Currently, the research community lacks the capacity to provide accurate, up-to-date information about conditions and trends in rural areas. Bringing together some of the best known rural development researchers, this volume begins to build an information base that can serve as a foundation for rural development policy. It deals with four components of development--education, entrepreneurship, physical infrastructure, and social infrastructure. The opening chapters address two aspects of each component--the use of the component to achieve rural development and measuring the impact of its use. The volume then applies specific analytic methods of measuring impact to each component.

The opening chapters address two aspects of each component--the concept of using that component to achieve rural development and the concept of measuring its impact. The volume then examines analytic methods of measuring impact. Following an overview of analytic methods, chapters apply a different analytic technique to each of the components. The techniques considered include econometric models, computable general equilibrium models, input-output analysis, and the case-study method.