This year, the Department chose Terry Moore, ECONorthwest Planning Director, as their Distinguished Alumus. Moore will accept his award at the 2013 PPPM-CSPA Awards Ceremony early next month.

Moore received a Masters of Urban and Regional Planning from the Planning, Public Policy and Management Department of the University of Oregon in 1977. One of the founders of ECONorthwest, Moore's project work focuses on transportation and land-use planning, economic development, growth management, policy analysis, and market analysis. In 1994, the American Planning Association published his book, The Transportation/Land Use Connection. He was among the recipients of the American Planning Association's 1996 Current Topic Award for Transportation Planning and in 2001 he was selected as a Fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners.

All PPPM/CSPA alumni, students, faculty, and staff, campus personnel, friends of PPPM, and friends or colleagues of the award recipients are cordially invited to attend 2013 PPPM-CSPA Awards Ceremony. The event is free of charge and no RSVP is required.

Date/Time: Thursday June 6th, 2013 at 3:30 pm
Location: Ford Alumni Center, Ballroom
                1720 E. 13th Avenue, Eugene, Oregon

For more information email pppm@uoregon.edu or call 541.346.3635.

“It seems that the factors that are driving continued work later in life, including part-time work, would be the same for Americans at home and abroad,” Dr. Cahill explains. “So I think it’s fair to say that, if the employment opportunities exist, we shouldn’t be surprised to see similar trends with respect to part-time employment for U.S. retirees living abroad.”

In previous research, Dr. Cahill has found that continued work later in life is an appealing way for older workers to help maintain their standard of living in retirement, by increasing income in the near term and simultaneously delaying the date at which assets are drawn down. While the financial benefit of continued work is straightforward and potentially large, the ripple effects of continued work can impact the lives of older Americans in many other ways.

The rest of the New York Times article is available here.

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Dr. Kevin E. Cahill specializes in the economics of aging, labor and health economics, and statistical methods. He is a senior economist and the managing director of ECONorthwest's office in Boise, Idaho.

To understand the tradeoff here, the Oregonian sat down with John Tapogna, ECONorthwest president and senior policy analyst.

"Whether Nike ultimately chooses Portland or Washington County for its expansion, Oregon has already come out ahead." said Tapogna. "We all should be excited that we're talking about the Portland metropolitan area and not Austin," he said, noting Nike's interest in Texas and Washington. But if Nike chooses Portland, it could be particularly beneficial because of the city's investments in the South Waterfront, which has a streetcar line, major road improvements and a new light-rail route opening in 2015. Tapogna said he expects South Waterfront will be successful with or without Nike, but the company's expansion would be a game-changer."

"It's just a matter of how many years it will take," he said, "and this will clearly accelerate that."

The rest of the article is available from the Oregonian here.

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John Tapogna is President of ECONorthwest and oversees the firm's overall business strategy and operations. Since his arrival at ECONorthwest in 1997, Tapogna has built practices in education, healthcare, human service, and tax policy.

As graduation day nears for the class of 2013—congratulations and best wishes for a bright future, graduates! —Let’s pause to think about the three in 10 students who won’t be graduating with their class. Considering the limited economic prospects for high school dropouts, not to mention the costs to society associated with students who drop out of high school, this is rightly considered a national crisis.

As it stands, only 67.7 percent of Oregon’s class of 2007-08 graduated with their class and received a regular diploma; another 4.7 percent graduated within the following year. This leaves 27.6 percent without their high school diploma (as reported by the Oregon Department of Education). Graduation rates are even lower for many demographic and socioeconomic subgroups.

With the goal of a 100 percent graduation rate for the class of 2025—the cohort that started kindergarten this year—Oregon clearly has much work ahead.

The rest of the piece is available here.

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Kelly Smith, an economic analyst that joined ECONorthwest in 2008, specializes in human services & social policy. In much of her work, she applies policy research and analysis, quantitative and qualitative program evaluation methods, performance measurement, and benefit-cost analysis to topics in health care, transportation, education, workforce development, asset building, child support, and criminal justice.

Harry Truman famously requested a one-handed economist after hearing too much "on the one hand, on the other hand" counsel from equivocating advisers. He would have appreciated the current debate on the precarious condition of state pension systems -- like Oregon's PERS.

On pension problems, economists speak with one hand.

Last fall, a diverse panel of the profession's best thinkers predicted defaults and federal bailouts if states didn't act quickly to shore up their unfunded liabilities. And, just last month, President Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers highlighted wobbly pension plans as a significant threat to state-delivered education, health care and infrastructure development programs.

The rest of the piece is available from the Oregonian.

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John Tapogna is President of ECONorthwest and oversees the firm's overall business strategy and operations. Since his arrival at ECONorthwest in 1997, Tapogna has built practices in education, healthcare, human service, and tax policy. Read more about ECONorthwest's data-driven practice in education.

Dr. Ed Whitelaw is the founder of ECONorthwest. He specializes in urban and regional economics, natural resource and environmental economics, and the economic consequences of policy decisions. As an expert witness, he has testified in litigation cases in state and federal trials and dozens of administrative, legislative, congressional, and judicial bodies on a variety of economic issues.

The study also finds Evergreen generated $161.3 million in total economic activity in Thurston County, $4 in net economic activity for every state dollar invested, and $102.1 million in net economic activity in Washington that would not have occured but for the presence of Evergreen. ECONorthwest also discovered Evergreen also has a strong "Buy Local" track record and Evergreen alumni living in Washington earn approximately $433 million more each year than if they had not attended college.

For more information, you can read the executive summary or full ECONorthwest report.

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ECONorthwest has experience conducting a wide range of economic impact analyses in a variety of contexts, including assessments of the economic impacts of institutions of higher education.

Buxbaum said his committee recommended ECONorthwest “because they represent a team of people that we feel have a great breadth of experience in the arena of community development and citizen participation.”

In the endeavor, ECONorthwest has two tasks. First to identify blighted areas, opportunities for redevelopment, and ways to make it happen. Second ECONorthwest will identify a Community Renewal area or areas by analyzing the market and holding meetings with property owners and the public. Oregon state law requires that the city find blight before it can create a Community Renewal Area. Blight is something that “substantially impairs or arrests the sound growth of the municipality” or limits “the provision of housing accommodations or constitutes an economic or social liability, and/or is detrimental or constitutes a menace to the public.”

Dr. Abe Farkas and Lorelei Juntunen, both senior planners, will head up ECONorthwest's endeavor. Dr. Farkas specializes in urban development and strategic planning and Juntunen's work focuses on land use and redevelopment finance and public sector fiscal analysis.

“If it wasn’t for the lottery, there would be no Dotty’s,” Whelan says in the article. "And lottery delis aren’t the only ones that would be in jeopardy. Most of these places would go out of business, including many bars and restaurants. There’s no doubt in my mind.”

“Effectively, they lose money on food and drink and they make it up on lottery,” Whelan notes. “That’s been my experience looking at dozens of these businesses.”

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Robert Whelan, a senior economist who joined ECONorthwest in 1996, specializes in market research, strategic planning, feasibility analysis, and economic forecasting. He has analyzed a wide range of industries including retail, tourism, electronics, energy, construction, casino gaming, mining, agriculture, food stores, film and video production, manufacturing, commodities, and residential housing.

In the video, Tapogna walks through a PERS history to explain why the system is too expensive and what went wrong. He also looks forward, showing what challenges lie ahead for PERS, the expected impact of these challenges on Oregon's schools and teachers.

If Oregon's legislature and the PERS board don't act meaningfully in the next several months, Tapogna concludes, Oregon will run 20 years, or more, of muted public services and will have a significant comparative disadvantage with Washington.

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John Tapogna is President of ECONorthwest and oversees the firm's overall business strategy and operations. Since his arrival at ECONorthwest in 1997, Tapogna has built practices in education, healthcare, human service, and tax policy. Read more about how ECONorthwest can help governments at all levels—local, regional, state, federal, and tribal—in making sound decisions and investments.

These economists also include ECONorthwest's Dr. Cahill, who sat down with the Business Insider to explain why.

"The idea that boomers are crowding out younger workers persists partly because it makes intuitive sense," Dr. Cahill explains. "If 10 workers were to leave a firm, that could open up spots for 10 others. But economies are driven by much more complex equations, with technological changes eliminating some jobs and creating others over time."

Dr. Cahill added, "Besides, if older employees didn’t want to work, middle-aged and younger people would have to support a growing section of society." And that, he warned, would present “a much bigger problem.”

The rest of the article is available from the Buisness Insider.

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Dr. Kevin E. Cahill specializes in the economics of aging, labor and health economics, and statistical methods. He is a senior economist and the managing director of ECONorthwest's office in Boise, Idaho. Read more about ECONorthwest's expanding presence in Idaho.

Oregonian education report Betsy Hammond sat down with ECONorthwest senior economist Dr. Bryce Ward and Portland Businesses Alliance vice president Megan Doern to discuss the report and its findings. In the live chat, they addressed the implications of these findings for Oregon, a "state that depends on income tax to raise money for schools, public services, and other priorities."

To read a transcript of the live chat, visit http://www.oregonlive.com/education/index.ssf/2013/03/how_pay_education_stack_up_in.html.

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Bryce Ward holds a PhD in Economics from Harvard University and specializes in natural resource and labor economics. Bryce has taught courses in Labor Economics, Microeconomic Theory, Public Finance, Econometrics, Environmental and Natural Resource Economics, and Social Economics at Harvard College, Lewis and Clark College, Portland State University, and the University of Oregon.

Dr. Cahill specializes in labor and health economics, public policy, and commercial litigation and antitrust matters. His public policy research focuses on the economics of aging and patterns of labor force withdrawal, including bridge job employment and re-entry, retirement income, occupational changes later in life, self employment, and the role of employer-provided pensions in the retirement decisions of older workers. Kevin's expert testimony experience spans a variety of industries, including: pharmaceuticals, pharmacy benefit management, banking, real estate, payment cards, and airlines. Prior to joining ECONorthwest, Kevin was a manager at Analysis Group, a national economic consulting firm based in Boston, Massachusetts.

