So Close, Yet So Far: The Benefits and Limits of Rural–Urban Industry Linkages

Rural–urban linkages have long been recognized as a potential rural economic development strategy. This article tests the effects of rural–urban created through food manufacturing, tourism, and data processing centers on per capita income, employment, population between 2009 2016. Using unique spatial interaction variables, we empirically estimate Carlino–Mills conditional growth model for all counties in contiguous US. Robustness checks reveal limits this strategy by testing specification across different definitions urban places varying lags. Results suggest that both agritourism increase incomes employment distances, urbanicity, rurality. The beneficial associated with manufacturing appears to be more situational, while creative class outdoor recreation had small negative or insignificant rural-urban linkage three outcomes.