ABSTRACT. In 2015, BEA published annual personal consumption expenditures (PCE) by state for the first time. These statistics measure the goods and services purchased by or on behalf of households residing in each state and the District of Columbia. Since this time, BEA has sustained an effort to develop new estimates of PCE by state at a quarterly frequency. Annual PCE by state statistics constitute a key component of the state-level information furnished by BEA. A consequence of this importance, however, is a demand from data users (policymakers, researchers and businesses) for higher frequency and timelier information. Thus, the development of quarterly measures of PCE by state will fill an important need and will be a valuable complement to other regional statistics including personal income and GDP by state statistics. This presentation provides a comprehensive overview of our attempts to develop an experimental quarterly measure of PCE by state. It discusses background and details of the methods used, and presents some experimental statistics.

ABSTRACT. While currently the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) publishes gross domestic product by state statistics that are constructed using an income-based approach, BEA has been researching methods to estimate a subset of expenditure components of GDP by state, which are individually of significant interest to businesses and policymakers. One such component is private fixed investment expenditures. Private fixed investment includes a large subcomponent, investment in equipment, for which state-specific input series that conform precisely to the relevant national accounts principles are not available from published household or business surveys aggregates. This presentation discusses an experimental method to allocate equipment investment to states using Census microdata. The project allocates enterprise-level equipment expenditures to individual establishments. Because single establishments are associated with a specific physical location, this allocation process results in equipment expenditure information that may be aggregated to state-level spending estimates. The presentation will include background information, details on the method, and some preliminary results.

ABSTRACT. BEA publishes statistics on national government consumption and investment expenditures each quarter, but does not publish similar statistics by state. This presentation details a BEA research effort aimed at developing experimental statistics on federal government consumption and investment expenditures by state. The method involves the computation of various components – Federal general government employee compensation, investment expenditures (by type of investment), purchases of intermediate goods and services (by type of good or service), consumption of fixed capital (by type of capital), own account investment, and sales to other sectors. Estimates of these components are constructed using a combination of administrative data (aggregates and micro data from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, and Government Contract Spending data from Department of the Treasury), Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics from Bureau of Labor Statistics, and other sources. These statistics are important components of expenditure-based measures of production by state, and could be used by policymakers, businesses and other organizations to provide valuable insights into the potential impacts of a variety federal government policies on states or regions.

ABSTRACT. This presentation covers the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA)'s ongoing effort to improve state-level gross domestic product (GDP) statistics through the Government Consumption Expenditures and Gross Investment (GCE&GI) research project. It will highlight the missing picture of government’s role as a consumer and an investor in state-level statistics. The GCE&GI project addresses data gaps, offering a detailed examination by state of the allocations of investment expenditures and consumption expenditures that are performed by the state and local governments. The presentation covers the challenges, current national-level statistical methods, and BEA's research on developing experimental state-level GCE&GI estimates.

ABSTRACT. Understanding optimal CO2 abatement strategies requires detailed analysis of marginal abatement costs (MACs) across economic sectors and regions. This research derives sector-specific MACs for three Southern US states and the nation to address this knowledge gap. We combine a partial extraction approach with structural decomposition analysis, leveraging the input-output model’s quasi-linear properties. Critically, we implement sector-level supply constraints to capture cost heterogeneity.

Results offer several insights. First, high carbon-intensity sectors do not necessarily demonstrate low MACs, suggesting uniform abatement policies may be inefficient. Second, sectoral MACs exhibit meaningful consistency across states and alignment with national averages, indicating federal guidelines could reasonably inform state-level climate policy.

We simulate least-cost emissions pathways using marginal cost estimates, comparing maximum economic output versus minimum abatement expenditure strategies. Minimizing costs reduces cumulative abatement expenditures by 18% while still achieving substantial emissions reductions, versus maximizing output.

Overall, a universal carbon price appears inferior to a differentiated approach allowing state-level divergence based on precise MACs. These findings contribute to the academic literature on environmentally extended input-output modeling and climate policy design. They suggest further specifying sectoral, state-level MACs should remain a research priority for crafting efficient climate mitigation policies. The methodology and results offer value to the field by demonstrating how structurally-enhanced input-output models can inform the spatial and sectoral targeting of climate change policies.

