ABSTRACT

THE SEVERAL CHAPTERS IN THIS BOOK explore an on-and-off relationship between resource and rural economics. The tie that binds these two fields is the desire to understand how people choose to use the natural resource base to foster rural development (read: keep open the local movie theater) and transfer resource rents to urban areas (read: build schools with good athletic facilities). An inherent tension exists between capturing resource rents in rural areas and redistributing them to a broader set of people that can include those in nearby urban areas and even beyond state boundaries. Rural policymakers face the political challenge of capturing some of these rents for local development.