Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Southern Nevada Regional Industrial Study, Brookings Mountain West, Center For Business And Economic Research, Transportation Research Center

Policy Briefs and Reports

Recognizing the ongoing need to diversify the Southern Nevada economy, in 2023 GOED commissioned Brookings Mountain West, the UNLV Center for Business and Economic Research, and the UNLV Transportation Research Center to evaluate how Southern Nevada can leverage its geography and connectivity to neighboring states and metros at the megapolitan level to pursue industrial opportunities in the face of shifting global supply chains, diminishing developable land, the need for efficient management of the regional water supply, and the availability of unprecedented federal resources to support clean energy development, manufacturing, electrification of transportation systems, and supply-chain resiliency.

The study builds on …

Competing For Innovation: A Case Study Of Knoxville And Similar Metropolitan Areas, Lucille G. Marret

Baker Scholar Projects

Knoxville competes with other mid-sized metropolitan areas for economic development and business attraction at the national level. Cities such as Greenville, SC, Huntsville, AL, and Ann Arbor, MI have similar resources and attributes to Knoxville, yet they are consistently surpassing Knoxville in business attraction and expansion. It is necessary for policy makers to understand what factors are contributing to underperformance in order to better support Knoxville’s efforts to create an innovation fund. Comparing available assets and access to funding for each MSA reveals that Knoxville has the necessary resources through the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory to …

Governing Smart Cities As Knowledge Commons - Introduction, Chapter 1 & Conclusion, Brett M. Frischmann, Michael J. Madison, Madelyn Sanfilippo

Book Chapters

Smart city technology has its value and its place; it isn’t automatically or universally harmful. Urban challenges and opportunities addressed via smart technology demand systematic study, examining general patterns and local variations as smart city practices unfold around the world. Smart cities are complex blends of community governance institutions, social dilemmas that cities face, and dynamic relationships among information and data, technology, and human lives. Some of those blends are more typical and common. Some are more nuanced in specific contexts. This volume uses the Governing Knowledge Commons (GKC) framework to sort out relevant and important distinctions. The framework grounds …

Mitigating Anomalous Electricity Consumption In Smart Cities Using An Ai-Based Stacked-Generalization Technique, Arshid Ali, Laiq Khan, Nadeem Javaid, Safdar Hussain Bouk, Abdulaziz Aldegheishem, Nabil Alrahjeh

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Energy management and efficient asset utilization play an important role in the economic development of a country. The electricity produced at the power station faces two types of losses from the generation point to the end user. These losses are technical losses (TL) and non-technical losses (NTL). TLs occurs due to the use of inefficient equipment. While NTLs occur due to the anomalous consumption of electricity by the customers, which happens in many ways; energy theft being one of them. Energy theft majorly happens to cut down on the electricity bills. These losses in the smart grid (SG) are the …

The Evolution Of The Southern Nevada Healthcare Economy: Building The Unlv Academic Health Center, The Lincy Institute

Lincy Institute Events

With the successful launch of the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV and the completion of its medical education building, Southern Nevada is positioned to expand its healthcare infrastructure - and its healthcare economy - to create a comprehensive, integrated healthcare system to serve our fast-growing community. As UNLV moves forward with the development of an integrated academic health center within the Las Vegas Medical District, understanding the economic and social benefits of such a transformational project is important to stakeholders throughout the region.

The Lincy Institute hosted representatives of Tripp Umbach - the nation's leading consultant on community …

Executive Summary: Driving The Southern Nevada Health Economy Forward, Tripp Umbach

Policy Briefs and Reports

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) plans to develop an integrated academic health center within the Las Vegas Medical District (LVMD).1 The academic health center includes UNLV’s five health science schools and mental and behavioral health, which is distributed among several colleges (medicine, liberal arts, urban affairs, and education) in the university. University Medical Center (UMC), a major teaching hospital, will also be an important driver of the academic health center. For the purposes of this report, UNLV’s medical and health science entities along with UMC are referred to collectively as the UNLV Academic Health Center.