ABSTRACT. This paper examines state-level CO2 emissions associated with energy consumption in the United States, focusing on the impacts of the Clean Air Act and the Clean Power Plan (CPP). Utilizing a comprehensive dataset from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, spanning decades from 1970 to 2021, the study employs exploratory data analysis and the event analysis with two-way fixed effects (TWFE) linear panel data model to evaluate the policy impacts on major energy-consuming sectors across states. The major energy-consuming sectors include electric power generation, transportation, industrial, commercial, and residential sectors. The event analysis assesses state-level compliance with CPP-mandated emission reduction targets, identifying variations in emissions pre- and post-CPP implementation. It discerns states that exceeded emission reduction targets and those facing challenges, offering insights into the effectiveness of the CPP at the state level. Furthermore, the study extends the event-study model by incorporating a Spatial SUR (Seemingly Unrelated Regressions) model for each sector to understand the spatial and sectoral interdependence in emission reductions. This approach captures the dynamic interactions among states and sectors, considering both geographical proximity and shared economic factors. Specifically, the Spatial SUR model accounts for spillover effects of emissions reduction efforts across neighboring states and analyzes the influence of economic factors that are common to multiple states. Preliminary findings from the event analysis and spatial SUR models reveal different timing of reaching CO2 emission peaks across states and sectors, and identify states that have successfully navigated emission reduction challenges. The results highlight the importance of spatial and sectoral interdependence in achieving effective emission reduction policies. By examining emissions reduction policies and analyzing their impacts at the state level, this study provides valuable insights for policymakers, particularly in assessing the effectiveness of climate policies across diverse state contexts.

ABSTRACT. We think of the cleanup of water pollution in the Ganges river in India as a local public good and ask whether this cleanup ought to be decentralized or centralized. We depart from the existing literature on this subject in two important ways. First, we allow the heterogeneous spillovers from cleaning up water pollution to be positive or negative. Second, we focus on water pollution cleanup in three cities---Kanpur, Prayagraj, Varanasi---through which the Ganges flows. Our model sheds light on two broad issues. First, we characterize efficient water pollution cleanup in the three cities, we describe how much water pollution is cleaned up under decentralization, we describe the set of cleanup amounts under decentralization, and we discuss why pollution cleanup under decentralization is unlikely to be efficient. Second, we focus on centralization. We derive the tax paid by the inhabitants of the three cities for pollution cleanup, the benefit to a city inhabitant from water pollution cleanup, how majority voting determines how much pollution is cleaned up when the spillovers from cleanup are uniform, and finally, we compare the amounts of pollution cleaned up with majority voting with the efficient pollution cleanup amounts.

ABSTRACT. In this article, I discuss how social interactions affect the decisions on work or not work (labor participation) in a spatial context. People in the neighborhoods affect the individual decision to participate in the labor market; that is, spatial neighborhoods affect individual choices related to the labor supply. I use a digital appropriation index built using intentions and uses of the internet in order to model the social interactions between people and how affect the individual labor participation. Using individual GPS data (latitude and longitude) for the municipality of Cali we find the social interaction have a positive effect and externalities in the labor participation.

ABSTRACT. This paper focuses on the role of online alumni networks in influencing the school-to-work migration flow of PhD graduates in non-academia. By collecting resumes from the LinkedIn platform, I create a PhD dataset that comprises about 300,000 graduates from 145 R1 universities during 1980-2016. This comprehensive dataset offers detailed information on the educational background and job trajectory of PhD graduates, enabling me to assess the stock of alumni and migration flow across school-destination state pairs. To identify the causal impact of alumni networks, I employ panel regressions at the school-destination state level that incorporate school-year, destination state-year, and school-destination state interactive fixed effects to effectively control for the potential endogenous problem caused by omitted variables. The empirical findings show that alumni in managerial positions play a role in facilitating migration by providing support to new graduates while alumni in junior positions may exert a contrasting influence, potentially limiting migration due to competition effects. This study contributes to existing literature by offering a detailed exploration of the school-to-work migration of PhD graduates, illuminating the significant role of alumni networks in this transition and the multifaceted impacts of networks shaped by alumni at different professional levels.

