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Evaluation without Bias: New Performance Measures for Business Incubators in Rural America
Researchers: Shaoming Cheng, Regional Research Institute; Peter Schaeffer, Division of Resource Management, Randall W. Jackson, Regional Research Institute
Start Date: September 1, 2008-September 31, 2010
External Funding: USDA's National Research Initiative (NRI)
Project Summary:
The proposed integrated project demonstrates the importance of business incubation for
entrepreneurship fostering and rural economic development. It shows that existing
evaluation tools for business incubators are lacking and that there have been numerous
flawed attempts to evaluate incubator performance in the past. Moreover, it shows that
there have been systematic and inherent biases against rural incubators in the way
evaluation data have been interpreted with regard to rural business incubation programs
where successful business formation and development are known to be considerably
more difficult than in more urbanized areas. The research produces new and expanded
tools and instruments for evaluating the performance of rural business incubators,
specifically, quantitative quasi-experimental and input-output measures and qualitative
balanced scorecard measures. Major outputs of the integrated project include: 1) An
evaluation toolkit for business incubators. The toolkit will include a description of the
problems rural incubators face, the methods for addressing these problems, and draft
protocols (measurement instruments and instructions on their utilization) for evaluation
of rural business incubators. 2) A handbook for policy makers and practitioners in
business incubation, entrepreneurship nurturing, and rural development. The policy
handbook highlights the challenges and opportunities for rural incubators, develops
generalizable, yet tailored policy tools and action plans addressing identified challenges,
and provides a strategic focus on the needs of the development of business incubators and
quality entrepreneurship in the economically distressed areas. 3) A new curriculum,
which emphasizes the interconnection between entrepreneurship and rural development.
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Valuing Domestically Produced Natural Gas and Oil
Researchers: Randall Jackson, Regional Research Institute; Lisa Phares, National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL)
Start Date: October 1, 2007
External Funding: National Energy Technology Laboratory
Project Summary: Technologies supported and advanced by the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct999 technologies) funding are expected to increase US natural gas and oil production while lowering production costs. The goal of this project is to develop a model that will facilitate a national and regional economic analysis of the impacts of offsetting imports by increasing domestic natural gas and oil production in areas likely to be impacted by EPAct 999 technologies. Ultimately, this project is aimed at capturing the economic impacts of industry-based activity associated with converting new and existing reserves into production and moving this product to the point of refinement or processing. The incremental value of these activities is the net value of these domestic production activities less the value of import-related activities within the US. |
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Materials Flow Modeling in Sustainable Industrial Systems within Urban Centers
Collaborative Researchers: Nancey Green Leigh, Bert Bras, Steven French, Catherine Ross, and John Muzzy, City & Regional Planning, Mechanical, Chemical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology; Joyce Cooper, Mechanical Engineering, University of Washington; Randall Jackson, Regional Research Institute, West Virginia University
Start Date: September 15, 2006
External Funding: National Science Foundation
Project Summary: Urban centers contain a significant and growing fraction of population and material and energy flows associated with the use and disposal of products . Re-engineering the flows of materials – particularly the patterns of their disposal – is critical to achieving sustainable systems within national boundaries, across international boundaries, and across generations. Yet, the urban landscape and population, and their associated material flows, have been underrepresented in models of sustainable industrial system growth. In developing models and tools to shape the next generation of industrial systems for materials mined from urban centers , the spatial distribution of these material resources must be integrated because successful design of sustainable systems cannot occur in a geographical vacuum. In recognition of the symbiotic material flow relationship between manufacturing companies and urban regions, this multi-disciplinary collaborative research effort will develop a framework for modeling and assessing the impact of redesigning urban materials flows to advance the mutual goals of sustainable industrial and urban systems. Our common focus is on mining specific products and associated materials from urban centers through new recycling networks and facilities for the Atlanta and Seattle metropolitan regions, and on modeling the economic development and environmental effects of different material flow scenarios on these regions. In our work, we will connect Geographic Information Systems data to demographic data, to consumer behavior models, to product models with material information, to industrial recycling process models, to Input-Output and Social Accounting Matrix models, and to transportation and environmental impact assessment models. The resulting framework and models will be applied to evaluate specific techno-economic- policy scenarios of interest to the Cities of Atlanta and Seattle in carpet and electronics recycling in terms of material flows, transportation, economic development, and environmental