In this paper we outline an I-O modeling approach tailored to the needs of rural area analysis. We cover four essential features. First, the rural area I-O model must convey an individual community focus. Second, the household sector must be defined in a manner that specifically captures the great openness of rural community economies. Third, the model should offer a degree of closure that provides an assessment of the community economic base. And finally, the rural community I-O model must be defined to include estimates of intercommunity trade, and intercommunity multiplier effects. Having laid the theoretical foundations, we identify subcounty data sources, and describe a collection of nonsurvey and hybrid approaches for estimating model components. The community I-O approach is illustrated next, with an empirical example from central Idaho. The paper closes with a discussion that considers the implications of community I-O in other contexts, including I-O analysis in less developed countries, and in addressing modeling issues in larger nonrural regions.

Nonsurvey input—output models, especially those constructed by means of pool and quotient techniques, are suspect when applied to the case of cross-hauling. This is well known. But the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service, through its IMPLAN model, and the US Department of Commerce (USDC), through its RIMSII model, encourage the application of pool and quotient nonsurvey models in cases where cross-hauling is likely to occur. In a study of the timber economy of the West-central Idaho Highlands we show the error caused by ignoring cross-hauling in estimates of logger—sawmill trade. We argue that pool and quotient techniques, used in nonsurvey models such as IMPLAN and RIMSII, should not be applied to a single county situation, or to any aggregation of counties that is not, in some sense, a functional economic area. This applies in many cases to full state models. We close by noting that in many applications of pool and quotient nonsurvey input—output methods, technique may be substituting for thought.

This paper addresses five issues encountered when estimating secondary benefits in regional project analysis: (a) the correction for opportunity cost of factors used, (b) the treatment of mobile factors, (c) the effect of economies of size, (d) the role of forward linkages, and (e) the role of spatial structure of economic regions. The first four are reasons that only a small part, if any, of regional impacts can be treated as regional net benefits. The fifth is a reason that, when secondary benefits or damages do exist, their correct estimation can depend on the spatial structure of the affected areas.

Input-output models are frequently used to estimate impacts, benefits or damages from some event. These analytic models and the questions they are designed to answer are usually based on political definitions of regions. However the true impacts propagate according to the actual spatial pattern of the regional economy. Because of the divergence between the political regions used for analysis and the economic regions on the ground, the economic impacts which spill over political boundaries can sometimes become analytically important. This paper applies these concepts to a case study of allocating irrigation water from the Pecos River in Texas and New Mexico. The US.Supreme Court has ruled that New Mexico used water belonging to Texas. Our analysis suggests that the spillover benefits to Texas from New Mexico's use of the water might equal or exceed the benefits which Texas would have gotten from using the water itself. Texas might be better off because New Mexico took its water. EGIONAL INPUT-OUTPUT MODELS ARE OFTEN THE TOOL OF CHOICE WHENR economists are asked to estimate impacts, benefits or damages to some region from a past or future event. Yet a problem can arise from the fact that impacts spread according to the contours of the regional economy, while the Joel R. Hamilton is a professor of agricultural economics and M . Henry Robison is a senior research economist with the Center for Business Development and

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