Driving The Southern Nevada Health Economy Forward: Benefits Of A Transformational Unlv Academic Health Center, Tripp Umbach

Policy Briefs and Reports

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) plans to develop an integrated academic health center within the Las Vegas Medical District (LVMD). The academic health center includes UNLV’s five health science schools and mental and behavioral health, which is distributed among several colleges (medicine, liberal arts, urban affairs, and education) in the university. University Medical Center (UMC), a major teaching hospital, will also be an important driver of the academic health center. For the purposes of this report, UNLV’s medical and health science entities along with UMC are referred to collectively as the UNLV Academic Health Center. Additional academic health …

Nevada Economic Development And Public Policy 2022-2026: A Sustainable Future For All Nevadans, The Lincy Institute, Brookings Mountain West

Policy Briefs and Reports

This report evaluates economic development efforts in the State of Nevada since the 2011 publication of Unify, Regionalize, Diversify: An Economic Development Agenda for Nevada; assesses demographic and economic trends for Nevada and its regions; examines how state and federal actions since the onset of COVID-19 can position Nevada and its regions to address long-standing economic, educational, and social deficits; and offers policy recommendations to be implemented in the next four years to facilitate a sustainable future for all Nevadans.

Do Casinos Create Economic Development?: A 15-Year National Analysis Of Local Retail Sales And Employment Growth, Jonathan Lawrence Krutz

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Casino gambling has exploded across the United States over the past 30 years. Both the academic literature and gambling proponents agree that promises of economic development have driven casino policy decisions. While such claims are tempting to policy makers, the academic literature has been largely skeptical of both the methodologies and conclusions of the casino-sponsored research behind them. For such claims to be true, retail sales and employment must grow faster in local economies with casinos than in similar locations without them. Economic theory and academic research suggest that casinos do not attract new money to an area but instead …

American Rescue Plan Act (Arpa): City And County Budget Allocations In The Mountain West, Katie M. Gilbertson, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Economic Development & Workforce

This fact sheet details how city and county governments within the Mountain West states of Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah allocated funds from the State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund (SLFRF) portion of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). Brookings Metro in partnership with the National League of Cities and the National Association of Counties created the “Local Government ARPA Investment Tracker” to display how communities across the country allocate this financial resource. This interactive site allows budget information from cities and counties to be added as such decisions are made.

A Review Of Nepali Diaspora And Their Role In Nepal’S Development And Lessons For Developing Countries, Ambika P. Adhikari

Himalayan Research Papers Archive

United Nations data shows that the size of global diaspora had reached 281 million in 2020, and it continues to grow. Diasporas have contributed significantly to the development of their native lands through remittance, technology and knowledge transfer, philanthropy, and diplomacy. Many countries have designed policies to engage the diaspora more deeply by providing concessional citizenship and visa regimes, and attractive investment opportunities. Yet, there is room for improvement in policies and programs to enhance these prospects.

Since the 2010s, the size and expanse of Nepali diaspora has grown dramatically, the numbers perhaps reaching 800,000 in 2022 in the more …

The Rise Of Southern Nevada As A Cluster For Metropolitan Transit Technology Innovations, Arthur C. Nelson

Policy Briefs and Reports

Southern Nevada is emerging as the nation’s leader in private sector-driven innovations in transportation technologies. From the humble beginnings of a monorail system serving a portion of major hotel and gaming venues along the Las Vegas Strip, now supplemented by an array of people movers, Southern Nevada continues to attract transit innovations in tunneling, Hyperloop, and driverless vehicle delivery technologies. The region may soon anchor a high-speed rail system connecting Southern Nevada to Los Angeles. The purpose of this briefing paper is to frame the nature of this emerging transportation cluster and the opportunities this creates for Southern Nevada to …

The Kind Of Solution A Smart City Is: Knowledge Commons And Postindustrial Pittsburgh, Michael J. Madison

Book Chapters

This case study brings new attention to a critical but under-appreciated dimension of so-called “smart” cities: how smart city governance builds and relies on institutionalized sharing of data, information, and other forms of knowledge across all sectors of public administration. Those smart city practices are referred to here as knowledge commons and systematized using the Governing Knowledge Commons (GKC) research framework. That framework extends and modifies Ostrom’s research tradition as to community-based resource governance. As with other GKC-focused research, this work relies on a qualitative case study. It draws a detailed, context-specific portrait of a smart city as knowledge commons …

Policy Sustainability Issues: Case Study Of Cassava Farmers In Ikorodu. Lagos, Nigeria, Medinat Oluwatoyin Adetunji

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The inconsistency and lack of continuity of Nigeria's agricultural policies impact the cassava sector. Despite being the world's biggest producer, the country is yet to benefit from the advantage due to a lack of sustainable growth. The situation manifests in terms of low productivity, low production level, and poor income to the farmers. The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate the experiences and perceptions of the cassava farmers on cassava policies and the effect on their income and livelihoods in the Ikorodu local government of Lagos State. This qualitative study adopted a case study research design using participatory …

Small Business Equity In Nevada, 2021, Ally M. Beckwith, Olivia K. Cheche, William E. Brown Jr.