impact. Recognizing the global need for such models and analysis systems, our work includes a problem-based international educational component focused on the dumping of electronic waste in Africa. We expect the research insights generated by this project will help in closing the significant gap in thinking on sustainability that has resulted from treating industrial systems separately from urban systems. Closing this gap is a necessary condition for fully mitigating the environmental impacts of industry. Outcomes will include improved modeling of material flows for the urban scale that will help in developing market-based collection and recycling systems which take into account the impacts of consuming greenfields, inner city economic revitalization, and landfill reduction. Thus, this research is intended to encourage new manufacturing activity via waste diversion in distressed areas -- a promising economic development strategy that promotes urban sustainability. |
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Joint Research between the U.S. and China
Researchers: Jerald J. Fletcher, Qingyun Sun, and Haixiao Huang (WVU); Xiangkun Ren (Shenhua Group). Project Advisors: Richard A. Bajura (WVU) and Yuzho Zhang (Shenhua Group)
Project Summary: Under Annex II, the Clean Fuels component of the of the US-China Protocol on Cooperation in the Field of Fossil Energy Technology Development and Utilization, WVU and the Shenhua Group are conducting an assessment of the long-term impacts of the development and operation of a direct coal liquefaction facility under construction in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China on the environment and economy of the local area. Specific objectives of the research include: analyze the long-term impacts of the development and operation of a direct coal liquefaction facility on the environmental quality of the region; formulate and analyze environmental policies and management alternatives related to the construction and operation of coal liquefaction facilities; assess the regional economic impacts attributed to the establishment and operation of the coal liquefaction plant; and perform a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of the coal liquefaction investment.
Collaboration between WVU and the Shenhua Group research teams will provide a rich and reliable database on the impacts of implementing commercial coal liquefaction technologies on economic development and environmental quality. |
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Models of Energy Futures and NETL's Local/Regional Economic and Environmental Impact
Researchers: Randall Jackson, Regional Research Institute; David Martinelli, Civil & Environmental Engineering; researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL)
Start Date: September 15, 2006
External Funding: NETL
Project Summary: This project was intended to provide a means for (1) regularly estimating the economic benefits that NETL employment and funding has on the state economy in terms of job creation and (2) identifying the more extensive state-level benefits from NETL research and energy industry improvements in the form of reduced costs and environmental impacts. In future years, the project work could develop means for quantifying the benefits associated with NETL research results and energy industry improvements. The intent is to develop a methodology that can be used by NETL and its partner research universities for continuing impact assessments and to provide guidance in decision making with respect to research investments. The project involved researchers at Carnegie Mellon and West Virginia Universities as well as personnel from NETL. |
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Constructing Interregional Commodity-Industry Accounts for US States
Principal Investigator: Randall Jackson
Co-Principal Investigator: Yasuhide Okuyama
(August 2003-January 2005)
External Funding: National Science Foundation
Project Summary: Various mechanisms link the fortunes of regional economies to one another. These linkages can be political, social, and economic, and can involve not only flows of information but also flows of goods and services (commodities). Through the exchange of information and commodities (interregional trade), economic impulses are transmitted throughout the regions in an economic system. Hence, economic growth in one region can stimulate other regional economies, and likewise, downturns in the economy of one region can have negative impacts on other interdependent regions. Understanding the nature of these interregional linkages can be enhanced by providing a formal representation of information and commodity flows among regions. This project will provide such a representation in the form of interregional trades of commodities among US states, delineating both industry and institutional origins and destinations. The project focuses on the estimation of interstate exchanges of commodities, leaving the estimation of interregional factor flows and interregional inter-institutional flows as avenues for future research. Information primarily from two sources is used in estimating the trade flows. The first is a commercially available dataset that enumerates intraregional commodity, factor and institutional flows, and the second is publicly available transportation shipment data from the Commodity Flow Survey (CFS) conducted by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Because disclosure rules and statistical reliability problems make it impossible to use the unmodified CFS data, the project uses a three-phase method to generate an interregional commodity flow accounting framework that is consistent with published national data. First, spatial regularities within the CFS data are estimated econometrically. Optimization techniques are then applied to estimate gross interregional flows by commodity. Lastly, the structure of these relationships is used to map the intraregional accounts to a consistent multiregional system.
