An assessment of business and area-based rural productivity. 2006-09
This study was undertaken by Professor Nigel Curry together with Don Webber of the University of Auckland, New Zealand. it explored the extent to which rural business productivity can be validly identified at the level of the local authority.
The work compared measures of rural business productivity with those of rural area productivity and examined alternative means of measuring economic activity in rural areas, particularly in the context of sustainable development where endogenous and neo-endogenous models have an important role to play.
The work concluded that remoter rural areas in particular were less productive in simple economic terms than urban and metropolitan areas but they offered advantages in ‘quality of life’ and well-being terms.