ABSTRACT. Following the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic induced economic shock, increased attention has been paid to the role that skill mismatch played in the recovery of the labor market. While evidence on the pervasiveness of skill mismatch in the U.S. is mixed, the previous literature suggests that employers raise skill requirements in response to labor market slack and that this trend persists during periods of recovery for certain occupations. Despite this, little is known about how increases in skill demand impacts local labor markets and individuals across different demographic groups. Using data on the near universe of online job postings, county-level occupational employment, and the U.S. Census Bureau’s Longitudinal Employer Household Dynamics (LEHD) Quarterly Workforce Indicators (QWI), I analyze how exposure to national within-occupation changes in skill demand in the decade following the Great Recession impacts hiring behavior, job separations, and wage dynamics. Differential impacts across race, gender, age, and educational attainment are also considered. This analysis will add to our understanding of how workers and local labor markets may be impacted by future skill requirement shocks.

ABSTRACT. This paper presents a historiographic analysis of the early philosophy of regional science (RS), focusing on the first six volumes of Papers and Proceedings of the Regional Science Association. It examines them to delineate the initial core and boundaries of the discipline; included in these early issues are several papers by Walter Isard which attempt just that. This focused historiography was conducted to generate a sufficient philosophical basis for the following thought experiment:

What would regional science look like if the major influences of economics and geography were removed? What types of problems would this parallel version of regional science allow us to study, and how could this work be applied in tandem with the contemporary field?

This project was inspired by research conducted in the Isard archives at Cornell University as well as the conversation surrounding Isard’s evolving interpretation of the scientific in RS (Donaghy, 2012) and the pressing application of RS to the war in Ukraine (Pascariu et al., 2023).

From this targeted historiography and thought experiment, this paper will pose 3-5 research questions building on this parallel approach.

ABSTRACT. On January 19, 2021, in the Federal Register, the Office of Management and Budget (0MB) requested public comment on the recommendations it had received from the Metropolitan and Micropolitan Statistical Area Standards Review Committee for changes to OMB's metropolitan and micropolitan statistical area standards. The "Overview of Recommendations From the Metropolitan and Micropolitan Statistical Area Standards Review Committee" included: "(3) Research should be undertaken on an additional, territorially exhaustive classification that covers all of the United States and Puerto Rico." This paper presents an approach to single-layer coverage that adds value to the historic State and County alphabetically assigned FIPS codes with a geocode method that would be used for the substate district geography chosen by each State. The county, county equivalent or municipality Census geographies are the building blocks; thus, historical data will aggregate into the substate district framework. The geocoding method will enable the aggregating of analytical regions smaller or larger than any basic substate district within a State or any contiguous multi-State area. In the 1970s, the Southern Growth Policies Board recommended to its member States that sub-state districts be established to assist in multi-county planning and development. This proposal is based on the long-term success of the implementation of The Virginia Area Development Act of 1968, which led to the delineation of 22 Planning Districts. It was unique in that a 1972 Executive Order required State Agencies that used sub-state districts for their management to realign them to an individual Planning District or multiples. Virginia's progress has been substantial due to the geographic alignment that flowed from this simple administrative action. An evaluation of the experience of the members, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and the Commonwealth of Puerto, would be useful. Texas, Maryland and Delaware were included on their map, but did not allocate funds.

ABSTRACT. Local governments face a growing array of challenges as their scope of responsibilities increases alongside emerging human and environmental issues brought about by population growth, new technology, and climate change (Lobao and Kelly 2019). The challenge is especially daunting for rural, financially constrained communities due to a limited capacity to take on additional functions. With a few exceptions, counties are led by elected commissioners who are often first-time public servants and responsible for important functions that shape the trajectory of local development, such as preparing the annual budget, providing adequate infrastructure, and crafting long-term development plans that serve as tools for achieving social and economic goals. Commissioners also advocate on behalf of their constituents at the state and national level, playing an important role in securing disaster relief and development grants.