Economic Development & Workforce

This fact sheet highlights data on minority and women-owned small businesses in Nevada in 2021, as originally reported by the Small Business Equity Tool. This tool examines the representation of Black, Asian, Latino, minority, and women-owned small businesses in the largest metropolitan areas and cities across the United States.

2020 Most Dynamic Micropolitans In The Mountain West, Kelliann Beavers, Katie M. Gilbertson, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Cities & Metros

This fact sheet draws from the “Most Dynamic Micropolitans 2020” report released by Heartland Forward, “an institute for economic renewal […] with a mission to improve economic performance in the center of the United States.” In this report, Heartland Forward offers the Most Dynamic Micropolitan Index to analyze the economies of smaller communities for a total of 515 micropolitan areas nationally. This fact sheet includes information on job growth, annual pay growth, and personal income growth for micropolitan areas in the Mountain West region.

Impact Of Income And Corporate Taxes On Economic Development In Egypt, Khaled Abo-Ahmed

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to examine how do corporate and income taxes impact economic development in Egypt. This study uses the analytical quantitative method, and the approach of this study is based on using annual time series data for the period 1980 to 2018 to estimate two models by using Autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model. First estimation is between direct taxes (corporate and income taxes) and Growth domestic product (GDP) growth as dependent variable, and the second one by using human development index (HDI) instead of GDP growth. The second objective is to investigate the difference, if any, …

Vision Redux: Power And Policy In Saudi Arabia, Ross Douglas Kimm

Theses and Dissertations

The size and scope of the Vision 2030 modernization plan and the associated Saudi Aramco initial public offering are watershed events in the history of the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. However, they are not outside the history of the country’s development. This thesis, tracing the roots of this latest development plan back to the founding of the current Saudi state, found that Vision 2030 shares many characteristics with previous efforts. Further, it also found precedence for powerful princes rising to power at times of tectonic change. Finally, while historical context is key to understanding this moment in the Kingdom, …

Rethinking The Functions Of Regional Economic Communities: Why African Small States Join And Remain In Sub-Regional Entities, Cliff Kodero

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation advances new arguments about regional integration in Africa. It sheds light on the roles of regional economic communities (RECs) for small-economy states in Africa by examining the benefits and drawbacks of participating in such regional groups for both the small states themselves and their ruling regimes. The study suggests that RECs, rather than being agents of economic development, facilitate regime-boosting agendas of neopatrimonial regimes, promote a sense of (false) sovereignty, and entrench the political elite’s capture of the states.

The significance is threefold. First, it suggests that RECs provide an extension of neopatrimonial networks, which expand state-capture by …

Essays On Economic Development And Environmental Sustainability, Rohan Ray

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The first chapter is a randomized controlled trial study that uses loss framing and information nudges to increase secondary school attendance in Bangladesh. Conditional cash transfers (CCTs) have become one of the most common policy interventions to increase school attendance, but the cost-effectiveness of such interventions has not attracted the attention it deserves. Hence, in addition to a standard CCT implementation, our rich unique dataset on daily attendance allows us to experimentally study two potential ways to improve the cost-effectiveness of school attendance interventions: (i) SMS information nudges and (ii) loss framing in CCTs. The former provides school attendance information …

America's Best Small Cities In The Mountain West, Katie M. Gilbertson, Kelliann Beavers, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr., Fatma Nasoz

Cities & Metros

This fact sheet reports the rankings of small cities in the Mountain West, based on perceived desirability for living, visiting, and investment. Resonance Consultancy’s “America’s Best Small Cities 2020,” report examines six key metrics: “People,” “Place,” “Product,” “Programming,” “Promotion,” and “Prosperity.” 11 small cities in the Mountain West are ranked within the top 100 in the United States.

2021 Business Tax Climate In The Mountain West, Katie M. Gilbertson, Peter Grema, Saha Salahi, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Economic Development & Workforce

This Fact Sheet summarizes a report by Jared Walczak and Janelle Cammenga of The Tax Foundation titled “2021 State Business Tax Climate Index.” The index compares how states structure tax systems to bolster state business activity and investments, and possible routes for future improvement. Scores and rankings are offered for the Mountain West states of Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah.

