Regional Economic Development as a New Theoretical Framework

This project led by Indiana University sought to build models and analytical tools that will enable policy makers and practitioners to craft development strategies and policies tailored to a region’s characteristics and capacities. The research team expanded theory about regional economic development to include more comprehensive data and a diverse array of academic disciplines, and built a complex computational model that integrates data science and regional economic science. In addition to drawing on traditional socioeconomic information and methods, it made use of data from unconventional sources such as social media, mouse clicks and data extracted from websites via web-scraping tools.

Funding Agency: U.S. Economic Development Administration

Principal Investigator: Timothy Slaper

Lead Institution: Indiana University

Accompanying Institution(s): U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service, Ohio State University, Penn State University and the University of California, San Diego

Start Date: January, 2018   End Date: December, 2019