State government economies vary tremendously in size in the US, with California’s GDP being so large that if it were its own country it would be the 5th largest in the world (Egel, May 4 2018) Inc Magazine Method Inc is a business magazine founded in 1979 and known for the “Inc 5000”, a list…
Tag: economic development
How to Raise Municipal Revenues While Reducing Inequality
Introduction Municipalities are funding their budgets pushed to the brink. In many communities, the tax base is declining (Augustine, Bell, Brunori & Youngman, 2009) while the amount of services expected by residents is staying the same, or even increasing. In some cases, functions formerly performed by the state or federal governments are being “downloaded” to…
Building a Pocket Park in Sigourney Iowa
Introduction Pocket parks are parks that are under 0.2 acres in size. (National Recreation and Park Association, n.d.) They are the smallest size of park, often located in commercial areas or in between houses in residential areas. There is research support to the idea that pocket parks can raise property values (Mwende, 2018), in addition…
Keokuk County Economic Indicators
Introduction In a previous blog post, Wealth Creation in Rural Communities, I noted that an important element of wealth creation is to understand the economic indicators in your region so that you can begin to plan improvements to them. Most economic indicators collected by US federal agencies are available at the County level, but some are…
Wealth Creation in Rural Communities
Introduction Have you ever considered what it actually means to have wealth? Usually when we say someone is wealthy, we mean that they have a lot of money. But wealth is a lot more than that. Wealth is defined more broadly as “the social worth of an economy’s entire productive base [which] consists of the…