A park by any other name : national park designation as a natural experiment in signaling

Site designation by the National Park Service conveys a unique set of signals to information-constrained potential visitors. Changes in designation thus offer natural experiments to evaluate the signaling importance of names. This paper estimates the visitation effect of the conversion of National Monuments to National Parks through panel data analyses of the 8 designation changes that occurred between 1979 and 2000. These conversions have substantial and persistent effects on annual visitation, indicating that designation signals are indeed significant and credible. These signals appear to be particularly important to information-constrained visitors from a broad national audience compared to more proximate state and metro populations who have better information about nearby sites. Furthermore, increased annual visitor flows to newly designated parks do not appear to occur at the expense of visitation at alternative sites. Finally, visits to these parks appear to be quasi-inferior goods, as visitation is inversely related to various measures of national income.Natural resources ; Recreation

Beyond cows and corn : rural America in the 21st century

Rural development ; Rural areas

Defining "rural" America

Rural areas ; Rural development

Racing toward new frontiers : helping regions compete in the global marketplace

Rural areas ; Rural development

New approaches to rural policy : lessons from around the world

Rural areas ; Rural development

New approaches to rural policy : lessons from around the world : a conference summary

New approaches to rural policy are badly needed, as past reliance on subsidies and policies focused on a single sector are yielding diminishing results. Fortunately, a new frontier of policy experiments is emerging, and this frontier holds great promise in helping rural regions seize new economic potential. ; This was the consensus of more than 120 leading officials and rural policy experts from around the world who gathered near Washington, D.C., on March 25-26, 2004, to explore new approaches to rural policy. The conference was jointly sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Rural Policy Research Institute, and The Countryside Agency (UK). ; Amid a flurry of new initiatives, participants agreed that new rural policies generally have two distinguishing features. First, they focus on exploiting each region’s distinct economic assets instead of trying to develop a sector that will “lift all boats,” as in most developed nations historically, where the sector of choice for rural regions has been agriculture. Second, public funds are aimed at constructing the public goods that will spur private sector investments. Indeed, investment is a strong theme of many new initiatives, with a deliberate attempt to scale back subsidies.Rural areas ; Rural development

Innovative regional partnerships in the rural Tenth District

Rural areas ; Rural development ; Federal Reserve District, 10th

New governance for a new rural economy : reinventing public and private institutions : a conference summary

A growing chorus of rural leaders agrees that new opportunities are on the horizon for rural America. Economic consolidation and outmigration need not be rural America’s future. The question most rural regions now face is this: How to claim the new opportunities? At root, this question is all about governance—how regions make economic decisions quickly and effectively. Simply put, regional governance is about how public and private leaders work together to build new economic engines that can compete in globalizing markets. More than 150 rural policy experts and leaders gathered in Kansas City in May to discuss new approaches to regional governance at the fifth annual rural policy conference hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s Center for the Study of Rural America. This article summarizes the proceedings. Participants agreed that new models of governance are long overdue in rural America. While rural communities value cooperation, all too often city limits and county lines paralyze new economic development strategies. Participants were encouraged, however, by a number of innovative partnerships now being forged in rural regions. These partnerships are often sparked by higher education and philanthropic institutions, but governments and businesses are also participating.Rural areas ; Rural development ; Economic conditions - Indiana

New governance for a new rural economy : reinventing public and private institutions : a conference summary

Rural areas ; Rural development

A catalog of innovative regional partnerships, part two

Rural areas ; Rural development ; Federal Reserve District, 10th