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We use data from a 2001 survey of Great Plains farmers to explore the adoption, usage patterns, and perceived benefits of computers and the Internet. Our adoption results suggest that exposure to the technology through college, outside employment, friends, and family is ultimately more influential than farmer age and farm size. Notably, about half of those who use the Internet for farm-related business report zero economic benefits from it. Whether a farmer perceives that the Internet generates economic benefits depends primarily on how long the farmer has used the Internet for farm business and for what purposes.

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The development of a theory for explaining why firms externalize producer services functions is critical to gaining a better understanding of why the producer services industries have enjoyed robust growth within the United States, Canada and the European Community. Scholars of the service economy have attempted to develop explanations for the externalization of producer services functions. These explanations constitute "the externalization debate" since there has been a lack of consistency and agreement as to how and why extemalization is taking place. None of the explanations for externalization approach what could be termed a theory of producer services externalization, since they consist of empirical generalizations that are not deductively connected. This paper attempts to move one step toward the development of such a theory by constructing a more comprehensive and systematic conceptual approach to analyzing the extemalization of producer services functions. The motivating factors for extemalization that are proposed in the externalization debate are systematically examined. The insights of the transaction cost and production subcontracting literatures are then discussed and the implications of these literatures for producer services extemalization are examined. A synthesis of the insights provided by these research literatures is then used to develop a more comprehensive analytical framework for examining producer services externalization.

Recent criminological research has produced inconsistent findings in its attempts to establish a statistical relationship between economic marginalization and the spatial distribution of crime rates. This paper contends that this inconsistency is partly attributable to the way in which economic marginalization has been conceptually defined and measured. By focusing strictly on unemployment and poverty as the processes that produce economic marginalization, researchers have ignored other important economic dynamics that can marginalize workers and provide an environment conducive to crime. Further, commonly used indicators of economic marginalization, such

In a seminal article on the relationship between the spatial structure of information flows and the location of firms, Tornqvist (1968) argued that``the most important contacts cannot be maintained with adequate efficiency by letters and telecommunications but demand direct personal contacts between personnel, and thus passenger transportation'' (page 101). Specifically, Tornqvist (1968) surmised that an essential motive force in the process of urbanization is the need for information exchange between increasingly specialized functions in the economy. His analysis drew particular attention to the role of face-to-face interactions in the efficient delivery of certain types of information, knowledge, or skills. Although major advances in telecommunications and information technology have taken place since Tornqvist's day, his basic premise regarding the centrality of personal interaction to key transactions remains no less valid today. In this paper we contend that it is particularly applicable to understanding present-day locational patterns of vendors of specific types of producer services and the client firms with whom they establish transactional relationships.Recently reported research has documented the tendency for vendors of producer services and their clients (particularly the headquarters of firms) to cluster within the metropolitan regions of the United States as well as in those of other advanced industrial nations (