Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development

 

 

Economic Development, Resilience, and Innovation

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Experimenting in the Cloud: The Digital Divide’s Impact on Innovation

This paper builds on a National Science Foundation working paper that identified a strong association between cloud use and various types of innovation but did not consider whether 1) cloud adoption is a reliable indicator of the innovation orientation of a firm, or 2) cloud adoption enables various types of innovation. The researchers estimate propensity score matching and endogenous treatment effect models to control for innovation orientation, producing evidence to test the second explanation. Findings support an enabling effect of the cloud on innovation providing concrete evidence of the adverse impact of the digital divide.

Authors: Luyi Han, Timothy R. Wojan, and Stephan J. Goetz

Publication: Telecommunications Policy Date Published: August 1, 2023

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Household Hardship and Stimulus Payments during the Pandemic: Differences Across Ethnic Minorities in the United States

This study examines the impact of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) Economic Impact Payments (EIP) on alleviating household hardship, primarily food insufficiency and expense difficulty, among ethnic groups in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using data from the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey (HPS) from 2020-2022, the study investigates who received the payments and how they used them. The study employs quasi-difference-in-difference models to address the issue of non-repetitive samples in the HPS dataset. The findings suggest that Black, Hispanic, and Other Races individuals reported consistently higher probabilities of food insufficiency and expense difficulty compared to Whites and Asians. The study further reveals that individuals across all ethnic groups reported less food insufficiency or expense difficulty after the distribution of the ARPA EIP in March 2021. In addition, individuals of all ethnic minority groups who used EIP for saving had a larger decrease in the probability of food insufficiency compared with the corresponding change for Whites. The study highlights the importance of targeted stimulus policies to address distinct problems faced by different ethnic minority groups.

Authors: Zheng Tian, Claudia Schmidt, Stephan J. Goetz

Publication: Presented at 2023 Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Meeting Date Published: July 23, 2023

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Impact of Broadband Access on Agritourism Operations in the United States

Agritourism is a growing sector that can provide opportunities for rural entrepreneurs and boost rural development in the US. Online presence is crucial for agritourism operators because they cater to consumers. In this study, we employ count data regression models to investigate the relationship between broadband adoption and the number of agritourism operations. Our analysis shows that access to fast broadband internet in 2012 significantly increased the number of agritourism operations in 2017, underscoring the pivotal role of broadband connectivity in facilitating farmer-consumer interactions.

Authors: Claudia Schmidt, Luyi Han, Arian Khaleghi Moghadam, Stephan J. Goetz

Publication: Presented at 2023 Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Meeting Date Published: July 22, 2023

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Internationalization of the Rural Nonfarm Economy and the Cloud: Evidence from US Firm-Level Export Data

The move toward universal broadband availability envisioned in the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program presents a double-edged sword for many rural communities: increasing the leakage of local spending to more internet sales countered by better opportunities for tapping remote markets. This paper uses confidential data to examine how export intensity is affected by subscription to cloud computer services—a technology that requires very high-speed broadband. Earlier research identified an enabling effect of the cloud on various types of firm-level innovation, effectively reducing the cost of experimentation by replacing large fixed IT investments with a pay-as-you-go service. To the extent that exporting places new demands on IT-enabled functions such as order fufillment and tracking, marketing, or document control, cloud subscriptions could substantially reduce the cost of entering, and excelling in, export markets.

Authors: Luyi Han, Timothy Wojan, Stephan J. Goetz

Publication: Presented at 2023 Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Meeting Date Published: July 23, 2023

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Impact of Community Reinvestment Act on Minority and Female Employment Growth

In this paper, we examine how the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) affected minority and female employment from 2012 to 2019. We also investigate whether the effects varied between metro and nonmetro areas. We combine demographic and income data from the American Community Survey (ACS) with employment data from the Census Longitudinal Employer- Household Dynamics Local Origin-Destination Employment Statistics (LODES). In order to determine the causal effects of the CRA on employment growth outcomes, a quasi-experimental study approach is used. According to the statistically significant findings, the CRA designation increased residence-based employment in CRA designated tracts, including job growth for female and minority groups. Additionally, we observe that these effects were higher in tracts located in non-metropolitan areas compared to metro areas.

