(Press-News.org) Small farms and businesses may be the unintended victims of legislation aimed at cutting the federal budget by eliminating certain sets of local and county-based economic data, according to a group of economists.
"This local data is really what we use in our lab," said Stephan Goetz, professor of agricultural economics and regional economics, Penn State, and director of the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development. "And, at the end of the day, we're using this information to try to understand how our world is changing."
The researchers, who report their findings in Choices Magazine, said that sequestration and proposed legislation, such as the Census Reform Act of 2013, will cut the reporting of some types of local economic and sociological data. For example, the legislation could eliminate county personal income by industry and unemployment insurance data provided by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Researchers use county per capita income by industry to measure how different sectors of a county are performing. Unemployment insurance data helps researchers understand employment trends in specific areas.
Analysis of this municipal and county-level data can also help entrepreneurs who run small businesses and farms recognize demographic changes and economic swings that can lead to market opportunities, according to the researchers.
"Someone who owns a business can see certain demographic trends and realize new opportunities," Goetz said. "For example, a restaurant may be able to tailor its menu if the restaurant owner knows that there is a new group of immigrants in their community."
The data that covers rural areas also gives researchers the chance to see how macroeconomic trends and policies, such as interest rate changes, are affecting communities.
"We will be in the dark without the data," said Goetz. "We won't know whether policy changes we implemented are effective or not, and that could end up costing us more than we were trying to save."
Economists can use the information to find communities that may be more vulnerable to the impact of globalization and global imports, as well as opportunities for communities to foster businesses that may succeed in global markets, said Goetz, who wrote the report with Mark Partridge, Swank Chair in Rural-Urban Policy and professor of agricultural, environmental and development, Ohio State University, and Maureen Kilkenny, senior fellow, National Center for Food and Agricultural Policy.
Goetz said that an unintended consequence of the move to trim the budget may lead to governments enacting ineffective policies that actually increase budgets.
"We won't be able to anticipate what services are needed and we might not be able to see and develop opportunities when they arise," said Goetz.
Other alternatives to the economic data collection, such as allowing private industry to gather and distribute data, may not help small entrepreneurs.
"Most likely, only larger businesses will be able to afford the data," said Goetz, "leaving the businesses that most need it -- small entrepreneurial firms -- blind to possible economic threats and opportunities."
Small firms, however, tend to be the economic drivers, according to the researchers.
There is compelling evidence that small, locally owned firms are key engines of both economic growth and of job creation, the researchers noted.
INFORMATION:
END
What makes some people more prone to wedded bliss or sorrow than others? Researchers at UC Berkeley and Northwestern University have found a major clue in our DNA. A gene involved in the regulation of serotonin can predict how much our emotions affect our relationships, according to a new study that may be the first to link genetics, emotions, and marital satisfaction. The study was conducted at UC Berkeley.
"An enduring mystery is, what makes one spouse so attuned to the emotional climate in a marriage, and another so oblivious?" said UC Berkeley psychologist Robert ...
CAMBRIDGE, Mass-- At first glance, Mars' clouds might easily be mistaken for those on Earth: Images of the Martian sky, taken by NASA's Opportunity rover, depict gauzy, high-altitude wisps, similar to our cirrus clouds. Given what scientists know about the Red Planet's atmosphere, these clouds likely consist of either carbon dioxide or water-based ice crystals. But it's difficult to know the precise conditions that give rise to such clouds without sampling directly from a Martian cloud.
Researchers at MIT have now done the next-best thing: They've recreated Mars-like ...
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Home-delivered meals bring not only food to seniors but also the opportunity to remain in their homes. A new study by Brown University public health researchers projects that if every U.S. state in the lower 48 expanded the number of seniors receiving meals by just 1 percent, 1,722 more Medicaid recipients avoid living in a nursing home and most states would experience a net annual savings from implementing the expansion.
Pennsylvania would see the greatest net savings – $5.7 million – as Medicaid costs for nursing home care dropped ...
LA JOLLA, CA—October 7, 2013—Chemists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have devised a new technique for connecting drug molecules to antibodies to make advanced therapies.
Antibody-drug conjugates, as they're called, are the basis of new therapies on the market that use the target-recognizing ability of antibodies to deliver drug payloads to specific cell types—for example, to deliver toxic chemotherapy drugs to cancer cells while sparing most healthy cells. The new technique allows drug developers to forge more stable conjugates than are possible with current ...
Philadelphia, PA, October 7, 2013 – The recognition of a causal link between mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes and increased risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer has intensified the demand for genetic testing. Identifying mutations in these large genes by conventional methods can be time consuming and costly. A report in the November issue of the Journal of Molecular Diagnostics describes a new technique using second-generation sequencing technology that is as sensitive as the standard methodology but has the potential to improve the efficiency and productivity ...
Scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Kenyan Marine and Fisheries Research Institute have achieved a milestone in Africa: they've helped build a better fish trap, one that keeps valuable fish in while letting undersized juvenile fish and non-target species out.
By modifying conventional African basket traps with escape gaps, the marine researchers have proven that the new traps catch larger fish, allow more undersized and non-target fish to escape, increase profits, and—most importantly—minimize the impact of fishing on coastal reef systems. The findings, ...
Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed a new approach with applications in materials development for energy capture and storage and for optoelectronic materials.
According to Charles Schroeder, an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, the results show that peptide precursor materials can be aligned and oriented during their assembly into polypeptides using tailored flows in microfluidic devices.
The research was a collaboration between the labs of Schroeder and William Wilson, a research ...
This news release is available in French. Researchers at the Sainte-Justine University Hospital Center and University of Montreal have discovered that the genomic signature inherited by today's 6 million French Canadians from the first 8,500 French settlers who colonized New France some 400 years ago has gone through an unparalleled change in human history, in a remarkably short timescale. This unique signature could serve as an ideal model to study the effect of demographic processes on human genetic diversity, including the identification of possibly damaging mutations ...
Relapses after treatment for Leishmania infection may be due to a greater infectivity of the parasite rather than drug resistance, as has been previously thought, according to a study published in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology.
Visceral leishmaniasis, also called kala-azar, is a parasitic disease that strikes 400,000 people every year and kills around 1 in 10 of its victims. The disease has proven difficult to treat, in part because a large percentage of patients who take the drug of choice, miltefosine, relapse after treatment, ...
San Diego, CA, October 8, 2013 – A new study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine indicates that motor vehicle crashes can be hazardous for pregnant women, especially if they are not wearing a seat belt when the accident occurs.
Trauma is a leading cause of maternal and fetal morbidity and mortality. Blunt abdominal trauma is of particular concern to a pregnant woman and her fetus since it can directly and indirectly harm fetal organs as well as shared maternal and fetal organ systems. Car crashes are responsible for most injuries requiring hospitalization ...
