Regional Economic Development as a New Theoretical Framework

Archive for Completed Projects

This project led by Indiana University sought to build models and analytical tools that will enable policy makers and practitioners to craft development strategies and policies tailored to a region’s characteristics and capacities. The research team expanded theory about regional economic development to include more comprehensive data and a diverse array of academic disciplines, and […]

Enhancing Rural Economic Opportunities, Community Resilience, and Entrepreneurship

The quality of rural life is affected by the migration of people into and out of rural communities, the evolution of agriculture and industry, local social organization, and public policy. During the course of this multi-year, multi-state project, the team of researchers from land-grant universities across the U.S. examined the forces that shape rural communities […]

Industry Clusters and the Location of Agriculture: Establishing a Theoretical Base for Economic Development Practice

Production agriculture has largely been considered to be beyond the scope of cluster theory. As a result, key insights from the theory have not been fully leveraged for agricultural and rural development practice. This study, led by NERCRD TAC Chair Paul Gottlieb, Rutgers University, examined clustering behavior in production agriculture. Using case study literature and […]

USDA AMS Local and Regional Food Systems COVID-19 Rapid Response

NERCRD partnered with the University of Kentucky and Colorado State University on a one-year Cooperative Agreement with the USDA Agriculture Marketing Service to research the impacts, adaptations and innovations of COVID-19 on U.S. Local and Regional Food Systems nationally. This highly engaged, real-time project focuses on capturing rapid responses of initial and ongoing COVID-19-related changes […]

Northeast Digital Equity Summit

The Northeast Digital Equity Summit was held September 19, 2023, and provided an opportunity for land-grant University educators and researchers across the Northeast region and beyond to learn from one another and expand capacity for digital equity programming. Follow the link below for more information.

NERCRD Small-Grants Program

In 2015, NERCRD launched a small-grants program aimed at helping Northeast Land-Grant University faculty and educators document the impacts of their work while also encouraging collaboration across state lines. Since then, the program has been offered in 2017 and 2019, and has engaged 53 people in 12 states, resulting in new collaborative knowledge-sharing networks in […]

Listening Sessions Initiative on Rural Community, Economic, and Workforce Development

In the wake of multiple chronic challenges exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, rural communities and small towns across the United States are beginning to build back from the associated impacts on their economies, workforces, and communities. These recovery efforts pose critical questions of where and how to invest. To identify where stakeholders engaged in rural […]

Enhancing Food Security in the Northeast through Regional Food Systems (EFSNE)

After seven years of analyzing a number of consumption, distribution, production, and other aspects of the Northeast US food system, EFSNE researchers made significant gains in understanding the extent to which the region can increase production of certain foods, and potentially better meet the food needs of low-income populations in the locations they studied. Findings […]

The Role of Innovation in Rural Firm Emergence and Vitality

This project, which ran from May 2018 through April 2023, utilized a newly available dataset that showed innovative activity, broadly defined, is far more prevalent in rural areas than was commonly believed; this dataset for the first time also allowed for in-depth research to examine the roles of different types of innovation in rural firm success.

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