Local, state, and national economies are facing unprecedented levels of international competition. The current fiscal crisis has hampered the ability of many governments in the developed world to directly facilitate economic growth. At the same time, many governments in the developing world are investing significant new resources into local…

The paper addresses the importance of developing a rural community's commercial sector for economic development by providing some analytical tools. Procedures are outlined to estimate commercial sector activity in a community, to estimate commercial sector activity for various counties within a state (Nevada is used as an example), and to develop…

Nineteen Wisconsin counties were the site of the four-year Rural Development Demonstration Project, one of five such projects in the nation. Among the project's objectives were to accelerate sound economic, social, cultural and environmental development and to provide alternatives for living in non-metropolitan areas while providing greater…

The purpose of this bibliography is to provide references to the existing literature pertinent to: 1) the understanding of the interrelationships between education and social development; and, 2) the formulation of guidelines for educational strategies in developing areas in light of social development. Of the more than 700 entries approximately…

The question of whether economic development programs can be evaluated seems simple, but the answer is not simple because of the nature of evaluation. Determining a program's effectiveness requires the evaluator to distinguish changes due to the program from changes due to nonprogram factors. The evaluator must focus on outcomes caused by the…

In this manual, an attempt is made to demonstrate how certain social science measurements can be adapted to help field workers in economic and community development assess initial conditions before a project is begun, to measure the extent to which various attempts at producing social change have succeeded, to determine the overall result of…

This book presents national and international perspectives on the role of further education (FE) in economic development in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. Throughout the papers, special attention is paid to the need to reassess FE and its role as service provider, stakeholder, and strategic partner in view of the following social and economic…

This document details the purposes and principles of community audits and presents guidelines for designing and conducting a community audit to assess a local community's workforce development needs and resources. Section 1 presents an overview of the U.S. Department of Labor's Community Audit Project and explains the following key steps in…