The Case For Public Investment In Higher Pay For New York State Home Care Workers: Estimated Costs And Savings, Isaac Jabola-Carolus, Stephanie Luce, Ruth Milkman

Publications and Research

This report explores one potential solution to the mounting home care labor shortage in New York State: substantially raising wages for the state's home care workers. The analysis presents detailed projections, based on the best available data, of the economic effects of such an intervention, estimating the costs and benefits that would result. We find that public funding to raise home care wages would require significant resources, but those costs would be surpassed by the resulting savings, tax revenues, and economic spillover effects. The net economic gain would total at least $3.7 billion. Lifting wages would also help fill nearly …

Nevada's Plan For Recovery And Resilience, Sri International, Rcg Economics, Brookings Mountain West

Policy Briefs and Reports

The report that follows contains the following components:

• An economic forecast from RCG Economics on the situation expected for Nevada—GDP and employment—in the fall of 2021 (subject to all the present uncertainties faced by Nevada and the country as a whole).
• A series of immediate actions, in which GOED plays a leadership role, to shelter and prepare for recovery key components of Nevada’s economy. The particular focus is on “Main Street” and small and medium sized businesses.
• A set of visionary strategies, firmly grounded in Nevada’s underlying assets, that will accelerate the diversification of the state’s economy and the transition …

Testing The Rambo Effect Theory: A Comparative Analysis Of Economic Integration In Mercosur And Sadc, Sarvesh Lutchmun

Young African Leaders Journal of Development

This paper attempts to conduct a comparative analysis between the integration processes of two regional blocs of the Global South, one in Latin America, namely the 1991-founded Common Market of South America (MERCOSUR) and the other in the southern part of Africa, namely the 1992-founded Southern African Development Community (SADC). In particular, this paper will seek to compare the economic integration process between MERCOSUR and SADC using insights of international political economy and regional cooperation. In doing so, the paper will test the 'Rambo effect' theory which claims that the dominant power of Brazil and South Africa has led to …

Webinar: Economic And Business Outcomes Of Bicycle And Pedestrian Improvements, Jenny H. Liu

TREC Webinar Series

The National Street Improvements Study, conducted by PSU in conjunction with PeopleForBikes and consulting firm Bennett Midland, researched the economic effects of bicycle infrastructure on 14 corridors across six cities — Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Memphis, Minneapolis and Indianapolis. The study found that improvements such as bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure had either positive or non-significant impacts on the local economy as measured through sales and employment. In this webinar, lead researcher Jenny Liu will share the results of the investigation and the unique methodology for investigating these economic outcomes.

This webinar is based on a study funded by the …

Understanding Factors Contributing To Community Change, Norman Walzer, Sharon Gulick, Connie Loden, Mary Emery, Milan Wall

Community Development Practice

This paper describes the work of the Community Change Network, a collaboration of university researchers and practitioners to understand the factors that contribute to lasting community changes. It describes the resources available as well as what has been accomplished regarding this issue.

A Return To State-Led Integrated Regional Planning? Emerging Approaches From Three U.S. States, Timothy Green, Donovan Finn

School of Marine & Atmospheric Sciences Faculty Publications

After decades of neglect, several U.S. states have increased support for regional development planning, creating new programs, organizations, and funding streams to support it. Analysis of programs in three states (New York, Michigan, and Indiana) shows similarities among them as well as contrasts with prior episodes of state-led regional planning. The new programs deliberately sidestep older regional planning organizations like COGs and RPCs in favor of new organizations with larger roles for the private sector and greater access to public funds. The resulting plans focus on individual projects within a pro-development agenda, but still have potential to coordinate action at …

Innovative Solution For Energy Supply In Rural Communities In Africa, Shilda Cardoso

English Language Institute

This research is a proposition of an innovative solution for energy supply in rural locations across Africa to stimulate social and economic growth. In the continuing unsolved problems in energy supply for rural communities across Africa, an Innovative solutions like solar energy can help change this status quo, and improve the lives of many people throughout the continent.

Metro Monitor 2020: Las Vegas & Reno, Elia Del Carmen Solano-Patricio, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Economic Development & Workforce

This Fact Sheet presents changes in indicators of economic health for the State of Nevada using data provided by the Brookings Institution’s Metro Monitor analysis. Looking beyond gross domestic product (GDP) and job growth, researchers at Brookings’ Metropolitan Policy Program measure various indicators of economic well-being across 192 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) for a 1-year period (from 2017-2018) and a 10-year period (from 2008-2018). Metro areas are classified by size: midsized metros (with populations between 250,000 and 500,000), large metros (with populations between 500,000 and 1 million), and very large metros (with populations over 1 million). For the purpose of …