Many communities in the United States face the decision about whether to protect or restore forests on environmentally sensitive sites. The objective of this research is to identify priority areas for forest landscape restoration in Knox County, Tennessee. A cost-benefit analysis is conducted to...

This study uses locally weighted regression to identify county-level characteristics that serve as drivers of creative employment throughout the southern United States. We found that higher per capita income, greater infrastructure investments, and the rural nature of a county tended to promote...

The objective of this research was to analyze the effects of education, health and hospital, parks and recreation, and public welfare expenditures on poverty, focusing particularly on how these relationships change over space and time. Government expenditure on parks and recreation has been the...

This study estimates the effects of an urban growth boundary (UGB) on land development decisions in Knox County, TN, using a heteroscedastic probit model. With combined efforts of increased land development within the city boundary and decreased development within the UGB and the neighboring...

The objective of this research is to evaluate a land value tax as a potential policy tool to moderate sprawling development in Nashville, TN, the nation’s most sprawling metropolitan community with a population of one million or more. To achieve this objective, the hypothesis is empirically...

This research evaluates the effects of a hypothetical land value tax as a smart growth policy to curtail urban sprawl in the mid-sized metropolitan areas of the Southeastern United States. The effectiveness of a hypothetical land value tax on moderating urban sprawl is determined by changes in...

A two-stage multinomial logit selection model is used to model the relationship between demographic characteristics and housing density across Tennessee’s six metropolitan statistical areas. The study finds that there is both spatial correlation and heterogeneity in the most densely...