Regional Economic Analysis and Impact Models

This paper from the University of Utah assessed the key difference between input-output modeling and REMI’s dynamic modeling approach. It includes diagrams for the structures of both types of models as well as detailed descriptions of the capabilities and linkages of each style of economic modeling. The author also found that the REMI model takes more social factors into consideration that then translate into monetary figures and analysis, while a standard input-output model only accounts for economic variables.

University of Utah – Regional Economic Analysis and Impact Models [full PDF]

Modeling Practices and Their Ability to Assess Tax/Expenditure Economic Impacts

This report reviewed five economic models (IMPLAN, TRAIN/Dynamic TRAIN, STAMP, DRAM, and REMI) to assess their usefulness in appraising behavioral responses as an aid to evaluating proposed tax legislation. Every model was thoroughly explained, including numbered lists of advantages and disadvantages for each. The report revealed some important issues to consider when using these models, such as the belief that the price effect on consumption of a tax change is one of the most important ‘behavioral’ responses, it is critical that time-paths of impacts be computed, there’s no recommendation that any state or government entity build a custom computable general equilibrium model, and estimating the positive (negative) impacts of a tax decrease (increase) will be overstated if government expenditures are not permitted to change with the change in tax and the interactions between regional taxes and federal taxes are not accounted for.

University of Arizona – Modeling Practices and Their Ability to Assess Tax-Expenditure Economic Impacts [full PDF]

The Waxing and Waning of Regional Economies: The Chicken-Egg Question of Jobs Versus People

This study revisits the long-debated chicken-egg question of whether people follow newly created jobs into regions or whether jobs follow newly arrived migrants with the help of economic modeling. Researchers found that labor demand shocks are deemed to be more important on average than migration innovations in determining state employment fluctuations, indicating that people are slightly more likely to be following jobs rather than the converse. By region, Sunbelt states are more influenced by labor-force migration shocks, but labor-demand shocks are paramount in Rustbelt, Farm Belt, and Energy states.

Journal of Urban Economics – Waxing and Waning of Regional Economies [full PDF]

Searching for General Equilibrium with a REMI Model: Rural-Urban Effects of Federal Taxes, Entitlements, and Deficits

This paper was written with the intention of providing estimates of the regional demographic and economic impacts of current and proposed federal policies, identifying the most important audiences for this type of data collection, and addressing the research design for this project. The Rural Policy Research Institute’s need for sixteen models for county groupings from REMI was detailed to show what separates REMI’s models from other similar products and the specific requirements requested by the Institute. The study then continued to describe how the REMI model incorporated the federal budget, utilized a baseline solution, and considered alternative policies.

Southern Regional Science Association, Rural Policy Research Institute – Searching for General Equilibrium with a REMI Model: Rural-Urban Effects of Federal Taxes, Entitlements, and Deficits [full PDF]

Productivity and Accessibility: Bridging Project-Specific and Macroeconomic Analyses of Transportation Investments

When it comes to transportation analysis, there are two primary perspectives typically used in the corresponding studies. The first relies on overly narrow measures of economic benefits and the second focuses on economic productivity, defines benefits more broadly, and is limited by geographic and functional aggregation constraints. The objective of this study was to connect both perspectives and describe how project-specific analysis methods can shed light on the overall macroeconomic effects of transportation infrastructure spending. Current research on productivity is at a sufficiently aggregate level so as to miss potentially important location-specific aspects and congestion relief elements of needs for highway system development, which may affect future benefits from highway improvements.

Economic Development Research Group, REMI – Productivity and Accessibility: Bridging Project-Specific and Macroeconomic Analyses of Transportation Investments [full PDF]