A regional economy perturbed by a shock may move onto a new growth path by reestablishing economic linkages both internally and with other regions. This dynamic property of regions has recently been explained in terms of regional economic resilience. In this paper, we introduce a more refined measure of economic resilience and then apply it to monthly employment data for U.S. counties in the 2007-2009 downturn. We suggest that describing and analyzing the distinct response patterns during this downturn are important starting points for policy makers to understand the spatial resilience of the US economy.

Labor market areas (LMAs) have long been a staple of regional and urban analysis. As commuting patterns have expanded over time, these areas have become larger and more complex, and the dichotomous designation of a county either belonging to an LMA or not may no longer be adequate. We apply recent advances in network science to conduct a more refined analysis of U.S. commuting patterns, and examine their effects on local economic growth. Results show that network degree and entropy measures explain variations in county per capita income growth patterns. Higher in- and out-commuting entropies are associated with lower per capita income growth, but their interaction enhances economic growth in places simultaneously open to both in- and out-commuters. Using these results, common ground may be found for creating new forms of regional governance that better reflect local realities of cross-county border flows of workers and economic activity. Copyright (c) 2010 Copyright the Authors. Journal compilation (c) 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc..

With food safety a growing concern in agriculture, the structure and management of agricultural supply chains has become a significant policy issue. In turn, agricultural supply chains are often analytically complex, characterized by feedback and time sensitive, often random parameters. Modern commodity chains such as wheat handling in Canada are no exception. Recently, the Canadian government classes of wheat, replacing it by a new wheat segregation system that relies on trust and self-2 declaration of wheat type by individual farmers. To maintain food safety as well as operate costeffectively in this new trust-based system, wheat handlers may be forced to develop a set of contamination testing strategies to maintain historical wheat quality and consistency. In contrast to much of the extant literature, this research builds a hybrid optimization-simulation model representing the new Canadian wheat supply chain, with the goal of identifying cost efficient varietal testing strategies. After solving for a base scenario, sensitivity analysis is conducted on key variables that influence wheat quality testing strategies. Our results validate the utility of currently employed wheat quality testing strategies in the Canadian supply chain.

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We examine how county characteristics affected voting outcomes in the 2016 presidential election, including the populist component represented by the President Trump to Mitt Romney vote difference. Different voter groups could be harmed or helped by policies proposed during the campaign, such as withdrawal from trade agreements, environmental deregulation, and spending cuts. We investigate whether average county-level voting patterns reflected such proposals. Race and educational attainment had large statistical impacts, but economic factors and religious adherence also mattered. The Trump vote share and Trump-Romney vote margin were larger in counties with more farming and coal employment.