Dr. Cahill is also Managing Director of ECONorthwest’s Boise office. Read more about ECONorthwest's expanding presence in Idaho.

You can pretty quickly get into the hundreds of millions of dollars of value per year," said Mark Buckley, a senior economist at ECONorthwest and one of the report's authors.

The report is a part of an on-going effort by a coalition of groups, including Wild Utah Project and Grand Canyon Trust, to restore healthy levels of dam-building beaver in Southern Utah and convince southern Utahans that this restoration is in their interest. The traditional view is that beavers are a nuisance species because they fell trees and impound waters. Before 2010, landowners who found beavers toppling trees along irrigation ditches or in backyards would call the Division of Wildlife Resources (DWR), which would remove and kill the beavers.

Relocation efforts began in May of 2012 when DWR and Grand Canyon Trust have conducted the first relocation of beavers under a revised state management plan. This plan reflects the current thinking, highlighted by the ECONothwest report, that beavers can improve landscapes and provide significant economic value to the surrounding areas.

The Wildlife Conservation Society, another partner in the effort, recently released a video documenting the progress on beaver relocation in Utah. You can watch their video below. Enjoy.

Grand Canyon Trust: Restoring a natural ecosystem engineer to provide riparian areas in Southern Utah from WCS Climate Adaptation Fund on Vimeo.

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ECONorthwest uses the latest science and economic techniques to incorporate ecosystem service values into economic analyses. Read more about our work on the economic value of ecosystem services provided by dam-building beaver.

The report concludes, "We need to do more to retain and attract employers who offer the family-wage jobs that can support our workers. As a region, we need to be focusing on what makes a difference in growing an economy: A strong manufacturing industry supported by a domestic and international trade network; a reasonable tax structure and regulatory environment; a supply of market-ready land for development; and a trained and educated workforce."

Dr. Ed Whitelaw, Founder of ECONorthwest, will deliver the keynote address after Opening Ceremonies on Thursday, February 28th, from 6:30 to 8:15 PM. His topic, "Economic Choice and Coal Exports," will address what it would take for the Pacific Northwest to make an evidence-based decision on whether or not to export coal.

Dr. Bryce Ward and Ed MacMullan, ECONorthwest senior economists, will also present during the conference. Together, they will address using benefit-cost analysis in superfund remediation, including the appropriate role of economics in remediation decisions for Superfund sites, and the full range of costs and benefits associated with remediation. They will hold their panel on Friday, March 1st from 9:00 - 10:15 AM.

For more information, or to register for the conference, visit http://www.pielc.org/pages/home.html.

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Dr. Ed Whitelaw is the founder of ECONorthwest. He specializes in urban and regional economics, natural resource and environmental economics, and the economic consequences of policy decisions. As an expert witness, he has testified in litigation cases in state and federal trials and dozens of administrative, legislative, congressional, and judicial bodies on a variety of economic issues.

Dr. Bryce Ward holds a PhD in Economics from Harvard University and specializes in urban and labor economics. Bryce has has taught courses in Labor Economics, Microeconomic Theory, Public Finance, Econometrics, Environmental and Natural Resource Economics, and Social Economics at Harvard College, Lewis and Clark College, Portland State University, and the University of Oregon.

Ed MacMullan specializes in assessing the economic effects of public policies that affect natural-resource management. Much of his public policy work focuses on describing the environmental, economic, and social outcomes of policy options for residents, businesses and governments using benefit-cost analysis.

As legislators convene in Salem, they're taking the first steps toward achieving Oregon's bold education goal. It's the beginning of a 12-year march to ensure high school graduation for all and that 80 percent of students receive a meaningful college credential or degree.

The state's ambitions and budgets appear mismatched. "It is clear to me that the entire enterprise of public education is underfunded at all levels," says Gov. John Kitzhaber.

He's right.

But he recognizes that waiting for an improved economy and tax code is tantamount to giving up. A big goal and tight resources put a premium on strategic budget making. As lawmakers decide how to divvy up $8 billion in state education funding, they must keep two concepts in mind: capacity and productivity.

The rest of the piece is available from the Oregonian.

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John Tapogna is President of ECONorthwest and oversees the firm's overall business strategy and operations. Since his arrival at ECONorthwest in 1997, Tapogna has built practices in education, healthcare, human service, and tax policy. Read more about ECONorthwest's data-driven practice in education.

In a 2001 USA TODAY article, Tom Kenworthy wrote, “It would be hard to find ... a community that better reflects the West’s emerging (economic) transition than Bend." Ask Oregonians to pick the most rapidly growing urban economy in the state, and those who pay attention to such matters will name Bend. It is remarkable that a view can be so widely held — and so wrong.

One symptom of a strong urban economy is its resilience, its ability to recover from the local consequences of a national recession. In the most recent recession, Oregon’s employment peaked in February 2008. To test Bend’s resilience, we divided Bend’s recent employment — in December 2012 — by its employment in February 2008. The higher that ratio or its percentage equivalent, the more resilient Bend’s economy has been. We did the same for four other Oregon cities — Eugene, Medford and Portland. In December 2012, Corvallis’ employment was 100 percent of what it had been February 2008; Eugene’s, 90 percent; Medford’s, 93 percent; and Portland’s, 96 percent, while Bend’s was 87 percent.

Another symptom is a city’s gross metropolitan product (the urban equivalent of a country’s gross domestic product, or GDP). Corvallis’ 2010 GMP was 198 percent of its 2001 GMP; Eugene’s was 107 percent; Medford’s, 97 percent; and Portland’s, 132 percent, while Bend’s was 96 percent.

The rest of the piece is available here.

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Dr. Ed Whitelaw is the founder of ECONorthwest. He specializes in urban and regional economics, natural resource and environmental economics, and the economic consequences of policy decisions. Dr. Bryce Ward holds a PhD in Economics from Harvard University and specializes in urban and labor economics. Read more about ECONorthwest's work in economic growth and development.

American Winter follows the personal stories of eight families living in Portland, Oregon who are struggling in the aftermath of the 2007 recession. It was produced and directed by Emmy award-winning filmmakers, Joe and Harry Gantz.

American Winter will premiere on HBO on Monday, March 18th, 2013. It will also be screening at the Portland International Film Festival on February 17 at 3:00 PM and February 18 at 7:30 PM.

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John Tapogna is President of ECONorthwest and oversees the firm's overall business strategy and operations. Since his arrival at ECONorthwest in 1997, Tapogna has built practices in education, healthcare, human service, and tax policy.

In the article, ECONorthwest president John Tapogna likens "Oregon's situation to that of a middle class family that shells out for a Cadillac Escalade and makes the payments regularly -- but doesn't have enough money left over to patch the house's leaky roof."

The editorial staff also note that, in the analysis from the presentation, ECONorthwest used "Washington and Colorado as companion states for Oregon." In these states, pension liabilities are similar in size to Oregon's and  their "state-sponsored pension plans cover roughly the same percentage of public employees."

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John Tapogna is President of ECONorthwest and oversees the firm's overall business strategy and operations. Since his arrival at ECONorthwest in 1997, Tapogna has built practices in education, healthcare, human service, and tax policy. Read more about ECONorthwest's work assisting governments at all levels—local, regional, state, federal, and tribal—in making sound decisions and investments.

In the article, Dr. Cahill speaks to some of the concerns other economists have raised about an aging labor force. For example, the article notes that "senior employees can be expensive for companies, both in salary and health-care costs" and they may "block the pipeline for younger employees trying to advance their careers," a problem which is particularly poignant given still-high unemployment rates.

Yet Dr. Cahill notes that, in the long-run, these concerns are "misplaced."

He says: "Keeping older Americans in the work force is a good thing. Those workers have more financial security, employers have a larger labor pool to draw from, and we have more people to produce goods and services. There may be bumps like the recent contraction in the labor market, but we need to look beyond the short term."

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Dr. Kevin E. Cahill specializes in the economics of aging, labor and health economics, and statistical methods. He is a senior economist and the managing director of ECONorthwest's office in Boise, Idaho. Read more about ECONorthwest's expanding presence in Idaho.

Since it's brought to you by 211Info and maintained by ECONorthwest, the Oregonian's Brent Hunsberger notes he would "trust the results."

In fact, Oregon Helps has won several national and international awards, including the Stockholm Challenge, Harvard University's Innovations in American Government Awards Program, the National Association of Counties (NACo) Achievement Award, and the Government Technology Leadership Award (known as the Gracie Award, after Admiral Gracie Hopper), sponsored by Government Executive Magazine and the Federal Office of Technology.

In a follow-up to a reader's question, "How to make sure you're not missing out on public benefits," Hunsberger of the Oregonian points out that Washington residents can also enjoy a similar service. It's called Washington Connection and it's also brought to you by ECONorthwest and 211Info.

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ECONorthwest has been developing and delivering web applications that provide easily accessible and usable analytical tools for end users since 1996. We have skilled staff dedicated to making complex software easy to use and trouble free. Read more about ECONorthwest's work in web applications.

In the interview Dr. Cahill addressed the social and economic forces affecting the workforce and retirement. He notes that many of the pressures that encourage older Americans to keep working later in life have existed for a few decades, well before the economic collapse of 2008. It was the recession, however, that changed a largely voluntary choice by older Americans to keep working, into an involuntary one, driven by economic necessity.

To listen to the full interview online, visit: http://www.wgbhnews.org/post/getting-older-and-getting-hired.

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Dr. Kevin E. Cahill specializes in the economics of aging, labor and health economics, and statistical methods. He is a senior economist and the managing director of ECONorthwest's new office in Boise, Idaho. Read more about ECONorthwest's expanding presence in Idaho.

According to a recent report released by the Value of Jobs Coalition and compiled by ECONorthwest, Portland is enjoying a recovery in employment in several key industries, including construction and the food and beverage industry. Yet Portland's median income levels still remain below its peers, including Denver, Minneapolis, and Seattle.

