts. There are two factors that contribute to potential misspecification. First, introductions to input-output based impacts assessment methods tend to use national modeling frameworks, for which the implications of degree of openness of the national economy are seldom, if ever discussed. Second, although modern input-output accounts are almost universally distributed in commodity-by-industry formats, presentations of input-output methods almost are always founded on interindustry accounts. The implication is that the path from published national data to a regional interindustry framework is simple and straightforward, when in fact, there are several key considerations to be taken and assumptions to be made along the way. In this paper, we lay out the relevant mathematical foundations. In so doing, we also identify the correct mathematical frameworks and impacts assessment formulations.

16:15-18:00 Session 7E: Rural Broadband
Location: Oglethorpe AB
16:15
The Need for Speed: Rural Broadband and Entrepreneurship by Business Size and Gender
PRESENTER: Tessa Conroy
DISCUSSANT: Anil Rupasingha

ABSTRACT. Rural broadband access may have important implications for entrepreneurship especially in rural areas, which feature thinner markets. Broadband may be especially important for nonemployer businesses, particularly those without a storefront, for access to nontraditional market channels. As women are more likely to run these types of small businesses, we further expect that broadband may have important implications for women-led businesses. Using a novel instrumental variable approach, we find evidence that broadband access is a key factor leading to higher startup activity across business size and gender in rural areas with the largest effects on nonemployer, women-led, and remote rural establishments.

16:36
Impacts of Rural Utilities Service Broadband Investment (BIP) on Business Outcomes
PRESENTER: Anil Rupasingha
DISCUSSANT: Matthew Kures

ABSTRACT. Rural broadband development is a high priority for the Administration, Congress, and the public. Several Federal programs have supported broadband development in rural and other underserved areas for the past two decades, and the 2018 farm bill increased funding for some of these programs. The incidence, socioeconomic impacts, and economic returns of these program investments have been little studied. One method of measuring economic returns of broadband investments is by measuring their impact on business outcomes. This study estimates the impacts of the USDA Broadband Initiatives Program (BIP) on business survival and job growth. The BIP was established under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 and implemented by the Rural Utilities Service (RUS) of the USDA. It was a $2.5 billion program (appropriations) and provided grants and loans to support broadband provision in unserved and underserved rural areas. All BIP awards were made in two rounds in FY 2010 and required to cover areas at least 75% rural without broadband availability at 5mbps (upstream & downstream). Eligible projects under this program were mostly (96%) last-mile infrastructure projects and some second-round projects also supported satellite broadband, rural libraries, and provided technical assistance. This research combines RUS program data on BIP loans and grants, business dynamics data from the National Establishment Time-Series (NETS) data, and other publicly available data. We use a quasi-experimental research design that combines exact matching with difference-in-differences (DiD) type estimation to identify the causal effect of the BIP program on employment growth at the establishment level and business survival. Preliminary results show that the BIP program helps program service area businesses to reduce the risk of failure and grow slightly faster, compared with a similar control group of businesses from nearby non-service areas.

16:57
Do Regional Differences Matter in the Effectiveness of Broadband Policy?
PRESENTER: Hyun Ji Lee
DISCUSSANT: John Pender

ABSTRACT. In recent decades, the impact of broadband use has been highlighted in various socioeconomic sectors, particularly in rural areas which largely benefit from its positive impact on regional development. However, it is not clear that the impact is homogeneous across all rural areas, as each rural economy depends on its unique regional base and develops by different regional driving sectors. Thus, implementation of broadband services among rural areas may have differing impacts on their communities, corresponding to their different regional compositions. Based on the fact that not all rural areas present the same feature, this study focuses on the differential impact of broadband deployment within rural areas. Additionally, the study takes into account the specific types of broadband that have been previously neglected in the literature. The study tests how each different type of broadband, such as wired and wireless deployment, economically affects rural residents with access. Then, the study compares how these particular broadband effects vary depending on regional characteristics that each rural area consists of. In this research, counties that are similar in population density but dissimilar in terms of regional characteristics, which are mainly agriculture- versus non-agriculture-based counties, are selected for comparison. The study expects that regional characteristics along with different broadband types correspond with dissimilar broadband deployment effects on rural residents.

