Recipient Organization
UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA
(N/A)
RENO,NV 89557
Performing Department
Resource Economics
Non Technical Summary
For the state of Nevada and many of Nevada's counties, federal agencies administer or own most of the land area. For the Nevada counties of Esmeralda, Lander, Lincoln, Nye, and White Pine, over 90 percent of the county's acreage is under federal ownership. For Humboldt County approximately 80% of its total land mass is under federal government ownership. For the state and counties in the state of Nevada, changes in public land management policies will impact state and county economies as well as state and county fiscal budgets. Often, changes in public land management policies are not researched or analyzed, especially consequences to the state and local economy through time as well as state and county fiscal balances. Development of a state-level and county-level Fiscal Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) model would provide information to Nevada populace regarding distributional impacts of alternative public land management policies on the economy and government fiscal ending balances at the state and county level. This proposal will extend state and county-level SAM modeling to address resource issues and their impacts on the state and county economies as well as state and county governmental fiscal balances. This model will be developed in close cooperation with federal, state, and local decision-makers and can act as an important extension education tool for providing information on the economic and fiscal linkages of public lands and public land management policies. As opposed to many so-called "black-box models", the state and county-level Fiscal SAM will be open so that data linkages and modeling will be available to federal, state, and local decision-makers. Also, sensitivity of impacts from alternative public land management policies can be analyzed. In addition, extension education programs can be developed for understanding of the model and its application through the University Center for Economic Development. Regarding NAES Research Priorities, this proposal addresses the issue of the promotion of economic development, especially in rural areas. The state and county Fiscal SAM can act as a tool for federal, state, and local decision-makers to analyze potential economic development and diversification opportunities and consequences from alternative public land management policies on local economies as well as governmental fiscal balances. Also, the successful development of state and county-level Fiscal SAM will provide procedures to develop additional state and county-level SAM and Fiscal SAM models for other counties in the state of Nevada.
Animal Health Component
70%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
15%
Applied
70%
Developmental
15%
Goals / Objectives
Enhancing rural economic opportunities and entrepreneurship. This is an exceptionally broad, multi-faceted objective which encompasses both the need for advancing the theoretical structure of community economic development and the need for empirical, focused, policy relevant research. Some of the areas which NE1049 researchers have pursued and will expand in the new project are discussed in the comments section. a. The Theory of “Community capitals” (Flora and Flora 1993, 2008). These seven community capitals include built, financial, political, social, human, cultural and natural capitals (Flora and Gillespie 2009). NE1049 researchers have done substantial research on social capital over the past five years (e.g. Goetz and Rupasinga, 2006; Halstead and Deller, 2015). Research in the capitals overlaps with many sub-topics in both this and the second proposal objective, and helps in the pursuit of a broad paradigm for economic development.
b. Issues of wealth/income distribution and rural economic development. Country-level studies have largely found that income inequality and economic growth are inversely related (e.g. Person and Tabellini, 1994; Alesina and Rodrik, 1994; Banerjee and Duflo, 2000). Income and wealth distribution is also an issue in rural areas. Bishaw and Posey (2016) noted that rural Americans have lower median household incomes than urban households, but rural areas have lower poverty rates than their urban counterparts.
c. Non-agricultural development opportunities. A particular area of research for NE1049 has been the economics of local agriculture. However, many rural communities have tried to expand into tourism and recreation with mixed success; in any case, employment opportunities generated in some of these sectors tend to be relatively low-income. Diversification of local economies (e.g. export base and local agriculture; business attraction and retention) through both expanding the small business sector (Eschker, Gold and Lane, 2017) and fostering retention and expansion of existing businesses (Halstead and Deller, 1997) are key development objectives which clearly affect resiliency in the face of natural and human caused shocks to the system. How entrepreneurs behave socially, exchange information, and procure resources and establish reciprocity, are key areas of research (Markeson and Deller 2015).
d. Infrastructure needs, development, and deficiencies. Infrastructure is a broad concept, including both Economic Overhead Capital (which includes roads, bridges, powerlines, etc.) and Social Overhead Capital (health, education, etc.) (Hansen, 1965). Built infrastructure has been researched by team members since the 1980s (e.g. Johnson et al. 1988). Such investments have the potential to affect virtually all the subtopics in both proposed objectives. Specific topics under scrutiny by NE1049 researchers include impacts of broad band internet availability/deficiency on economic development and availability and affordability of child care as a deterrent to availability of affordable labor, and its effects on rural quality of life.
e. Chronic and progressive labor availability problems, related to the issues raised in the third REE goal listed above. If labor becomes more expensive, more automation may result (Devaraj et al. 2017). This can cause economic distortion, and affect labor participation rates, economic goal setting, and other key features at the community level
f. The impact of entrepreneurship on rural areas. There is evidence from previous research that entrepreneurs can contribute to growth in rural areas (e.g. Sepehns et al. 2013; Rupasingha and Goetz, 2013) and understanding what types of policies can contribute to this growth will be critical to deal with the restructuring of rural areas.
Project Methods
Development of Fiscal Social Accounting Matrix model will require knowledge of developing a regular Social Accounting Matrix model from IMPLAN. After developing the IMPLAN Social Accounting Matrix model, procedures will be developed to allow estimation of the flows of current federal land based payments to local government services in the Social Accounting Matrix model. With development of the Fiscal Social Accounting Matrix model, the impacts of various federal land based payments can be estimated. This will allow changes to be made to current federal land based payments and derive their local government fiscal and economic impacts. For project evaluation, the following steps will be followed. Step 1 will be the successful download of the Humboldt County Social Accounting Matrix model from IMPLAN. Step 2 will be to identify the federal land based payments to be analyzed. Third development of procedures for allocating federal land based payments to local services. Four running the Fiscal Social Accounting Matrix model to show the fiscal and economic linkages of various federal land based funds. Fifth would be to change federal land based payments and estimate their local government fiscal and economic impacts.