To better prepare commissioners, state associations for local governments increasingly leverage the expertise housed within universities (Thomson 2010). Through partnerships, they provide training in a myriad of areas, from communication and crisis management to economic development, and aim to increase the capacity of local leaders to tackle social and economic issues. With effective leadership a key factor in the performance of local governments (Benton 2005), delivering programs that improve the professionalism and competencies of elected officials aligns with the mission of Cooperative Extension to improve the social and economic well-being of communities. These programs in turn can benefit universities by creating goodwill among important stakeholders, internship and employment opportunities for students, and research ideas for faculty.

However, despite leadership education programs existing in 23 states (Thomson 2010), little information exists on how various factors influence the decision of elected officials to engage with leadership education. Factors can be individual characteristics, such as party affiliation or years in office, as well as county characteristics such as ruralness and median income. Our study addresses the gap by empirically investigating how a variety of individual and county factors affect the probability of commissioners engaging with three sequential leadership education programs (certified county commissioner, advanced county commissioner I, and advanced county commissioner II) offered by the Institute for County Government in partnership with UF|IFAS Extension.

We exploit cross-sectional data, obtained from the Institute for County Government (2023), of all Florida county commissioners that held office as of May 2023. The data include information on whether a commissioner is a graduate from the leadership programs as well as party affiliation, years in office, gender, race, and the number of other commissioners from the same county that are program graduates. We supplement the commissioner data with the following county data, rurality, median income, whether the county imposes term limits, and the linear distance to Gainesville (training site) from the county seat. We gather attendance data from the 2022-2023 advanced county commissioner programs enrollment records.

We will analyze county commissioner engagement (specifically attendance and graduation) with the programs using logistic regression, which can be used to predict the conditional probability of the occurrence of a dichotomous outcome. Our approach is similar to that taken by Rumberger (2010) and Cameron and Heckman (2001), who investigate how student attributes affect educational attainment.

Our study will generate novel insight on the individual and county factors that may affect the decision of elected officials to engage with leadership education programs. For example, attitudes towards universities are increasingly split along party lines, with democrats tending to hold positive views and republicans tending to hold negative views (Parker 2019). Our study will show whether party affiliation has a substantial influence on the decision of commissioners to engage with a program, and, if so, the need to develop strategies to overcome skepticism towards universities (e.g. emphasize partnership with trusted professional organizations). Additionally, commissioners from financially constrained and rural counties, which are arguably the most in need of capable leadership, may struggle to find the time and resources to attend the programs. If we find that the rurality or median income of a county is negatively associated with engagement, it suggests that program leaders may want to identify solutions to make programs more accessible (e.g. scholarship opportunities to commissioners from qualifying counties). Discussion of our results can help other extension faculty focused on local government to develop strategies to increase the reach and impact of their programs as well as new lines of research.

ABSTRACT. PFAS (polyfluoroalkyl substances) contamination in the US is an increasing concern for utilities, industries, regulators, and citizens. While these compounds were introduced decades ago, consequences of contamination are still being uncovered. Ongoing identification of human health effects has caused states to impose stricter regulations on PFAS in public drinking water. Yet, justifications for expanding or imposing regulations likely underestimate benefits by failing to account for broader effects; PFAS contamination may reduce home or business property values. We attempt to fill this gap by measuring housing market effects of PFAS in municipal water systems. Using the hedonic method, we measure housing market effects of PFAS contamination in well water systems in New Hampshire, connecting PFAS measurements from household wells in a sample of 100,000+ housing transactions (2015 – 2021) across Hillsborough, Rockingham, and Strafford counties (a major industrial source of PFAS contamination is in this area).