This research uses a Difference-In-Differences (DID) method to find a unique broadband effect on rural residents. Specifically, the study tests how broadband deployment has influenced income, as an economic outcome, of rural residents in the year following broadband access. The study explores national broadband availability data as of 2010 and 2011 for comparison, where a substantial increase in broadband provisions is observed from 2010 to 2011. By using GIS techniques, this research distinguishes areas based on availability of broadband services in each period to find an individual effect of either wireline or wireless service.

By comparing the results among the selected counties (i.e. which rural county was greatly influenced by a wireline provision and/or how the impact has differed with the other comparable counties), this research expects to find different DID effects between the counties. If this is true, the study finds evidence to demonstrate that regional differences matter in broadband policy. Based on the result, the study analyzes how future broadband provision and access should be differently applied depending on unique regional characteristics.

17:18
Concentration and Co-location Patterns of Information and Communication Technology Establishments: A Comparison of Approaches Using Establishment Level and Spatially-Aggregated Data
DISCUSSANT: Tessa Conroy

ABSTRACT. Patterns of industrial distribution and clustering remain important considerations for regions attempting to identify sources of comparative advantage and craft effective economic development strategies. While these patterns are often assessed using measures that depend on industry data aggregated to various enumeration units, it has been argued that a reliance on spatially-aggregated data restricts the spatial scale of industry concentration and co-location and creates problems related to the modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP). As a result, several distance-based measures of industry concentration and co-location that rely on establishment level data have been developed or adapted to overcome these issues. These distance-based measures include modifications to the K-density function, (Duranton and Overman, 2005), Ripley’s K and Ripley’s Cross K functions (Casanova, Orts and Albert, 2017), the M function (Marcon and Puech, 2010) and the W function (Kukuliač and Horák, 2017).

While these approaches have potential advantages over estimates that rely on spatially-aggregated data, the availability of extensive establishment level data is often uncertain. The calculation of these distance-based measures also can be computationally intensive when using large establishment level datasets. Consequently, many analysts and researchers continue to rely on data aggregated to various geographic enumeration units in their assessments of industry concentration and co-location. However, does a reliance on spatially-aggregated data create significantly different results when compared to those produced using establishment-level data? To explore these potential differences, this analysis compares aggregated and establishment-based measures of concentration and co-location for the information and communication technology (ICT) industry across the United States. Specifically, the analysis compares the results of Moran’s I/bi-variate Moran’s I and Ripley’s K/Ripley’s Cross K in measuring industry concentration and co-location based on: 1) address-based establishment data, 2) data spatially-aggregated to enumeration units and 3) a dasymetric approach to creating random distributions of industry locations within enumeration units.

17:39
Impacts of the Broadband Initiatives Program on Broadband Availability and House Sale Prices
PRESENTER: John Pender
DISCUSSANT: Hyun Ji Lee

ABSTRACT. The Broadband Initiatives Program (BIP) is the largest USDA program to promote broadband development in rural areas. Enacted as a part of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, in 2010 BIP funded 300 broadband infrastructure projects serving almost every state, with a total value of $2.9 billion (net, excluding projects that were approved but not completed). Almost all of these projects were “last mile” projects, and most provided fiber-to-the-premises. This study investigates the impacts of these projects on broadband availability and house sale prices using Rural Utilities Service (RUS) data on the program, FCC Form 477 data on broadband availability in 2010 and 2015, and CoreLogic property tax and deed data for the years 2007 to 2016. A combination of matching and difference-in-difference regression methods is used to identify the impacts of these projects. For the analysis of impacts on house prices, the levels and trends in house prices in project service areas and matched comparison communities are used to ensure the comparability of the comparison groups and of prior trends in house prices.