In the article, Tapogna notes that "at this point, we're seeing a, maybe, slightly above average type of recovery, but we want to see more traded-sector growth." He adds: "The big, big question is, what kind of jobs are we recovering with? Consumers are showing more confidence, so they're going to restaurants more and spending more on groceries. Those are local-sector industries that typically don't pay as well as their traded-sector peers."

The rest of the article is available from the Portland Business Journal here.

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John Tapogna is President of ECONorthwest and oversees the firm's overall business strategy and operations. Since his arrival at ECONorthwest in 1997, Tapogna has built practices in education, healthcare, human service, and tax policy.

The conference will be held at the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company in Chico on Thursday and Friday, November 29th and 30th. Ed MacMullan will speak on Thursday, November 29th in the Economics session.

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Ed MacMullan is a nationally recognized expert on ecosystem services and the economic aspects of public policy decisions, particularly those affecting the use and allocation of water resources. Ed helps regulators, decisionmakers, and stakeholders at the local, state and national level understand the economic aspects of water management. In his project work and alongside other staff at ECONorthwest, he describes the economic consequences on values of ecosystem services of developing areas prone to landslides and other hazards. He also studies the economic factors associated with avoiding and complying with regional water quality regulations and county permitting processes.

Visiting us from the conference?

Learn more about our work using market and non-market techniques to analyze the benefits, costs and tradeoffs of water-resource allocation by exploring our site or downloading the brochure.

In their research, the authors used the Age and Generations (A&G) dataset, a survey of more than 2,000 employees from nine large organizations that, fortuitously, took place just prior to and immediate following the onset of the 2007-2009 recession.

The authors find that, across all workers, the state of the macroeconomy is a statistically significant determinant of job satisfaction and satisfaction with work-family balance. When the macroeconomy performs poorly, employees tend to report lower levels of job satisfaction and higher levels of satisfaction with work-family balance. This suggests that factors beyond the immediate job and family domains influence employees' job- and family-related attitudes.

An examination of workers by age reveals that those aged 40-54 years and those aged 55 years and older report higher engagement scores compared with younger workers, regardless of the current state of the macroeconomy. Older workers' employment experiences are also less influenced by fluctuations in housing prices compared with younger workers.

You can read more about the presentation and download the slides here.

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Dr. Kevin E. Cahill specializes in the economics of aging, labor and health economics, and statistical methods. He is a senior economist and the managing director of ECONorthwest's new office in Boise, Idaho. Read more about ECONorthwest's expanding presence in Idaho.

That's the question Dr. Kevin E. Cahill, ECONorthwest senior economist, and coresearchers answered in their recent presentation to the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management Fall Conference in Baltimore, Maryland. In their presentation, the researchers presented results from their study examining the prevalence and determinants of various paths to retirement. In the study, the authors examined three cohorts of older Americans from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a nationally-representative longitudinal dataset of older Americans: HRS Core (born between 1931­ and 1941), War Babies (born 1942­-1947), and Early Boomers (born 1948­-1953).

They found that each of these cohorts have faced very different economic circumstances when approaching traditional retirement ages, which has led to different outcomes with respect to retirement patterns. In particular, they found that the retirement patterns of the Early Boomers appear to be diverging from those of earlier cohorts. The Early Boomers were more likely than the HRS Core and War Babies to transition to a bridge job prior to exiting the labor force completely and were more likely to leave their career jobs involuntarily, with layoffs being a key factor.

Their research provides further evidence for the idea that retirement in the United States continues to evolve.

You can read more about the presentation and download the slides here.

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Dr. Kevin E. Cahill specializes in the economics of aging, labor and health economics, and statistical methods. He is a senior economist and the managing director of ECONorthwest's new office in Boise, Idaho. Read more about ECONorthwest's expanding presence in Idaho.

Those are some of the questions that Ed MacMullan, ECONorthwest senior economist, addressed in his recent presentation to the International Association of Emergency Managers Annual Conference in Orlando, Florida. In the talk, Ed presented a basic framework for applying the principles of benefit-cost analysis to hazard mitigation. Ed explains the roles risk assessments and business continuity plans can play in an economic analysis, the main components of a business continuity plan, examples of tradeoff decisions in the context of limited resources and how economic principles can inform those tradeoffs. Ed also explains the four basic steps involved in a benefit-cost analysis for hazard mitigation at Universities.

To learn more, click through Ed's presentation below.

Ed MacMullan specializes in assessing the economic effects of public policies that affect natural-resource management. Much of his public policy work focuses on describing the environmental, economic, and social outcomes of policy options for residents, businesses and governments using benefit-cost analysis. Ed is also a recognized regional expert on the economic implications of natural and manmade disasters.

ECONorthwest found that manufactoring careers provide higher wages and better benefits than non-manufactoring jobs, paricularly for minorities and immigrants.

According to ECONorthwest's research, the Portland area has 107,000 manufacturing employees, which produced $32.6 billion worth of goods and services in 2010, which accounts for 26 percent of the Portland region's economic output. ECONorthwest also found the average manufacturing worker in Portland is quite efficient--producing about $300,000 in output annually, which is about twice the U.S.-metro average.

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You can read the full report here. Find additional coverage of the ECONorthwest research in the Oregonian and the Portland Tribune.

Contributors to the report include Bryce Ward, senior economist who specializes in economic analysis, modeling, and urban and labor economics; John Tapogna, ECONorthwest President and senior policy analyst; and Terry Moore, planning director who specializes in land use and transportation planning.

That's the question Kevin Cahill, ECONorthwest senior economist; Michael Giandrea, a research economist with the Bureau of Labor Statistics; and Joseph Quinn, a professor of economics at Boston College, looked to answer in their recent paper. In the paper, which the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Office of Survey Methods Research published in October, the authors note that many have suggested that continued work later in life can be a way for older workers to help maintain their standard of living in retirement, by increasing income in the near term and simultaneously delaying the date at which assets are drawn down.

While the financial benefit of continued work is straightforward and potentially large, the ripple effects of continued work can impact the lives of older Americans in many other ways. The authors use the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), an ongoing nationally-representative longitudinal survey of older Americans that began in 1992, to explore the frequency and determinants of relocations among career workers who moved to a bridge job relative to those who exited from the labor force directly.

For both groups the authors find that long-distance relocations following career employment were infrequent, as less than one in twenty career workers moved to a new Census Division. Moves that involved a change in “area” or change in residence, however, were much more common, with a frequency at the time of transition from career employment of 9 percent and 15 percent, respectively. Most importantly, the frequency of moves was similar for those who took bridge jobs and those who exited directly, as were key determinants of moves, suggesting that continued work does not significantly limit or promote relocations.

The authors also presented their findings to the American Economic Association's 2012 Allied Social Sciences Association Conference in Chicago.

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Dr. Kevin E. Cahill specializes in the economics of aging, labor and health economics, and statistical methods. He is a senior economist and the managing director of ECONorthwest's new office in Boise, Idaho. Read more about ECONorthwest's expanding presence in Idaho.

To answer the question of whether or not there is enough demand for student housing to support the new development, the Register Guard looked to ECONorthwest's Anne Fifield. The article reads:

UO enrollment is expected to continue to increase over the next few years, “so there’s definitely demand for new housing,” said Anne Fifield, senior economist with ECONorthwest, an economics consulting firm based in Eugene.

She predicts that a fresh supply of housing that appeals to students and their parents, who, for the most part, are footing the bill, will put pressure on owners of run-down rentals near campus to improve their properties.

“Existing landlords haven’t had to invest in their properties because they have this market where students have to live here, and it’s sort of a captive audience,” Fifield said. “I think that’s one of the reasons these out-of-town developers are seeing an opportunity.” Owners of older rentals “will have to invest in their properties or will have to lower their prices,” Fifield said.

That could put downward pressure on rents throughout the area, she said.

“You’ll probably see a decline, or lack of increase, in rents across town,” Fifield said.

The rest of the article is available from the Register Guard here.

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Anne Fifield, senior economist, specializes in assessing the economic and fiscal impacts of public policies at the local, regional, and state level. She is also an adjunct instructor at the University of Oregon.

Using data from 2010, the most recent year available, ECONorthwest estimated the casino and tribal operations' economic impacts, which includes three main categories: total output, or the final value of all goods and services produced; labor income, worker's wages and benefits; and jobs, including full- and part-time employment. The Mail Tribune article reads:

An economic analysis shows how much of a financial powerhouse the Coquille Indian Tribe and The Mill Casino in North Bend are for the Coos County economy.

The ECONorthwest study, which was released on July 9, analyzes the economic impact of the tribe and the casino during 2010. The ripple effect of the casino and tribal operations throughout the state amounted to $165 million in direct and indirect impacts, generating 1,555 jobs, the study concluded.

For Coos County, the economic impact of both the tribal government and the casino totaled $125 million, including direct revenues of the casino and tribes and their effect on other businesses in the county.

In a press release, Cal Mukumoto, CEO of the Coquille Economic Development Corporation said: “We commissioned this independent study in order to have a more complete picture of how our business spending reverberates throughout the region. We cannot truly understand economic development if we only look at the pieces. We need to look at how the pieces are interrelated.”

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Find additional coverage of ECONorthwest's report in The World.

Robert Whelan, Director / Senior Economist who specializes in market research and forecasting; and Carsten Jensen, Research Analyst, contributed to this report.

In the article, Dr. Ward speaks to whether or not a worker's bad day can affect the overall productivity of a company.

"If I just make it up some other day, then the total output may not have changed," says Dr. Ward in the Oregonian.

In the article, Dr. Ward also notes that if "demand for the company's product exists, then workers will still find a way to fulfill it."

He concludes that one way worker satisfaction can impact employers is if morale falls to such a low level it prompts employees to leave en masse. This is particularly true in industries with low-wage jobs, but high training costs. "If you can lower that turnover cost, that will have a big effect on the company's bottom line," Dr. Ward said.