Preliminary estimates indicate that houses located within 25 meters of wells that exceed EPA’s designated maximum contaminant level for PFAS experience a 24% decrease in sales price, though this holds only for homes sold during 2019. As we add successive years’ data to our sample, we hypothesize that effects of PFAS on property values may change as more information is becomes available. To further investigate effects of information over time, our analysis is supplemented with a homeowner survey to assess potential lack of awareness to presence and risks of PFAS. We analyze the role of information on housing prices over time (since much of our data set contains observations from before PFAS’ effects were widely known) and use responses from household surveys to obtain homeowners’ estimates of PFAS effects on their home valuation. This dual approach should allow us to identify impacts of information, income, and education on housing prices as a function of pollution.

ABSTRACT. Agriculture are the necessary inputs in the production of food manufacturing and are sensitive to weather conditions. Global agri-food security is challenged by a growing population and less predictable weather patterns as climate change intensifies. This necessitates a better understanding of how variations in weather leads to changes in agricultural productivity. Ever since the Ricardian approach was first proposed as an alternative to the traditional production function, there have been large developments in the range of samples and methodologies used in the analysis. However, there is no study that pools all the results together. To fill this gap, we use meta-analytic techniques for the 1,078 estimates collected globally that estimate the relationship of agricultural profit and land value with temperature and precipitation. The results can be generalized as follows. First, latitude and longitude presented a positive effect in the estimations for both revenue and land value. This indicates that agricultural productivity for the countries in the northeast are more sensitive to weather-related disruptions. In addition, controlling for location increased the temperature and precipitation effect for land value. The negative moderator was the U.S. dummy which indicates that agricultural profit in the U.S. is less sensitive to changing climate compared to other studied countries. Overall, the findings provide us with a better understanding of the sensitivity of global agricultural productivity to temperature and precipitation that is informative for the adaptation and mitigation strategies in the agriculture and agri-food sector.

ABSTRACT. The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) introduced a cap on State and Local Taxes (SALT) deductions, significantly altering the cost of public services for high-income residents in high-tax areas. This study explores local governments' response to the federal deductibility limit by assessing changes in property tax rates and levies. Findings indicate a decline in nominal property taxes in New York, a state heavily impacted by the cap. This paper suggests increased inter-jurisdictional competition among local governments as a plausible mechanism for these changes, as they strive to retain resident households in the face of the cap's constraints.

ABSTRACT. Successful attraction of a large new facility is the primary goal of many local economic development efforts. Policy-makers justify the financial and other incentives used to lure these companies with the promise of substantial direct and indirect benefits. Using detailed establishment-level data and data on highly incentivized new facility locations, this paper provides quasi-experimental evidence of spillovers associated with the successful attraction of a large new facility in the new millennium. We estimate the change in employment for zip codes that are exposed to a large, highly incentivized new establishment. Our results suggest modest employment spillovers that attenuate sharply with distance from the new facility zip code and vary substantially based upon the economic sector of the new facility.

ABSTRACT. Production and sales of plug-in electric vehicles are growing rapidly in the United States. What does this major transformation hold in store for the industry’s production footprint? This paper compares the emerging geography of battery electric vehicle (BEV) production with the existing distribution of internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle production facilities in North America. For our analysis we are able to draw on detailed vehicle production and powertrain sourcing forecasts for all of North America, extending though the end of 2029. For example, we distinguish all major powertrain variants, specifically: ICE vehicles, HEVs, PHEVs, and BEVs.

Our analysis includes the location patterns of vehicle assembly, as well as related sourcing of powertrains: engine, as well as batteries (cells and packs). We find that despite the massive changes expected in the mix of vehicles produced, the emerging spatial pattern of BEV assembly and battery production is strikingly similar to the existing pattern for ICE vehicle assembly and engine production at the scale of North America as a whole. However, at the local scale, new battery plants are being constructed in different communities than those that are home to existing engine plants. Importantly we find that two “intermediate” technologies, HEVs and PHEVs, are playing an important role in the emerging geography of vehicle production, at least through the end of the decade, as they need both a battery and an internal combustion engine.

