ABSTRACT

Regional projections will be viewed here as an effort in the field of applied economics relating to (a) economic policy for multistate regions, states, and metropolitan areas; (b) physical planning in programs dealing with such concerns as land use, transportation, and spatial distribution of economic activity; and (c) human resource planning in programs dealing with income redistribution, training, and welfare. The emphasis, therefore, will be on the question of use of projections; particularly on the relationship between methodology and use. Increasingly projections, rather than past trends, have become the key indicators of economic and social change or in Biderman's felicitous phrase, "vindicators" of economic and social planning (57). But beyond this, the relationships spelled out in models that provide projections are themselves used in the planning process in order to mitigate trends considered to be undesirable, and to speed up desirable trends.