The rest of the article is available from the Oregonian.

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Bryce Ward holds a PhD in Economics from Harvard University and specializes in natural resource and labor economics. Bryce has taught courses in Labor Economics, Microeconomic Theory, Public Finance, Econometrics, Environmental and Natural Resource Economics, and Social Economics at Harvard College, Lewis and Clark College, Portland State University, and the University of Oregon.

In a forthcoming report for the Portland Business Alliance and the Value of Jobs Coalition, ECONorthwest is tackling the issue of why young, college-educated residents of Portland work less and earn less than their counterparts in other U.S. cities.

In the article, Tapogna puts forward one theory, which holds that “car-sharing, bike commuting and collective living are all part of a large-scale, new emphasis on less materialistic living among young adults. If Millennials truly are the cheapest generation, as a number of economists have suggested, Portland’s young creatives might not become the job creators on whom the city has been banking.“

ECONorthwest’s research will update an annual series on the economic opportunities and challenges for Portland-metro. This year the report will also address Portland’s progress in the wake of the recent recession.

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Read the 2011 Portland Regional Economic Health report on the Value of Jobs Coalition website.

Other contributors to the report include Bryce Ward, ECONorthwest senior economist who specializes in economic analysis, modeling, and urban and labor economics; Terry Moore, ECONorthwest planning director who specializes in land use and transportation planning; and Paul Thoma, economic analyst, who specializes in statistical and econometric analysis and applied microeconomics.

The three pillars of retirement income – Social Security, private pensions, and savings – are shaky these days.

• The Trustees of the Social Security program report that, as of 2033, the trust fund will run dry and system revenues will not be sufficient to pay 100 percent of promised benefits under current law.
• Traditional defined-benefit plans — ones that pay predetermined monthly benefits throughout retirement — have been largely usurped by 401(k) plans, leaving individuals exposed to investment risk and, for those who do not convert to annuities, longevity risk.
• Savings offer no real buffer either, because the typical older household has less than $100,000 in non-pension, non-housing assets— hardly sufficient to support 20 years of leisure later in life. Today, one in three older Americans relies not on savings but on Social Security benefits for the bulk (80 percent or more) of their family income.

Given the status of these traditional sources of retirement income and the precarious prospects for the future, most of us are going to need to work beyond traditional retirement ages if we want to mitigate any loss in our standard of living.

Maybe that’s not news to you. Well, get ready: the situation is even bleaker.

The rest of the blog post is available here. The Huffington Post also published the article.

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Dr. Kevin E. Cahill specializes in the economics of aging, labor and health economics, and statistical methods. He is a senior economist and the managing director of ECONorthwest's new office in Boise, Idaho. Read more about ECONorthwest's expanding presence in Idaho.

Love Food Not Waste (LFNW) is a unique collaboration between the City of Eugene and local businesses, haulers, and commercial composters. Area businesses collect food scraps, which are picked up and sent to Rexius, an organic waste recycling and processing organic center that turns the food scraps into compost.

Eugene’s gardeners and landscapers can already purchase their locally-made compost from Rexius. And the City of Eugene, which has an internal zero waste policy, is looking to use the compost in its engineering and landscape projects.

In an effort to promote sustainability, reduce waste, and to support an inspiring new program, ECONorthwest Eugene has joined on as a participant in the Love Food Not Waste campaign.

“Its been remarkably easy to get into the habit of composting our food scraps,” said Karen McClain, ECONorthwest’s Office Manager in Eugene. “And I’ve been surprised by what a broad list of items we can throw in our bin—anything from meat to food soiled paper towels.”

ECONorthwest joins the City of Eugene, the Eugene Federal Building and Courthouse, and Lane County Department of Youth Services, as some of the first office participants in the program.

“It’s unique and cool that we have employers like ECONorthwest that are on board and want to do the right thing,” says Stephanie Scafa, a Zero Waste Analyst for the City of Eugene and the Coordinator of Love Food Not Waste.

Despite its fledgling status—the campaign is still less than a year old—over 80 area businesses have already joined in, with many more on their way. As of August, LFNW had already generated 1.5 million pounds of compost. And it has also kicked off two pilot school programs, partnering with 4J middle and elementary schools in Eugene. Those schools, already part of the Oregon Green Schools Program, will collect food scraps from their kitchens, cafeterias, and even classrooms.

LFNW has been so successful, it’s now providing a model for other midsized jurisdictions to get similar programs off the ground. “We’re actually also part of an [Environmental Protection Agency] program that targets zero waste communities” says Scafa. “We’ve already worked with city staff in Beaverton, Oregon, lent them our materials and helped them quickly start up their own program.” LFNW is currently working with staff in Clackamas County, Austin, Texas, and New Paulz, New York on similar initiatives.

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ECONorthwest provides professional economics, planning, and financial consulting services and expert testimony for a wide variety of private and public sector clients throughout the United States and worldwide. We have earned a global reputation of excellence for our technical expertise, communication skills, and exceptional client service.

Terry Moore, ECONorthwest Planning Director, will participate in the Congress as both a speaker and a panelist, lending his internationally-recognized expertise on land use planning to the topic of water resources. Terry will be participate as a panelist on the following workshops:

• Creating new and hybrid paradigms for water and cities on the path to 2050
• Smart cities: resilient, livable, sustainable, and affordable
• Means for achieving complementary basin solutions on a crowded planet
  Investing in optimizing the water, food, energy nexus of water food and energy
• Municipal wastewater, solid waste energy, and energy
  Institutional barriers to jointly optimizing food waste and wastewater digestion in generating energy from municipal wastewater plants

In project work alongside other ECONorthwest staff, Moore assists governments, businesses, and non-profit institutions with planning and development issues, including long-range regional planning, economic analysis of policy decisions, policy implementation, and site development. Much of this project work involves describing the consequences of land-use policy decisions on water quality and supply, as well as other natural resource assets.

As Moore points out, "Urban areas require many elements to be successful, but none are more fundamental than energy and water. Designing systems that allow cities to use water more efficiently could potentially lead to larger changes in the pattern of urbanization, with related positive effects on other urban systems."

Behind all of this analysis is high-quality, rigorous economic analysis to describe trade-offs. The ECONorthwest approach begins from an economic perspective: one that incorporates market analysis, economic forecasting, fiscal impact analysis, and financing to produce realistic, implementation-oriented work products. These strategies identify specific steps to help policymakers and stakeholders to fund infrastructure needs, evaluate urban growth boundaries, propose approaches to economic development, and inventory buildable land.

In the effort to improve water quality and supply sustainability, the planning options are nearly endless. And as Moore puts it, he's "interested in any path with promise for leading to more livable and sustainable cities."

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Terry Moore is Planning Director of ECONorthwest. Since 1979, he has managed over 500 projects in transportation and land-use planning, economic development, growth management, policy analysis, and market analysis. Moore’s current work focuses on integrated regional planning for land use, transportation, and economic development; the economic evaluation of growth management policies; and market analysis for private development. He has published books, book chapters, or refereed journal articles on the transportation / land use connection, benefit-cost analysis in transportation, economic development, market analysis, scenario planning, and project management.

Read more about ECONorthwest's project work in water resources and planning.

For much of the last 15 years, Oregon K-12 educators have waited for additional revenue to boost school quality and achievement. A weak economy and growing medical and corrections costs have gotten in the way. And looking forward, the costs associated with an aging population, the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, and rising public pension costs will compete with classroom dollars. In short, K-12’s fight for sustained, significant increases in funding will be as tough in the next decade as it has been in the past.

While educators can, and should, advocate for additional resources, they must simultaneously evaluate how well they are deploying the dollars they have. Evidence suggests a weak relationship between per-student spending and achievement. In a classic debate, competing economists from Princeton and Stanford dug into the same set of rigorous K-12 spending studies. The Princeton economist concluded spending had improved achievement in about half of the studies’ findings. By the Stanford economist’s accounting, only a quarter of the studies exhibited a spending-to-achievement link.

So, does money matter? These dueling economists might say the answer ranges from “maybe” to “probably not.”

We get a similar answer in Oregon, where data show different outcomes across similarly situated and funded schools.

The rest of the piece is available here.

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John Tapogna is President of ECONorthwest and oversees the firm's overall business strategy and operations. Since his arrival at ECONorthwest in 1997, Tapogna has built practices in education, healthcare, human service, and tax policy.

“Idaho is young relative to the rest of the United States; that was true yesterday, it’s true today, and it will be true tomorrow.” explains Dr. Kevin E. Cahill, ECONorthwest senior economist and the principal author of the ECONorthwest Issue Brief.  “But Idaho is young only in a relative sense – compared to the rest of the country at snapshots in time.  In fact, Idaho is aging just like the rest of the country.”

Americans are having fewer children and living longer than prior generations, which means that both Idaho and America are in the midst of a shift in the age distribution of our populations. Going forward, there will be fewer younger Idahoans for each older one.

“Not only is our society aging, our society’s shift to an older population will be permanent – at least for our lifetime,” says Dr. Cahill.

It's the permanency of this shift that will have a profound impact on individuals, employers, Idaho, and the country as a whole.

With an aging society, the three legs of the retirement income stool – Social Security, private pensions, and individual savings – become very wobbly. Dr. Cahill explains that, as they are currently structured, those pillars will no longer be able “to both maintain our standard of living later in life and allow us to enjoy 20 plus years of leisure.”

So, what can Americans and Idahoans do, especially those on the cusp of retirement?

“Most of us will have two choices,” says Dr. Cahill. “One, lower our standard of living as we age or, two, work later in life.  Some have suggested an expansion of our social programs, such as Social Security, but that’s just not sustainable given the financial pressures that already exist.  For all intents and purposes, continued work later in life is the only game in town.  It’s time to get real about that.”