ABSTRACT. South Carolina offered Boeing nearly $1 billion to locate a 787 Dreamliner assembly plant in North Charleston, which opened in 2011. State and local governments have traditionally attempted to lure large-employer firms within traded sectors using subsidies due to their perceived ability to attract suppliers and related firms which might evolve into a local cluster. Following the methodologies of Greenstone et al. (2010) and Adams (2016), I use a control group composed of candidate states that failed to attract the assembly plant and find that the Boeing project produced gains in employment, wages, and establishments within South Carolina’s aerospace industry in the subsequent decade. However, estimated industry employment gains do not exceed the number of Boeing’s promised jobs and much of the state’s aerospace establishment growth was not near Charleston but in the Upstate region (Greenville, Spartanburg) late in the treatment period. At best, the direct cost per job generated by the plant is comparable to the average aerospace industrial recruitment deal according to Slattery & Zidar (2020). However, when I examine the impact of the plant on Charleston’s metropolitan economy, I find a substantial local multiplier effect which suggests a much lower cost per total job generated by the recruitment deal.

ABSTRACT. Both urban and rural firm entry rates have declined over the last three decades, and the urban-rural gap in firm entry rates has increased. We investigate which local market factors are associated with the divergence between 1993 and 2019. Our model includes local measures of agglomeration, human capital, consumption demand, government fiscal policies, and natural amenities. We find that declining sensitivity of firm entry to local agglomeration, human capital, and consumption demand are associated with the decrease in firm entry rates in both markets and with the increasing urban-rural gap in firm entry rate.

ABSTRACT. Rural and distressed areas consistently have lower labor force participation rates and lag behind their urban counterparts. Previous literature suggests that entrepreneurs can lead to higher levels of economic growth in rural areas. However, the effects are heterogeneous across different demographic groups. Furthermore, self-employment rates of women and minorities are continuously lower than those of white men. While many studies have examined the factors affecting self-employment, the factors influencing entrepreneurship of women and minorities are less clear, especially in rural areas. Using various county-level data, we explore the local characteristics that may contribute to higher rural female and minority self-employment rates in rural regions, focusing on understanding the unique challenges and opportunities faced by these underrepresented groups. Our analysis can help understand and support entrepreneurs from disadvantaged groups in rural and distressed regions and improve regional prosperity.

ABSTRACT. Schumpeter argued that the creative destruction process causes an increase in regional value added by product innovation, the services required to support product development, and the entry of new businesses that displace or diminish the value of incumbent products, services, and providers. The most evident outcome of this process is the birth (entries) and death (exits) of brick-and-mortar establishments, with knock-on effects on employment, local demand, spending patterns, and migration. More generally, business establishment births and deaths reallocate limited resources to their most efficient use as economic conditions change. Over the past several decades the rate of establishment entry and exit has declined significantly, especially in rural areas, calling into the question the importance of the creative destruction process in reallocating resources. We test the implications of Schumpeter’s theory of ‘creative destruction’ on business establishment births and deaths using a dynamic panel, unobserved effect Poisson model. We use NETS data, 2002 to 2019, for business establishment births and deaths. We focus specifically on the food manufacturing sector (NAICS 311) and how birth-death rates vary between urban and rural locations and whether the creative destruction process is fundamentally different in these areas.

ABSTRACT. Oil and gas rigs create unique ecological habitats for fish preyed on by recreational anglers which led to fishing tournaments with potential large economic benefit for the Gulf of Mexico region. In recent years, a substantial number of oil and gas rigs around the Gulf of Mexico shut down. Those shutdowns may have affected these favorable habitats for fishes hunted by recreational fisher and impacted the frequency and locations of fishing tournaments. For a holistic understanding of the tournaments, we are first trying to understand how fishers are thinking about tournament participation in an environment where fish may be attracted to different areas due to oil and gas rigs shutdown. We therefore assess the attitudes of fisher towards oil and gas rigs across several major fishing tournaments in the Gulf of Mexico region. In a second step, we assess the economic impact of the fishing tournaments. We conducted an economic evaluation survey in seven deep-sea fishing tournaments in four states in the northern Gulf of Mexico: Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. In the survey we asked questions to elicit the importance that fishing teams place on oil and gas rigs, artificial reefs (non-operating oil and gas rigs), and other structures such as pipes or sunken boats using a five-point Likert scale. To assess the economic impact of the tournaments, the expenditures of the fishing tournament teams were requested. We find that overall fishers think oil and gas rigs are crucial to fishing tournaments, and fishers put a lower weight on artificial reefs and other artificial structures. Another finding is gulf-wide deep-sea fishing tournaments across Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas likely created economic contributions of around $83.4 million on the local communities and regions.