The interregional database that results from this project will provide a foundation for a wide variety of analytical research advancing knowledge and understanding of the US state and interstate economic system. Analyses that will flow from this database include studies of economic structure and structural change, and the identification of key industry sectors and critical interstate linkages by state. The database will find use as the foundation of a range of extended models formulated specifically to analyze the economic impacts of various policies, including those that focus on trade, transportation infrastructure, and economic development. |
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An Analysis of Industry Clusters Related to the Advent of Thin Slab Casting
Co-Principle Investigator: Randall W. Jackson
External Funding: Sloan Foundation, in collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh, Center for Industry Studies
Click here to link to NUCOR album pics
Project Summary: The Regional Research Institute will conduct research on the effects of changes in steel production technology on regional economies and regional economic development. The research is a comparative analysis of interindustry linkages based on the clustering activity associated with steel minimills .
This research will use the advent of the new thin-slab casting technology in the American steel industry to enhance understanding of the relationship between industry clusters that have developed around steel minimills and firm competitiveness.
RRI researchers will investigate industry clustering and its effects on regional economies. The analysis will be based on qualitative and quantitative data, gathered on plant visits, that should bring valuable evidence to bear on the nature of the economies that accrue to individual plants in an industry as that industry expands.
Understanding these economies and the way they develop can translate into cost competitiveness and strategic advantage for firms. Knowledge of the ways in which industry clusters are developing around new steel sites can provide useful information for regional development agencies and government offices. This research takes advantage of a unique opportunity for comparative analysis that can be used to better understand the ways in which regions grow and develop. |
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Analysis of Lifeline Damages and Economic Impacts of an Earthquake: Development of an Integrated Economic-Engineering Assessment Model
Researchers: Yasuhide Okuyama, in collaboration with Dr. Geoffrey J. D. Hewings, the Regional Economics Applications Laboratory (REAL) at the University of Illinois, and with the Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry (CRIEPI), Japan
External Funding: National Science Foundation
Sponsoring Agency: University of Illinois (two-year grant)
Project Summary: Recent major earthquakes in urban areas throughout the world (for example, Northridge, CA, 1994; Kobe, Japan, 1995; and Taipei, Taiwan, 1999) have re-emphasized how intense and significant the damages and impacts of a major earthquake could become. An earthquake in an urban area not only will bring the physical damages to the lifelines, such as electric power, water, transportation networks, and to the buildings and houses, but also will cause the business interruptions that may lead to further economic impacts to the area. In addition, the economic impacts of an earthquake would spread over to other regions and even to other countries through economic interactions, i.e. domestic and international trades. The estimation of these economic impacts is very important for both justifying the policy to retrofit (reinforce) existing structures to minimize the physical damages, such as transportation facilities and lifelines, and providing useful information to the emergency management process after an earthquake.
The objectives of this research project are to investigate the economic impacts of a major earthquake in an urban area and to analyze the relationship between the recovery activities on lifeline damages and the mitigation of the economic impacts. In this project, first, a lifeline network engineering model and a set of economic models will be constructed separately. Once completed, an integrated economic-engineering model will be developed for connecting the physical damage data from the engineering model with the estimation of the economic impacts by the economic models, in order to simulate recovery activities and its effects to a broad range of economic activities.
Findings from the project can respond to some important modeling issues to integrate engineering model with economic assessment models. By doing so, the project will also contribute some perspective to aid in the formulation of retrofit policy for the lifeline system and of recovery and reconstruction plans after an earthquake.
The project is being carried out by the collaboration of U.S. and Japanese researchers to connect and integrate each other's knowledge and skills in economic and engineering modeling, respectively. Moreover, the construction of a modeling scheme will enable researchers to compare the countermeasures against earthquakes in the U.S. and Japan. |
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Information Technology for Higher Education Capacity Building in Southern Africa
WVU Units: The Eberly College of Arts and Sciences units, namely Geography and Foreign Languages are working with the WVU Center for Extension Service and the Regional Research Institute to develop an innovative international collaboratory.