There are two clear financial benefits of this idea. Continued work simultaneously increases resources for retirement and delays the date at which these assets are spent down.  Work also has benefits beyond just a paycheck, such as continued cognitive development and expanded social networks.

“What I like to emphasize is that work later in life is not such a bad thing,” says Dr. Cahill. “Sure, most of us would rather not be working than working.  Continued work, however, puts each of us, individually, on much safer ground financially, as we save more and delay the date at which we spend down our assets.”

It’s not just workers that will see advantages, employers and society also stand to benefit greatly from continued work later in life. As Dr. Cahill notes, employers are able to “tap into a larger pool of workers with a lifetime of experience.” And for society?

“Continued work increases the amount of goods and services that are produced and that can be distributed among our aging population.”

In the Issue Brief, Dr. Cahill proposes several ways Idaho’s policymakers can promote work later in life. Some of these solutions include policies that focus on late-career flexibility options, and aid to employers as they navigate regulatory requirements that might hinder phased retirement offerings.

Idaho is about to get older. It’s time for Idaho’s citizens, employers, and policymakers to start planning for it now.

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Download the ECONorthwest Issue Brief What Does the Aging of Idaho Mean for its Citizens, Employers, and Policymakers?

Dr. Kevin E. Cahill is a senior economist and the managing director of ECONorthwest's new office in Boise, Idaho. He is experienced in labor and health economics, public policy, and commercial litigation and antitrust matters. Read more about ECONorthwest's expanding presence in Idaho.

Paul Thoma, economic analyst, also contributed to this report.

In a panel on Planning for Affordable Housing in the Face of Systematic Change, Senior Economist Bryce Ward will address demographic changes and the economics of housing supply and demand. This panel will also comment on the how the turbulent financial market, neighborhood dynamics, and demographic changes, are affecting where and how people live, what trends will shape our communities, and how affordable housing fits–or does not fit–with a community’s vision of their future.

On the panel, Dr. Ward will join Brad Schmidt, a reporter with the Oregonian; Claire Carpenter-Sequin, Executive Director of Neighborhood Economic Development Corporation; and Alex Dupey, Senior Planner for DEA.

Dr. Ward will also give a presentation called Polka Dots and Stripes: Mismatch Between Supply and Demand in a Changed Economy.

Date/Time:  September 14th, 2012 from 9:45 to 10:45 am, and 10:45am to Noon
Location:     2100 SW River Parkway, Portland, Oregon 97201

For more information, or to register for the conference, visit http://housinglandadvocates.org/2012-conference/.

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Bryce Ward holds a PhD in Economics from Harvard University and specializes in urban and labor economics. Bryce has has taught courses in Labor Economics, Microeconomic Theory, Public Finance, Econometrics, Environmental and Natural Resource Economics, and Social Economics at Harvard College, Lewis and Clark College, Portland State University, and the University of Oregon.

Beaverton received a $1 million HUD Community Challenge Grant to complete the Creekside District Master Plan, which, including funds from the city, brings the project’s total resources to $2.5 million. Beaverton hopes to adopt the completed Plan in early 2015.

Alongside Fregonese Associates, ECONorthwest will contribute to a redevelopment analysis and help prioritize investments for the Beaverton Creekside Master Plan. ECONorthwest will conduct the technical analysis of market conditions and future market feasibility, create the small business mitigation strategy, provide expertise on how public policies affect natural resource management, and lead the program development for coordinated transit-oriented development projects and employment investments. ECONorthwest will also develop recommendations for implementation and funding strategies to achieve the goals for the District.

Laura Kelly, senior planner with Beaverton’s Community and Economic Development Department, told the Portland Tribune, “It’s going to be a big project. It’s a small project area, but a lot of big ideas here have the potential to really catalyze this area – this district and the rest of downtown Beaverton.”

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Lorelei Juntunen, senior planner who specializes in land use and redevelopment policy, planning, and finance; Abe Farkas, Director of Development Services who specializes in urban development and strategic planning; Anne Fifield, senior planner, and Ed MacMullan, senior economist, will contribute to this analysis.

Find additional coverage of the Beaverton Creekside Master Plan in the Oregonian, Portland Tribune, and Oregon Business.

In the article, Dr. Ward speaks to a "chicken and egg" problem in the public policy of regional growth. Namely, should regions should try to attract industry or talented workers in order to drive economic growth?

"People first or jobs first? It's one of the great debates in regional economics," says Dr. Ward in MSN Money.

In the article, Dr. Ward also addresses the "slacker theory" or the idea that 20- and 30-somethings in Portland are attracted to the low cost of living and high quality of life, but are not entrepreneurs or the next Phil Knight, who founded Nike in Portland in the 1970s. The article reads:

Even if the slacker theory were true, it wouldn't be a bad thing, said economist Ward. "Only if their coming here drives out other people."

[...] Creative types, particularly college graduates, tend to demand attractive amenities that increase lifestyle value, even if they aren't launching the next big thing, Ward said. Their presence alone tends to stimulate creativity and business activity among noncollege graduates. Since World War II, the success of a region has always been tied to its number of college graduates, Ward said, a phenomenon that's critical as economies evolve.

"Having a lot of smart people living there in close proximity to each other means that you'll figure something out," he said.

The rest of the article is available from MSN Money here.

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Bryce Ward holds a PhD in Economics from Harvard University and specializes in natural resource and labor economics. Bryce has has taught courses in Labor Economics, Microeconomic Theory, Public Finance, Econometrics, Environmental and Natural Resource Economics, and Social Economics at Harvard College, Lewis and Clark College, Portland State University, and the University of Oregon.

The City contracted with ECONorthwest to facilitate the development of an Economic Development Strategy. The Strategy outlines Wilsonville's vision for economic development and proposes an action plan for moving forward. It is a framework that guides both city investments and regulations and private supporting efforts.

But Wilsonville didn’t go it alone. City staff understood that the success of their economic development strategy would depend on the quality of their collaboration with the community’s various members. So Wilsonville and ECONorthwest focused on providing multiple opportunities for public participation in the project. An Advisory Committee of residents, business owners, and other community members guided the development of the strategy. ECONorthwest also sought input through interviews with key business leaders, focus groups with more than forty community members, an Economic Summit attended by more than 50 community members, and community surveys. These efforts aligned the Strategy with the priorities and vision of the city and its members.

The Strategy recommends twelve actions for Wilsonville that fall under these six categories:

• Agreeing on an amount, type, location and pattern of development
• Safeguarding the supply of land and buildings
• Ensuring adequate transportation and other infrastructure
• Building relationships to enhance workforce development
• Maintaining and improving quality of life and public service
• Clarifying business communication and services

In a vote on August 20th, 2012, the City Council adopted the Wilsonville Economic Development Strategy. The Council also directed the City Manager to continue the effort by appointing a task force to review and make recommendations on issues related to business recruitment and financial incentives.

"I believe that what we have in front of us is not only a strong economic development and a strong beginning,” said City Council President Celia Núñez, “but also quite strategic for what's good for Wilsonville."

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Find additional coverage of the Strategy in the Oregonian.

Terry Moore, ECONorthwest Planning Director who specializes in land use and transportation planning, and Beth Goodman, Senior Planner who specializes in land use planning and policy analysis, contributed to this report.

Let’s first stipulate that safety takes top priority.  While we know people are willing to make tradeoffs between risk and money (we don’t all buy the safest possible car) we do not accept likely loss of life to, say, protect a building. Saving human lives is of the utmost importance.

After stipulating this first priority, we can then turn our attention to the optimal way to suppress and ideally prevent fires. Do we focus our protection on targets with the highest market values? How do we balance expensive homes and smaller ones; buildings and watersheds providing clean drinking water; recreation sites and historical or cultural resources? Fire line officers and incident managers face challenging tradeoff decisions and we need to support our managers as best we can, especially as fire suppression efforts consume an increasing majority of the U.S. Forest Service budget.

The National Interagency Fire Center and the U.S. Forest Service have made great strides in disseminating information to our line managers about values at risk. One well-known model, for example, provides incident managers and others with detailed information about the value of resources threatened by wildfires. Output is organized into two tiers, the first covers primary assets, such as private structures and public infrastructure, including water supply systems and power lines. The second tier includes information about natural resources and wildland management priorities. This information is critically important, but there is still a lot of work to do.

In particular, while computer models provide information about resources at risk, at the end of the day, our society needs to assign weights to these different resources, weights that might be different than some market-based valuation.  Our take on measuring the cost-effectiveness of fire suppression efforts is that there is no one gold standard that values resources at risk. Different metrics will likely yield different results, and this variation can shed a lot of light on the way we fight fires in the future.  Using one valuation metric only is likely to conceal more than it reveals, and lead to distortions in the efficient allocation of our scarce firefighting resources, especially with respect to ecosystem-management goals.

More information about resources at risk could be very helpful to our line managers and our community in general as we learn more about what is at stake when fighting wildfires. The fire research community has made great strides in developing tools to understand resource values at risk. This is the right direction, and we need to keep moving forward.

More immediately, however, as our firefighters work overtime to suppress Idaho’s series of active wildfires, our responsibility is to support them as they make difficult decisions and to do everything in our control to help prevent future fires.  We wish our brave firefighters all the best. Godspeed.

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Dr. Kevin E. Cahill and Dr. Mark Buckley contributed to this commentary. Dr. Cahill is a senior economist and the managing director of ECONorthwest's new office in Boise, Idaho. He is experienced in labor and health economics, public policy, and commercial litigation and antitrust matters. Dr. Buckley is a senior economist and managing director. He specializes in natural resource and environmental economics. The views expressed here are their own.

Read more about ECONorthwest's expanding presence in Idaho.

Image: Some rights reserved by Michele Landi

[E]conomic consulting firm ECONorthwest [...] predicts the state’s economy would lose $1.639 billion to global warming between 2009 and 2020, assuming governments do not rein in greenhouse-gas emissions. The report predicts the state economy would lose $3.325 billion between 2009 and 2040.