ABSTRACT. The Suwannee River basin is a large hydrological region that spans southern Georgia and parts of northern Florida. The key freshwater hydrological feature of this region is the Suwannee River, which empties into the Gulf of Mexico along the Dixie County and Levy County border, just north of Cedar Key, Florida. The basin contains more than 190 freshwater springs, which contribute to regional ecosystem health and support a variety of aquatic recreational activities, including swimming, kayaking, and freshwater and saltwater fishing. The region is also highly agricultural, with various types of field crops, vegetables, livestock, and forestry production (Obreza and Means, 2006). Changes in climate and human activity have impacted both water quantity and quality within the basin (Florida DEP, 2018), and are expected to continue under future climate scenarios (Neupane et al., 2018). Given the economic contributions of agriculture, forestry, and natural resource recreation to the region, it is important to understand the economic impacts of such land use and environmental changes (Rahmani, Hodges, and Mulkey, 2005; He et al., 2021).

The present study will estimate changes in the economic contributions of agriculture and natural resource activities within the functional economic region associated with the Suwannee River Basin. Taking an integrated model approach, the regional economic model will be informed by hydrological and ecological models that were developed to simulate different land use and climate scenarios for the Suwannee River basin. Estimated levels of output associated with agriculture and natural resource activities are used to drive an input-output model to estimate the economic impacts of the land use and environmental changes on the regional economy under the four different scenarios. Understanding the regional economic impacts associated with the different climate and land use change scenarios can inform regulatory and policy decisions regarding land use, water management, and development policies in the region.

ABSTRACT. Numerous studies underscore the significance of STEM programs and how immigration policies can influence the academic pursuits of international students. Beginning in 2012, the Department of Homeland Security's acceptance of Econometrics and Quantitative Economics (EQE) as a STEM major marked a pivotal development. With the Optional Practical Training (OPT) period being extended twice, first in 2008 and again in 2016, the popularity of EQE surged in subsequent years. Consequently, many educational institutions began reclassifying their economics programs. This paper employs data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) to explore the impact of this reclassification. The reclassification has positive effects on the number of degree conferrals, and the effect on the number of international students is more significant. In addition, I also investigated the location of all reclassifying institutions and found large regional differences in the effects of reclassification.

ABSTRACT. This paper addresses the issue of marginalization of labor force with poor family health to certain employment strategies. Using National Health Interview Survey data from 2010 to 2018, and weighted multinomial probit models, we extensively study employment strategies of the US workforce with poor family health. Worker’s health, spouse’s health, and child health are considered, by providing insights into the family embeddedness nature of worker’s decision-making. Findings suggest disproportionate impacts of family health on the choice of employment for married vs. single-parents, and male vs. female workforce. The results are prominent choosing between part-time and full-time employment in the wage work sector. Those who have poor health are less likely to choose full-time wage work compared to part-time wage work, regardless of the gender and marital status. For married men, their poor health restricts them from choosing full-time job over part-time job in both wage work and self-employment sectors. We do not find evidence for health driven differences for the choice between wage and self-employment except for full-time married male workers. Married men with good health are more likely to choose full-time self-employment over full-time wage work. That implies poor health hinders new ventures. Our findings give mixed results for males and females in terms of family health effect on employment choice, and those results are prominent for the married sample. For married mothers, having a higher proportion of children with good health leads to choosing full time wage work over part-time wage work. For married fathers, child health is not a significant determinant of the choice of work strategy. Also, for mothers, having a spouse with good health leads to choosing part-time wage work over full-time wage work. May be mothers take time off for childcare and house chores if she has a healthy spouse who can support the family income. We find no evidence for the impact of spouse health on married fathers’ job choice. Only their own health matters between choosing employment strategy. Gender-wise differences in job choice led by family health variables are difficult to identify in single-parent models due to small sample sizes. However, child health is a significant determinant of the employment choice of single parents. Study provides important insights for policy makers. Currently, there are significant barriers for health plans to integrate with workforce entities. Effective health plans with reshaping funding structures and program policies will reward the workforce with poor health. The study also highlights the importance of targeting health plan interventions towards a network/social group/family, rather than an individual. Further, considering the heterogeneity of workers, i.e., their gender and marital status is important in health plan interventions, especially child benefits for working women and single parents. Workplace flexibility and special accommodations for poor health work force may also reduce the marginalization of workforce with poor health. Other than the health policy interventions and workplace changes, our study adds to the growing body of literature on family health and employment relationships.

