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This paper investigates the effects of local fiscal policy on the location decisions of 3,763 establishments that began operations in Maine between 1993 and 1995. Empirical results, estimated from Poisson and negative binomial regression models, indicate that businesses favor municipalities that spend high amounts on public goods and services, even when these expenditures are financed by an increase in local taxes. This suggests that a local fiscal policy of reduced government spending, to balance a tax cut, may attract fewer new businesses than a policy featuring additional spending and higher taxes.''Whether we adore the tax cut or love taxes, we assume that reduction in revenue means reduction in spending. That's the way it works around our house.'' (O'Rourke, 2001)

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As many local and state governments in the United States grapple with increasing growth pressures, the need to understand the economic and institutional factors underlying these pressures has taken on added urgency. From an economic perspective, individual land use decisions play a central role in the manifestation of growth pressures, as changes in land use pattern are the cumulative result of numerous individual decisions regarding the use of lands. In this study, the issue of growth management is addressed by developing a spatially disaggregated, microeconomic model of land conversion decisions suitable for describing residential land use change at the rural-urban fringe. The model employs parcel-level data on land use in Calvert County, Maryland, a rapidly growing rural-urban fringe county. A probabilistic model of residential land use change is estimated using a duration model, and the parameter estimates are employed to simulate possible future growth scenarios under alternative growth management scenarios. Results suggest that "smart growth" objectives are best met when policies aimed at concentrating growth in target areas are implemented in tandem with policies designed to preserve rural or open space lands.

This paper describes micro-economic models of land use change applicable to the rural-urban interface in the US. Use of a spatially explicit micro-level modelling approach permits the analysis of regional patterns of land use as the aggregate outcomes of many, disparate individual land use decisions distributed across space. In contrast to the models featured by Nelson and Geoghegan, we focus on models that require spatially articulated data on parcel-levelland use changes through time. In characterising the spatially disaggregated models, we highlight issues uniquely related to the management and generation of spatial data and the estimation of micro-level spatial models.

The emergence of urban-rural space, as evidenced by the expansion of low-density exurban areas and growth of amenity-based rural areas, is characterized by the merging of a rural landscape form with urban economic function. Changing economic conditions, including waning transportation and communication costs, technological change and economic restructuring, rising real incomes, and changing tastes for natural amenities, have led to this new form of urban-rural interdependence. We review the recent research on the causes and consequences of this growth at regional and metropolitan scales, discuss advances in empirical and theoretical economic models of urban land-use patterns at spatially disaggregate scales, and highlight research on environmental impacts and the efficacy of growth controls and land conservation programs that seek to manage this growth. The paper concludes with future research questions and needs. These include spatially disaggregate and accurate data, improved causal inference and structural modeling, and dynamic models that incorporate multiple sources of spatial and agent heterogeneity and interactions.