ENHANCING RURAL ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITIES, COMMUNITY RESILIENCE, AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP

In light of the growing concern about declining rural opportuntity, the proposed contribution from the Pennsylvania State University Agricultural Experiment Station will focus on county-level determinants and impacts of both county-level economicresilience and entrepreneurship development. We will use a variety of data sources to examine these issues, including potentially the Big Data available from thePenn State Census Survey Research Data Center. In addition to applying convential economic theory we plan to use emerging insights from Network science as well as Complex Adaptive Systems in formulating and testing novel hypotheses.