ABSTRACT. The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic necessitated significant adaptations in various aspects of daily life, including the field of education. The education sector had to change the traditional learning methods and migrated to a virtual space. While virtual education presents advantages, it also introduces limitations, particularly concerning connectivity and access to telecommunication resources. This study focuses on Colombia, where disparities in internet access and availability of technological devices pose challenges for online education. These disparities contribute to increased dropout rates, grade repetition, and decreased enrollment rates. Socioeconomic disparities and the marginalization of minority groups play a significant role in creating these discrepancies. The objective of this research is to analyze the impact of the pandemic on educational performance, particularly examining the correlation with access to resources and technological devices, with a specific focus on the experiences of minority groups. The study concludes that the pandemic, coupled with belonging to minority groups, negatively affects students' academic performance and learning processes. Additionally, the research highlights the significance of factors such as access to technology.

ABSTRACT. The growing world population and climate change have put increasing pressure on the management of the global food supply chain and impacted the patterns of water use worldwide. Today, the production of food depends on inputs from many trade partners around the world; therefore, a detailed understanding of the key drivers of the global supply chain of agriculture and food is necessary to reduce costs, maintain a profitable production system, and anticipate disruptions caused by water scarcity. We complete this analysis across USMCA countries by applying the newly-developed Multi-Dynamic interregional Input-Output Shift-Share decomposition. Results indicate that the dominating factor varies by country. The US relies heavily on domestic supply chain linkages while Mexico and Canada depend more on their interaction with partners from the Rest of the World. These differences reflect varying levels of exposure to international events, protectionist trade, and water use optimization policies adapted to the productive sector of each country.

ABSTRACT. This paper investigates the impact of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) designation on small farm loans at the US Census tract level during the period from 2000 to 2020. Leveraging data from the American Community Survey to determine CRA eligibility based on median family income, we employ Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD) with Differences-in-differences (DID) methodology to obtain causal effects. Our preliminary findings indicate some positive effects of CRA designation on small farm loans. This study contributes to the understanding of how CRA policies influence lending practices within agricultural communities. These findings underscore the importance of targeted financial regulations in fostering access to capital for small-scale agricultural enterprises, thereby potentially enhancing economic opportunities and sustainability within rural areas.

ABSTRACT. The aim of this study is to determine if a census tract’s ruggedness has any relation to its fiber internet availability. Fiber internet is considered to be the top internet delivery method to homes in terms of speed and reliability. It is hypothesized in this study that if an area has rugged terrain or roads, then they are less likely to be served with fiber internet. The theory is that internet service providers would be less willing to incur the costs of installing fiber in difficult to work with roads or terrain. Road and area ruggedness scores for census tracts in the southern United States come from United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service. Fiber internet availability data is from the Federal Communications Commission, Form 477. Preliminary logistic regressions indicate that southern census tracts with rugged roads are less likely to have fiber internet. Similar models show that rugged area census tracts are less likely to have fiber internet. Findings from this study can provide another potential explanation as to why some places in the southern United States have lagged behind others with regards to their fiber internet availability.