The ECONorthwest report predicts that 2 percent to 3 percent of the state’s losses will result from fewer skiing days. It predicts that the state’s economy will lose $50 million between 2009 and 2020 and $78 million between 2009 and 2040 due to the loss of skiing days alone.

In addition to predicting the economic losses the state would witness as a result of fewer skiing days, ECONorthwest also calculates the potential effects of climate change for 18 other types of potential costs, including: increased cooling costs for residents, increased cost of fighting wildland fires, and increased costs related to flood and storm damage, and reduced beef production.

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You can read the full ECONorthwest report here. Find additional coverage of the report in the New York Times, Science Daily, Demos, and the University of Oregon blog.

ECONorthwest contributors to this report include: Dr. Mark Buckley, who specializes in environmental economics; Sarah Reich, who specializes in natural resource policy and economics; and Cleo Neculae.

In the article, the authors use the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a nationally-representative longitudinal dataset of older Americans, to investigate how and why workers reenter the workforce after retirement. The authors find respondents were more likely to renter the labor force if they were younger, in better health, or had a defined-contribution pension plan.

The authors note that recent research, including their own, indicates that the work patterns of older Americans are many and varied, representing a process that takes place over time. "Retirement is not a one-time, permanent event for most older Americans," write Cahill and his co-authors, "even for those who initially leave the labor force directly from career employment."

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Once a year since 1969, the Trustees of the Lawrence R. Klein Award honor the best articles appearing in the Monthly Labor Review. Lawrence R. Klein, editor-in-chief of the Monthly Labor Review, donated his retirement gift to establish the award. Its purpose is to encourage articles that exhibit originality of ideas, methods, or analysis; adhere to the principles of scientific inquiry; and are well-written.

Dr. Kevin E. Cahill specializes in the economics of aging, labor and health economics, and statistical methods. He is a senior economist and the managing director of ECONorthwest's new office in Boise, Idaho. Read more about ECONorthwest's expanding presence in Idaho.

Slumping revenue and aging facilities. Disappointing results and tougher competition.

That's where Billy Beane found the Oakland A's in October 2001. Conventional wisdom would have moved the franchise to a more lucrative locale, or easier yet, shut the team down.

But as recounted in Michael Lewis' "Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game," Beane reinvented the game. Diving deep into data, his bean counters discovered how games were won and recruited unconventional players to win them. They slapped singles, took walks, stole bases and turned the A's into persistent overachievers. During 2002-2012, they rank ninth on wins and 24th on payroll.

With schools set to open next month, Oregon's new education chief, Rudy Crew, faces a challenge similar to Beane's circa 2001. The state is coming off a disappointing decade: virtually no gains on national achievement exams. Revenue is weak, pension costs are rising and facilities are uninspiring.

The rest of the piece is available here.

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John Tapogna is President of ECONorthwest and oversees the firm's overall business strategy and operations. Since his arrival at ECONorthwest in 1997, Tapogna has built practices in education, healthcare, human service, and tax policy. Dr. Andrew Dyke specializes in economic analysis, labor economics, and social policy; and Dr. Bryce Ward specializes in natural resource and labor economics.

In a white paper, recently released by Food and Water Watch, ECONorthwest estimates the future impact of the canal / tunnel on ratepayers in Los Angeles, including the costs of financing the construction and operation and related mitigation costs.

To account for uncertainty surrounding the actual cost of building the tunnel, the ECONorthwest model included two scenarios: a high-cost and a low-cost. ECONorthwest's model predicts that under the lowest cost scenario, Los Angeles water rates will go up on average $86/year in 2021. The high cost scenario would increase rates by $393/year in 2021.

In the white paper, the authors also describe local water supply alternatives and their potential costs, including conservation, water reuse and recycling, stormwater capture, and groundwater desalination.

"Alone, or in combination, these options could provide a cost-effective alternative for Los Angeles' water-supply needs," said Ed MacMullan, senior economist and the report's principal author. "Our white paper provides insight into the cost impacts of the peripheral tunnel versus local water-supply options. The tunnel does not compare favorably."

The white paper is a companion to a similar analysis ECONorthwest conducted for Santa Barbara ratepayers.

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You can read the full white paper here. Find additional coverage of the ECONorthwest white paper in City Watch, The Record, and San Francisco Bay Area Indymedia.

Other contributors to the white paper include: Ann Hollingshead, Research Analyst, who specializes in natural resource policy and economics; and Paul Thoma, Economic Analyst, who specializes statistical and econometric analysis and applied microeconomics.

The principal measures of economic impacts used in this report are:

• Output: the final value of all goods and services produced. For businesses, this is approximately equal to sales. For Tribal government, output equals total spending.
• Labor Income: workers’ wages and benefits, including self-employment income.
• Jobs: full- and part-time employment.

In a press release, Cal Mukumoto, CEO of the Coquille Economic Development Corporation said: “We commissioned this independent study in order to have a more complete picture of how our business spending reverberates throughout the region. We cannot truly understand economic development if we only look at the pieces. We need to look at how the pieces are interrelated.”

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Find additional coverage of ECONorthwest's report in The World.

Robert Whelan, Director / Senior Economist who specializes in market research and forecasting, and Carsten Jensen contributed to this report.

"There are just no obvious benchmarks," explains Dr. Kevin E. Cahill, ECONorthwest senior economist and the principal author of the ECONorthwest Issue Brief.

So how do you benchmark economic performance for a city like Boise?

To answer the question ECONorthwest examined U.S. cities of similar size and capability. The authors began with a list of cities comparable to Boise in terms of "knowledge traits," as defined by a study from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The Fed study grouped cities according to  the predominant types of knowledge used in the workforce, also known as human capital. For example, cities in the Making Region are characterized by knowledge about manufacturing and cities in the Enterprising Region, including Boise, have a deeper knowledge about commerce.

Using those lists, ECONorthwest honed in on four cities in the Enterprising Region with roughly the same number of residents as Boise. Those were: Des Moines, Iowa; Provo, Utah; Sarasota, Florida; and Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Wait. Really? Chattanooga?

"As it turns out, Boise looks a lot like Chattanooga," says Dr. Cahill. "Economically, that is."

All four of these cities have metropolitan areas with populations between 526,000 and 703,000, GMP between $14 and $40 billion, and annual per capita personal income between $25,000 and $46,000. These four cities represent Boise's comparators and economic peers. Boise fell in the middle of the pack--with a personal income lower than Des Moines and Sarasota, but higher than Provo. With Chattanooga, Boise was about even.

"If Boise were playing a game of golf, it would be hitting par," says Dr. Cahill. "Boise is not under-performing, nor is Boise over-performing."

There are advantages to knowing Boise is hitting par. For one, we know that  Boise can do better at harnessing its human capital, like Sarasota and Des Moines. "And if we do better,” says Dr. Cahill, “that will mean more resources for everyone - - families, businesses, and the public sector alike."

Dr. Cahill also assures us that the "goal of this exercise is not to say that Boise should be like this city or that city." Boise has a thriving, unique local culture and is within a 20-minute drive of some of the most beautiful, rugged outdoors areas on Earth. We wouldn't want anything about that to change.

"The goal of this report was to provide Boise with an economic benchmark," explains Dr. Cahill. "Coming out of the Great Recession many cities, including Boise, will start goal setting. But before you can set a goal, you need to have some perspective about where you stand."

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Download the ECONorthwest Issue Brief Is Boise Over- or Underperforming Economically?

Dr. Kevin E. Cahill is a senior economist and the managing director of ECONorthwest's new office in Boise, Idaho. He is experienced in labor and health economics, public policy, and commercial litigation and antitrust matters. Read more about ECONorthwest's expanding presence in Idaho. Other contributors to the issue brief include John Tapogna, President of ECONorthwest, who specializes in education, healthcare, human service, and tax policy; Paul Thoma, economic analyst; and Dr. Bryce Ward, senior economist.

ECONorthwest found that traded sector workers in Portland earn an average of $15,300 more per year than their local sector counterparts--including those in health care, education, food service, and construction.

"We used cutting-edge techniques and a mountain of data covering forty years, many industries, and several U.S. metropolitan areas, to show how variation in traded sector performance helps to explain variation in regional economic performance," said Dr. Bryce Ward, ECONorthwest senior economist, and one of the report's principal authors.

"We now know," Dr. Ward said "that Portland's declining income relative to the U.S. metro areas average--a topic that has received much attention locally--is related to slower income growth in the traded services sector." In fact, according to the ECONorthwest report, average wages in Portland's traded sector are lower than those in Seattle, Denver, and Minneapolis. In 2010, the average income from Portland-area traded sector jobs was $47,200, while those in Seattle averaged $61,400, in Minneapolis they were $56,700, and in Denver $56,200.

John Tapogna, president of ECONorthwest and one of the report's authors, offered an explanation at the Westside Economic Alliance. “The presence of companies like Starbucks, Microsoft, Amazon and Boeing are one big reason why average incomes are higher in Seattle than Portland." Tapogna said, "It’s not just the corporate salaries, it’s also the contracting with outside professionals like lawyers, accountants and even economic consultants, like my company."

You can read the full report here. Find additional coverage of the ECONorthwest report in the Oregonian, the Portland Tribune, the Portland Business Journal, and the Oregon Business Report.

Other contributors to the report include Terry Moore, ECONorthwest planning director who specializes in land use and transportation planning, and Paul Thoma, economic analyst, who specializes in statistical and econometric analysis and applied microeconomics.

In his research, Dr. Cahill used the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a nationally-representative longitudinal dataset of older Americans, to investigate the role of self-employment in the retirement transitions of HRS Core respondents over nearly two decades, from 1992 to 2010, with particular emphasis on recent years. Dr. Cahill found that post-career transitions into and out of self-employment remain common in the face of the Great Recession. Health status, occupation, and financial variables remain important determinants of switches from wage-and-salary career employment to self-employed bridge jobs.