18:00-19:00 Session 8: Undergraduate Poster Session
Location: Atrium
18:00
When numbers lie, using data to influence rather than inform opinions and resource allocation

ABSTRACT. Nonprofit organizations have become increasingly engaged in disseminating information. Unlike federal statistics that are collected with rigidly proscribed procedures, nonprofits have an advocacy role that may influence the information they release and the interpretations they derive from that data. While federal statistics are released to inform opinion, nonprofit statistics are released to influence opinion. Using as cases the Feeding America county food insecurity statistics, the United Way ALICE estimates of working poor, and the MIT Living Wage Calculator, we show how the need to shape opinion with data can lead nonprofits to release data characterized by flawed methodology and misleading or implausible values. Because errors or biases in federal data have been widely researched and publicized through peer review, users can adjust to the known noise in the data. Flaws in data reported by the nonprofits are not made transparent, and so users will make bad decisions if they assume the information is correct.

18:00
Eclipsonomics: Estimating the Effects of the Great American Eclipse
PRESENTER: Shaheen Pirani

ABSTRACT. On August 21, 2017, the "Great American Eclipse" passed over much of the continental United States. Our research question is whether this event could be characterized as a positive environmental shock in the same way that hurricanes, floods, and other weather events are considered negative environmental shocks in the literature. Indeed, some reports from states in the eclipse path indicate a boost to economic activity stemming from the event (South Carolina Department of Parks, 2017). This project leverages traffic pattern data to test the hypothesis that there was an increase in monthly average traffic along roads in the path of totality. Due to lack of daily spending data, such traffic increases plausibly imply greater spending in the areas surrounding these roads as observers stopped at local restaurants and shops. Using a difference-in-difference approach, our results show mixed evidence of the eclipse statistically changing traffic patterns and, by extension, economic activity. The lack of significance could be due to several factors, including the fact that the eclipse took place in the middle of a workday in addition to the fact that it lasted only a few minutes. The implication is then that the duration and timing of a positive environmental shock are most influential in determining the effect on economic activity.

18:00
Effect of Farm-Size Change on Rural Community Well-Being

ABSTRACT. “In America, the big get bigger and the small go out. I don’t think in America, for any small business, we have a guaranteed income or guaranteed profitability,” stated Sonny Perdue, Secretary of Agriculture (World Dairy Expose, Madison, Wisconsin October 2019). This comment came upon a time when Wisconsin has been losing an average of two dairy farms a day and is leading the nation in the number of farm bankruptcies. Wisconsin, like many other states, is experiencing a bifurcation in the distribution of farms with a growth in larger as well as smaller farms. The latter growth in smaller farms is largely a reflection of the growth of the markets supporting local foods as well as niche agricultural products (e.g., grapes for wine or hops for beer). The middle of that distribution of farm size is slowly hollowing out. Coupled with rapid technological advancement in the field of agriculture and changing economic situations, the question of the impact of farm size on the economic well-being of rural communities has been attracting more and more attention. Thus, this study analyzes the current relationship between shifting farm size and rural-community well-being in order to provide analytical results useful for US agricultural policy.

18:00
Redefining Defense: The United States DoD and the Fight Against Climate Change

ABSTRACT. The United States Department of Defense (DoD) has quietly become one of the federal government’s leading land management agencies and environmental stewards. As the nation’s largest energy consumer, DoD’s efforts to reduce costs in terms of dollars and casualties have positioned the agency as a leading innovator for renewable energy production and improvements to energy efficiency. Additionally, encroachment issues have motivated DoD to develop land acquisition programs creating buffer zones that provide habitat for threatened and endangered species and protect civilians from military training operations. Despite federal gridlock over climate change, the DoD has acknowledged it as a threat for thirty years and has adapted its energy and land management programs in response. International instability, dependence on foreign fossil fuels, sea level rise, increased extreme weather events, and more frequent and severe forest fires are all phenomena associated with climate change threatening military readiness. The Southeastern US has a high concentration of DoD installations, and in 2019 the Southeastern Partnership for Planning and Sustainability (SERPPAS), a working-group led by DoD, gathered the Collaborating Towards Coastal Resilience Conference to create dialogue and partnerships around the climate change threats to coastal DoD installations in the Southeastern region. This research grew out of identified needs from that conference, and will 1) document DoD’s internal programs for a civilian audience, 2) grow awareness of DoD’s progressive environmental stance, and 3) suggest ways that DoD’s framework for action could be applied by other agencies.