While this session focuses on the persistence of poverty in the rural South, my paper looks beyond how the research community can be effective in dealing with poverty to how we might better approach rural development. Persistent poverty is clearly a major element of the development dilemma, but the solution to poverty cannot come through transfer programs that support the poor, although they may play a role. It can only come from a broad development initiative that changes the environment in which the rural poor live and provides them with the opportunity to participate in the economy. This is a large task, and it is not one that we should believe will be easily or rapidly accomplished. But despite the odds we have an obligation to society to identify a role for social science research in the process and to carry out that role to the best of our ability.

These comments discuss the presentations by Christy, Wenner, and Dassie (“A Microenterprise-Centered Economic Development Strategy for the Rural South: Sustaining Growth with Economic Opportunity”) and Freshwater (“What Can Social Scientists Contribute to the Challenges of Rural Economic Development?”) in three sections. These are (1) a brief overview of the Southern Black Belt and its rural development needs, (2) an assessment of the microenterprise-Centered economic development strategy for the rural South, and (3) a quick review of what social scientists can contribute to the challenges of rural economic development. This approach also emphasizes the authors’ background at a historically black land-grant university, and the belief that as goes the Black Belt, so goes the rural South.

A logistic growth equation with time and location varying parameters was used to model corn response to applied nitrogen. A nonlinear dummy-variable regression model provided a parsimonious representation of site and time effects on parameter values. The model was used to test for the equality of the mean marginal product of nitrogen fertilizer between locations on the coastal plain of North Carolina. Monte Carlo simulation and bootstrap simulation were used to construct finite sample covariance estimates. Results support rejection of the hypothesis that mean marginal products are equal when nitrogen is applied at 168 kg/ac. A comparison of bootstrapped errors and asymptotic errors suggests that results based on asymptotic theory are fairly reliable in this case.

The objective of the research presented in this paper is the development of a stochastic adoption threshold. The option pricing approach for modeling investment under uncertainty is extended for the case of comparing two stochastic input prices associated with inputs that are perfect substitutes in a production process. Based on this methodology, a threshold decision rule influenced by the drift and volatility of these two input prices is developed. Theoretical results establish an empirical link for measuring the tradeoff of a relatively more expensive input (biodiesel) with lower price drift and volatility compared with a lower but more volatile priced input (petroleum diesel).

The objective is to analyze the effects of country- and firm-specific factors on the return on equity in the beverage and tobacco and food and consumer-products industries for 11 industrialized nations. The results indicate that country- and firm-specific factors are important in explaining variation in return on equity within countries but not generally across countries or time.