External Funding: For the College and University Affiliations Program (CUAP), the U.S. Department of State provided the WVU Office of International Programs with a multiple-year (2001-2004) grant
Project Summary: This is an information technology (IT) based initiative that builds human and technological capacity in higher education and in this way, contributes towards regional development. The initiative has two IT focus areas: (1) Community-Integrated Geographic Information Systems (CiGIS) and (2) Curriculum Development for Distance Education. These IT foci will be accomplished in the context of two important social science themes: land use planning and medical geography. Field sites have been set up in the three locations.
Community-Integrated GIS is an attempt to broaden the use of digital spatial data handling technologies with the objective of increasing the number and diversity of people who participate in spatial decision-making. The CiGIS are built on traditional GIS and include local knowledge as data layers. Communities help to establish the initial research questions, which is essential in any participatory project, but rare in conventional GIS research and development planning. The project has trained 51 participants in the first two years in web page design, CiGIS methods, and distance education technologies. |
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The Construction of an Interregional Social Accounting Matrix Focusing on the West Virginia Economy
Researchers: Yasuhide Okuyama and Randall Jackson
Funding: WVU PsCoR
Project Summary: This research project aims to construct an Interregional Social Accounting Matrix (ISAM), covering West Virginia, and the neighboring states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, Kentucky, and Virginia. The interregional SAM framework is useful not only for understanding the interdependencies among economic agents (industries, governments, and households) but also for investigating the relationships of such agents over geographic space, which are increasingly important for US national and regional economies. The constructed interregional SAM will become the foundation for further research opportunities over a wide range of fields, from economic development to energy-related policy analysis. The SAMs also can be extended to generate an interregional Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model, which will lead to another set of future research opportunities.
At the first stage of this project, an interregional SAM focusing on the State of West Virginia and its neighboring states will be constructed. The data for this effort can be collected mostly from secondary data sources (Census Bureau, Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Bureau of Economic Analysis, etc.) and from some commercial sources (IMPLAN; input-output table for the US regions). Based on the data, interregional SAM will be assembled. Because the use of interregional SAM can cover a broad range of policy areas; the database compiled for this project will be designed to enable the construction of tailor-made SAMs for more detailed analysis and investigation.
Once the ISAM is completed, a wide range of possibilities for further research opportunities will be pursued. The potential research include:
1) Methodological Research An interregional SAM can be extended to more sophisticated and complex models, such as interregional Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model. The investigation and comparison of these modeling frameworks, especially in an interregional context, will provide important information to the research community in many academic fields, such as Regional Science, Geography, Economics, and Public Policy.
2) Policy Research Since the interregional SAM includes almost all economic agents, such as industries, governments, and households, the implications of broad public policies can be addressed. These public policies include: economic development; impacts of regulations/deregulations on industries; transportation plans and policies; and energy related policies. |
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Economic Impacts of a Proposed LNG Facility Expansion and Associated Pipeline
Principal Investigator: Walter Schwarm
Co-PI: Randall Jackson
May 2004 - June 2004
External Funding: Dominion Transmission, Inc.
Final Report
Project Summary: Dominion Cove Point LNG, LP, a company in the Dominion Transmission, Inc. family, "will ask the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to approve an increase in the plant's daily output capacity." Upon approval, Dominion Cove Point would expand its pipeline in Maryland to deliver more natural gas to interstate pipeline connections in Virginia. Dominion Transmission also would build a pipeline and two compressor stations in central Pennsylvania to move natural gas to customers throughout the Northeast.1
The RRI has be asked to estimate the economic impacts on the affected Pennsylvania counties of the pipeline and compressor station construction, operation and maintenance.
Map of the pipeline area: http://www.dom.com/about/gas-transmission/covepoint/expansion/pdf/03_434_6pa.pdf.
1Based on statements on the company website (http://www.dom,com/about/gas-transmission/covepoint/expansion/index.jsp |
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