Swenson, David A.

June 2006

In Iowa, both in urban areas and more rural territories, there is a general awareness of sales leakages. These leakages take the forms of out-of-region intermediate input purchases, overall household and institutional imports, and the normal regional competitive losses in small communities to neighboring trade centers. As an economic development service extension, we have developed a useful prototype for measuring regional import substitute opportunities and identifying the potential regional gains from such a campaign. This paper will describe the basics of the approach using IMPLAN along with an example of a recent buy local report.

JEL Classification: C50

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