In his presentation, Dr. Cahill noted that the 1990s and 2000s witnessed an increase in self-employment substantially later in life, partly because self-employment provides older workers with opportunities not found in wage-and-salary jobs. The evidence suggests that self-employment is an important pathway to retirement for many Americans and these transitions have become even more prominent in recent years.

Dr. Kevin E. Cahill specializes in the economics of aging, labor and health economics, and statistical methods. He is a senior economist and the managing director of ECONorthwest's new office in Boise, Idaho. Read more about ECONorthwest's expanding presence in Idaho.

The presentation below addresses the complex relationship between natural capital, ecosystem goods and services, and human well-being and introduces the ECONorthwest framework for analyzing these issues.

Ed MacMullan is a nationally recognized expert on ecosystem services and the economics of low impact development. He currently serves on the Hydrology Subcommittee of the Sustainable Sites Initiative, where he helped develop the guidelines and performance benchmarks for the SITES rating system.

Following the announcement, the California Water Impact Network (C-WIN) released its report "The Cost of Water for Santa Barbara County--Why We Cannot Afford a Peripheral Canal." As part of the report, C-WIN included a white paper which they commissioned from ECONorthwest titled "Analysis of the Cost of a Bay-Delta Conveyance Structure: Rate Impacts to Santa Barbara County." In the white paper, ECONorthwest estimates the future impact of the Canal / Tunnel on ratepayers in Santa Barbara, including the costs of financing the construction and operation and related mitigation costs.

To account for uncertainty surrounding the actual cost of building the tunnel, the ECONorthwest model included two scenarios: a high-cost and a low-cost. This allowed the authors to estimate, on an annual basis, the total increase in rates for each ratepayer in the Santa Barbara County Flood Control and Water Conservation District.

"The ECONorthwest report predicts that under the lowest cost scenario, Santa Barbara County water rates will go up on average $24/month in 2019." said Carolee Krieger, C-WIN's President, "The high cost scenario would increase rates by $160 month in 2019."

ECONorthwest also reported the total principal and interest payments Santa Barbara would pass along to its ratepayers and the total increase per ratepayers, over the lifetime of the financing costs.

"This report is useful because it's so accessible." said Ed MacMullan, senior economist and the report's principal author, "The Bay Delta Conservation Plan says the tunnel will cost $17 billion, but numbers that big are too abstract for most of us. Our report translates big numbers into the actual dollar increase each ratepayer in Santa Barbara will see on his or her monthly bill. Making the numbers accessible helps to clarify the decision."

You can read the full white paper here. Find additional coverage of the ECONorthwest white paper in the Daily Kos and the Central Valley Business Times.

Other contributors included: Ann Hollingshead, Research Analyst, who specializes in natural resource policy and economics; and Paul Thoma, Economic Analyst, who specializes statistical and econometric analysis and applied microeconomics.

Commissioner Amanda Fritz noted "Cleaning up the Harbor will require a significant investment from the public sector and businesses. The study shows there will also be significant economic benefits in our community."

ECONorthwest conducted the analysis using an economic model known as IMPLAN, which is built on estimates of empirical and technological relationships that trace how spending circulates through an economy.

The IMPLAN model reports the following measures of economic impacts:

• Output represents the value of goods and services produced and is the broadest measure of economic activity.
• Personal income (or labor income) consists of employee compensation and proprietary income.
• State and local taxes and fees include production business taxes; personal income taxes; social insurance (employer and employee contributions) taxes; and various other taxes, fines, licenses, and fees paid by businesses and households.
• Jobs include both full- and part-time employment. Jobs are measured in terms of job- years, or one position (either full or part time) for one year.

In a recent Op-Ed in the Oregonian, Travis Williams, executive director of Willamette Riverkeeper and Bob Sallinger, conservation director of the Audubon Society of Portland, cite the ECONorthwest study, noting that "each dollar put into the cleanup will generate more than a dollar in return locally -- meaning the cleanup will actually be good for the river and the economy."

Ed MacMullan, senior economist, and Sarah Reich, policy analyst, contributed to this report.

MY brother, Brian, has been a Mariners fan since 1983, when he was just 13 years old. Brian called me on Monday night with the news. "Can you believe they traded Ichiro after 11 years with the Mariners?" His voice then stopped. After a long pause he said, "I've had it. I've had it with this team." It's an empty threat, but my brother is hurting, and his comments are understandable.

Separation is never easy, and it shouldn't be. Unfortunately, it is now ingrained in our culture. Don't like your spouse? Get a divorce. Don't like your job? Quit. That also means that if your spouse doesn't like you, you're out of luck, and if your employer doesn't like how you're performing, you're fired. And, sadly, if you're an aging baseball player, you're traded (or you ask to be traded). Ichiro went to the Yankees.

All I can offer my brother and other die-hard Mariners fans is some insight as an economist.

The rest of the peice is available here.

Dr. Kevin E. Cahill specializes in the economics of aging, labor and health economics, and statistical methods. He is a senior economist and the managing director of ECONorthwest's new office in Boise, Idaho. Read more about ECONortwest's expanding presence in Idaho.

Ed will join Danielle Pieranunzi, Director of the Sustainable Sites Initaitve, as co-host of the Working Group "SITES Rating System: Influencing Landscape Performance using an Ecosystem Serivces Framework."

The conference will be held at the Hilton Doubletree in Portland, Oregon from July 31st - August 4th. Ed will co-host a Working Group on Wednesday, August 1st, from 10:00 onwards.

For more information, or to register for the conference, visit http://www.espconference.org.

Ed MacMullan is a nationally recognized expert on ecosystem services and the economics of low impact development. He currently serves on the Hydrology Subcommittee of the Sustainable Sites Initiative, where he helped develop the guidelines and performance benchmarks for the SITES rating system. In his project work and alongside other staff at ECONorthwest, Ed regularly helps regulators, decisionmakers, and stakeholders at the local, state and national level understand the economic aspects of stormwater management and green infrastructure.

In his presentation, Dr. Cahill concluded that since the mid-1980s, the retirement income landscape in the United States has changed to favor work over leisure and that older Americans have responded to these changes ­ by working later in life. As Dr. Cahill notes, the average retirement age of men has increased from 63 in the early 2000s to 65 today. What makes the change so dramatic is that this increase represents a reversal of a near-century-long trend toward earlier retirement. Dr. Cahill noted that these demographic shifts will likely force employers to increasingly hire older workers. 

Dr. Cahill views all of these pro-work changes as essentially good news. Employees benefit through increased financial security in their retirement years; employers benefit by tapping into a valuable resource ­ older workers and their lifetime of experience; and the country as a whole benefits as more goods and services are produced, to be distributed across an aging population.

Dr. Kevin E. Cahill specializes in the economics of aging, labor and health economics, and statistical methods. He is a senior economist and the managing director of ECONorthwest's new office in Boise, Idaho. Read more about ECONortwest's expanding presence in Idaho.

“We have long recognized the growing economies of the Rocky Mountain Region and the potential benefits of a local ECONorthwest office,” said John Tapogna, President of ECONorthwest. “While we have served the Boise area for many years from our offices in Oregon, we believe 2012 is the right time to take this bold step of opening a new office in Boise. We are staffed for success.”

Dr. Kevin E. Cahill, Managing Director, and Dr. Brian Greber, Business Development Director, will co-lead the new office. Kevin—formerly a Manager at Analysis Group, a national economic consulting firm based in Boston, Massachusetts—specializes in labor economics, public policy, and statistical methods, and has experience testifying in court as an expert witness. Kevin holds a PhD in Economics from Boston College and actively publishes and presents his research at academic conferences nationally and internationally. Kevin also serves as a Research Economist at the Sloan Center on Aging & Work at Boston College.

Brian is an Adjunct Professor of Economics at Boise State University and formerly the founding director of Boise State University’s Center for Business Research and Economic Development. He specializes in industry/market analysis, natural resource economics, strategic planning, and organizational effectiveness. Brian holds a PhD in Forest Resource Economics from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and is widely published in both technical journals and popular press.

Combined Kevin and Brian have several decades of professional experience in economic research, public policy and executive management. They are both active in the Boise community, with numerous ties in the public, private, and academic sectors.

You can reach ECONorthwest in Boise at 208-918-0617, visit our office in the Banner Bank Building, or email Kevin Cahill (cahill@econw.com) or Brian Greber (greber@econw.com) directly.

The meeting was held on Friday, July 13th at the Eugene Hilton. The entire meeting will be broadcast Monday, July 16th at 6:30 pm on KLCC 89.7 FM. For more information, or to listen online, visit klcc.org/onlineaudiofeature.asp.

Bryce Ward holds a PhD in Economics from Harvard University and specializes in natural resource and labor economics. Bryce has has taught courses in Labor Economics, Microeconomic Theory, Public Finance, Econometrics, Environmental and Natural Resource Economics, and Social Economics at Harvard College, Lewis and Clark College, Portland State University, and the University of Oregon.

In conducting the analysis, ECONorthwest focused on four broad categories of economic effects. These included:

• Natural-resource effects: the economic effects of mitigating for the loss of 300 acres of habitat and changes in the supply and values of ecosystem services provided by natural resources on and around WHI.
• Recreation effects: the economic effects of changes in recreation, including the new recreational opportunities under the proposed development.
• Local effects: the changes in quality of life for residents and businesses on East Hayden Island.
• Port effects: the costs of developing the WHI port and the economic values, jobs, employment income, of the new facilities.

The ECONorthwest analysis also examined three types of economic effects: economic values, or the changes in values of goods and services available that result from the market and non-market activities; economic impacts, which are changes in jobs, employment income, and tax revenues; and the economic distribution of the other two types of economic effects.

"I've been excited to see the public policy impacts of this project unfold," said Ed MacMullan, a senior economist with ECONorthwest and one of the report's primary authors. "At its core, economics is the science of choice. This project was a great example of how policymakers can use a tool like benefit-cost analysis to help make choices in complex situations."

