Regional Economic Impacts of Bypasses: A Longitudinal Study Incorporating Spatial Panel Econometrics and Multilevel Modeling

摘要

This paper will describe an integrated approach to documenting and quantifying the impacts of bypasses on small communities, with a focus on what economic impacts, if any, occur, and how these impacts change over time. Two similarly sized communities in Indiana, a subset of twelve communities analyzed in a previous report (Fricker and Mills 2009), will be discussed in this report. One of these communities has had a bypass in place for 40 years, and the other community has been a candidate for a bypass for several years. The socioeconomics impacts on the community with the bypass will be documented in terms of (1) the decisions made by public officials as learned through case study interviews, and (2) the changes in employment in various industry sectors, as quantified by the development of random effects statistical models. The long-term impacts and lessons learned concerning the bypassed community will then be used to offer suggestions on how communities could benefit from a bypass. The integrated approach of combining case studies with advanced statistical methodologies was found to be helpful in painting a clearer picture of how communities with bypasses were impacted.