Authors: Luyi Han, Yuxuan Pan, Stephan J. Goetz, Anil Rupasingha

Publication: Presented at 2023 Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Meeting Date Published: July 23, 2023

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Agritourism and Direct Sales Clusters in the United States

Agritourism and direct-to-consumer sales are increasingly used as diversification strategies to generate additional farm revenue streams. Yet despite their growing importance, the impacts, interactions, and adoption of these strategies remain poorly understood. Here we use univariate and bivariate local Moran’s I statistics to identify agritourism and direct-to-consumer sales hotspots in the United States and a Seemingly-Unrelated-Regression Spatial Durbin Model to examine the association between agritourism and direct farm sales to consumers. We find that agritourism and direct sales reinforce each other within the same county but not consistently across neighboring counties.

Authors: Claudia Schmidt, Zheng Tian, Lisa Chase, Chadley Hollas and Stephan J. Goetz

Publication: Agricultural and Resource Economics Review Date Published: April 17, 2023

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Rural US Residents Recognize Anxiety Better than Urbanites and Suburbanites but Hold Similar Stigma

Recognizing signs of psychological distress is a critical first step in assisting people who are struggling with poor mental health to access help. However, community-level factors that impact recognition and stigma are underexplored. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between rurality, other community-level variables, and individual variables with regard to the recognition and stigma of anxiety.

Authors: Scott Loveridge, Mark Skidmore, Robert Shupp, Paula K. Miller, Courtney Cuthbertson, Stephan J. Goetz

Publication: The Journal of Rural Health Date Published: March 29, 2023

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Investing in Rural Recovery: Comprehensive Summary of National Rural Development Stakeholder Listening Sessions

This report summarizes results from the an initiative carried out by the Regional Rural Development Centers in 2021 and 2022 to identify investments needed to fill the gaps between rural communities’ assets and opportunities. These facilitated dialogues included four sessions conducted at the regional level focusing on issues of regional importance, and four national sessions on topics of widespread importance.

Authors: Jason Entsminger, John Green, Rachel Welborn, Renee Wiatt, Z. Bednarikova, Rianna Gayle, and Yuxuan Pan

Publication: Published by the Regional Rural Development Centers Date Published: February 27, 2023

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The U.S. Recreation Economy: Data, COVID-19, and Implications for Extension

The breadth, depth, and speed of the economic collapse associated with the COVID-19 pandemic was unprecedented in economic history. No sector was hit harder than Leisure and Hospitality, which accounts for the economic core of tourism and recreation-based activity. Only recently has employment in this sector begun to show signs of recovery toward pre-pandemic levels. Here we document the importance of the Leisure and Hospitality sector to the economy and identify impacts from the pandemic and recovery, at both state and local (county) levels. Selected implications for Extension Services programming by Land- and Sea-Grant institutions are highlighted.

Authors: Stephan J. Goetz, Luyi Han, Daniel Eades, Jason Entsminger, Doug Arbogast

Publication: 2021 NET Conference Proceedings Date Published: October 4, 2022

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An Examination of the Informational Value of Self-Reported Innovation Questions

Self-reported innovation measures provide an alternative means for examining the economic performance of firms or regions. While European researchers have been exploiting the data from the Community Innovation Survey for over two decades, uptake of U.S. innovation data has been much slower. This paper uses a restricted innovation survey designed to differentiate incremental innovators from more far-ranging innovators and compares it to responses in the Annual Survey of Entrepreneurs (ASE) and the Business R&D and Innovation Survey (BRDIS) to examine the informational value of these positive innovation measures. The analysis begins by examining the association between the incremental innovation measure in the Rural Establishment Innovation Survey (REIS) and a measure of the inter-industry buying and selling complexity. A parallel analysis using BRDIS and ASE reveals such an association may vary among surveys, providing additional insight on the informational value of various innovation profiles available in self-reported innovation surveys.

Authors: Zheng Tian, Timothy R. Wojan, Stephan J. Goetz

Publication: U.S. Census Bureau Working Paper Number CES-22-46 Date Published: October 1, 2022

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