Paper:ewp-dev/0510017 From: Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2005 07:18:30 -0500
The rural non-farm economy (RNFE) is of interest to governments, multilateral donor organisations, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and development practitioners because of its increasing prevalence in both developing and transition economies. In many parts of the world, the number of poor people in rural areas exceeds the capacity of agriculture to provide sustainable livelihood opportunities. Even with a decline in fertility rates and a slowing of population growth, this situation will not change significantly. Out-migration is not possible for all types of people, and urban centres cannot (or should not, for economic and social reasons) be assumed capable of providing adequate livelihood opportunities for all those unable to make a living in agriculture. For these reasons, a healthy RNFE holds out the prospect of improved livelihoods for people living in rural areas. This set of circumstances puts the spotlight on the RNFE as a potential vehicle for poverty reduction in rural areas. This paper reviews contemporary empirical and conceptual thinking on the economics of diversity, non- agricultural growth and the rural non-farm economy.
EconWPA began as a conversation between Bob Parks and Larry Blume on January 28, 1993. I located Paul Ginsparg's archive (then xxx.lanl.gov) and he graciously installed his software on a Sun Sparc system which was supporting the department of economics email and computation. EconWPA began accepting papers July 1, 1993 and had ftp, email, gopher and web interfaces. The web interface for submissions was engineered into existence in July 1995. A complete and catastrophic machine failure in 1999 caused the loss of EconWPA's email new paper announcment service at which time there were over 15,000 subscriptions with over 8,000 unique email addresses.

I was told that I could keep operating EconWPA (as well as many other services including rfe.wustl.edu, barnett.wustl.edu, and three RePEc servers) but I would receive no support (hardware, software, or anthing else) and (as had been the case) no compensation. At that point, given the apparent low valuation of my activities by the department, and university, it made no sense for me to continue operating EconWPA or other services.
Thanks to all who have supported EconWPA in the past.
A Chinese curse states May you live in intersting times. I have. Bob Parks - Jan 2006