A recent article in the Portland Tribune quotes Sam Ruda, the Port of Portland's chief commercial officer, who "praised ECONorthwest for a 'job well done." Other news outlets, including the Daily Commerce Journal, also covered the new report.

Other contributers included: Mark Buckley, Senior Economist, who specializes in natural resource and environmental economics; Bryce Ward, Senior Economist, who specializes in economic analysis and modeling; Tom Souhlas, Policy Analyst, who specializes in environmental policy and economics; and Ann Hollingshead, Research Analyst.

The OSU Cascades campus "helps to build the skills of workers in Central Oregon and spark innovation that benefits people around the globe," said Paul Thoma, an economist at ECONorthwest and an author of the report.

Last week, the Oregonian reported Oregon State University is now looking to expand its OSU Cascades branch campus into a four-year university. The program would launch in 2015 and, by 2025, would serve between 3,000 and 5,000 students. OSU President Ed Ray told the Oregonian "Central Oregon is the only major population and economic area without a four-year university, and having one would help develop a more educated workforce to attract and sustain business and industry in the area."

You can download the report and learn more at Powered By Orange.

Alec Jospehson, a Senior Economist who specializes in economic impact analysis, also contributed to this report.

Anne Sutton, a wildlife viewing coordinator from ADF&G, told the Dutch Harbor Fisherman "we're hoping to get a good sense of what the economic benefit is to the state." As she notes, ADF&G needed a more comprehensive analysis because, while the U.S. Department of Fish and Game puts out a similar study, "their numbers don't always reflect what we're seeing on the ground."

What's the advantage of using ECONorthwest over the national survey? "We can get a lot more detail," Sutton says. "When they're making policy decision that affect the department, it's important to know just how it will affect the economy. We don't base our decisions purely on economic figures, but it is certainly an important consideration."

Although Brady finished in third place during the May 15 primary election and is no longer in the race, John Topagna [sic], president of the ECONorthwest economic development firm, says Brady had a point. Speaking before the Westside Economic Alliance last week, Topagna pointed to the concentration of Fortune 500 companies in the Seattle region to help explain the difference in per capita incomes – more than $50,000 in the Seattle region compared to slightly more than $40,000 in the Portland region in 2010.

“The presence of companies like Starbucks, Microsoft, Amazon and Boeing are one big reason why average incomes are higher in Seattle than Portland,” Topagna says. “It’s not just the corporate salaries, it’s also the contracting with outside professionals like lawyers, accountants and even economic consultants, like my company.”

At the same time, Topagna says the best economic development strategy is to encourage a mix of diverse large, medium and small firms that provide a wide range of employment opportunities.

“Having a healthy mix is important,” Topagna says.

Tapogna based his presentation on preliminary data ECONorthwest collected for the annual Portland Region's Economic Health report for the Value of Jobs Coalition, which includes the Portland Business Alliance, Associated Oregon Industries, the Oregon Business Association, the Oregon Business Council and the Port of Portland. ECONorthwest also compiled data for the 2011 and 2010 studies, which represent the Coalition's effort "to identify key factors impacting employment, wages and incomes, highlight areas where the Portland-metro economy under-perform relative to various benchmarks; and begin a conversation with public and private leaders to define strategies to spur the economic growth."

ECONorthwest has worked with dozens of state, regional, and local governments on economic development evaluations and strategies. We excel at the technical analysis, including describing a regional economy’s capacity and utilization of resources, and the facilitation and strategic planning required to help advisory groups establish economic goals and evaluate actions.

You can pretty quickly get into the hundreds of millions of dollars of value per year," said Mark Buckley, a senior economist at ECONorthwest and one of the report's authors.

The report is a part of an on-going effort by a coalition of groups, including Wild Utah Project and Grand Canyon Trust, to restore healthy levels of dam-building beaver in Southern Utah and convince southern Utahans that this restoration is in their interest. The traditional view is that beavers are a nuisance species because they fell trees and impound waters. Before 2010, landowners who found beavers toppling trees along irrigation ditches or in backyards would call the Division of Wildlife Resources (DWR), which would remove and kill the beavers.

At the time of the release of the report Jim Catlin, Project Director at Grand Canyon Trust, noted in the Salt Lake Tribune that only one in ten southern Utah streams that should have beavers currently does.

This month DWR and Grand Canyon Trust have conducted the first relocation of beavers under a revised state management plan. This plan reflects the current thinking, highlighted by the ECONothwest report, that beavers can improve landscapes and provide significant economic value to the surrounding areas.

Early this month, the Salt Lake Tribune reported that biologists released nine beavers in a southern Utah stream, six of which they trapped from irrigated pasture land in Paguitch when the landowner noticed the beavers cutting down trees on his property. The biologists freed the beavers at the site of a dilapidated dam that has been vacant for several years.

The beavers got to work right away.

On the weekends the players of Sprawl and Unintended Consequences compete in the City of Eugene Ultimate League. During the week, they shed the neon to work in the community as city planners, economists, and University of Oregon students, staff, and alumni. Many have shown an exemplary commitment to service in the local community; their work ranges from combating underage drinking in Lane County to kick-starting a commercial composting program.

In recognition of these professional and personal contributions, ECONorthwest sponsored the team with new jerseys.

"Before we were wearing ratty, unmatched t-shirts and you couldn't always tell who was on our team," says Michael Weinerman, a player for both teams and a research analyst for ECONorthwest. "Now we can make long-bomb throws with confidence all while the jerseys wick the sweat away!"

The team names and logo--a dinosaur sprawling over a small neighborhood as it unsuccessfully reaches for a frisbee--are both tributes to planning and urban development. Perhaps the lime green is an inadvertant nod to Eugene's nickname, the Emerald City. Or maybe it's just stylish.

The teams are pleased with their seasons thus far. Sprawl currently holds a 6-1 record in the C-League, while Unintended Consequences is tied for last in the B-League, with a 1-6 record.

"As a group, we seem to straddle the B-C League divide," Weinerman says.

On June 3rd, Sprawl will play Hot Lava for a chance to take the C-League Championship title. On the same day, Unintended Consequences will face off against Hammer Time in the 7th/8th place playoff game of the B-League.

After the championships, they'll hang up their jerseys. For now. Because both will return, with a vengence and in lime green, for a new season this fall.

The forum costs $25 for alliance members and $35 for non-members, with an additional $10 for registration received after Monday, May 21. A breakfast buffet will be available to members and guests.

Date/Time: Thursday, May 24, 2012 from 7:30 to 9:00 AM
Location: Embassy Suites Hotel,
                9000 S.W. Washington Square Road, Tigard, Oregon

For more information, or to register, email tdunham@westside-alliance.org or call 503-968-3100.

John Tapogna is President of ECONorthwest and oversees the firm's overall business strategy and operations. Since his arrival at ECONorthwest in 1997, Tapogna has built practices in education, healthcare, human service, and tax policy.

ECONorthwest has decades of experience helping clients identifying and adapting to shifts in economic and environmental trends by addressing their sustainability goals and providing them with the most effective options to achieve them.
 

ECONorthwest analyzed two components of the Intertwine's total value. First, staff calculated the value of ecosystem goods and services the Intertwine provides--including its effects on stormwater and water quality; benefits to wildlife and habitat; carbon sequestration and air filtration; and increased and enhanced recreational opportunities. Next, they monetized the Intertwine's effects on local property values.

ECONorthwest's results show that, over the next 20 years, the Interwine will provide about $1.5 billion in benefits from ecosystem goods and  services to the local community and an additional $0.3 billion in benefits to non-local communities. ECONorthwest's results also show that properties within 900 feet of the Interwine sell for approximately 1 percent more than similar properties, in the same neighborhood, but more than 900 feet from a developed park.

You can download the ecosystem service component of the report here and the property values report here.

Mark Buckley, Senior Economist, and Tom Souhlas, Policy Analyst, contributed to this report. Mark specializes in the economics of environmental policy and decision-making, particularly focused on water resources, forests, climate, and ecosystem services and Tom specializes in environmental policy and economics.

Looking at 479 case studies of green infrastructure projects around the U.S., the report finds that the majority of projects turned out to be just as affordable or even more so than traditional "grey" infrastructure. About a quarter of projects raised costs, 31 percent, kept costs the same and more than 44 percent actually brought costs down.

"The lesson learned so far by early adopter communities who have already implemented green infrastructure in a significant fashion is that a wide-ranging commitment to including green infrastructure stormwater approaches, on public as well as private properties, can result in long-term fiscal savings for local governments as well as provide numerous, tangible economic and community benefits through related ecosystem services," notes the study, co-authored by the American Society of Landscape Architects, American Rivers, the Water Environment Federation, and ECONorthwest.

The costs of traditional infrastructure are especially pronounced in cities and regions with combined sewer systems that collect both sewage and stormwater. During heavy rainfall, these systems are often overwhelmed, pouring sewage-laden water into drinking water sources and greatly increasing water treatment costs.

The rest of the article is available from the Atlantic, here.

You can download the report, and others in the series, Going Green to Save Green: Economic Benefits of Green Infrastructure Projects, here.

In "Economist hits 'legacy' report," The Advocate quotes Whitelaw's testimony and ECONorthwest's report. It reads:

Whitelaw, founder of ECONorthwest, a Portland, Ore., company that provides financial analysis for businesses and governments, said Dismukes’ widely quoted analysis has several major flaws.

“Understand that these errors, and there are three or four big ones, any one of which is enough to render his analysis nonsense,” Whitelaw said. “These are rookie errors.”

For instance, Whitelaw said, the analysis omits a relevant variable. Dismukes included data from 2005 and 2006, when the Louisiana energy industry was battered by two hurricanes, and stops his analysis in 2007.

“He fails to mention Hurricane Katrina or Hurricane Rita anywhere in the report,” Whitelaw said.

“In our opinion, the Dismukes document fails to meet any of these professional standards. And this failure matters to the degree that the Dismukes document is fatally flawed, both theoretically and empirically. Nowhere does Dr. Dismukes present a coherent economic model linking legacy lawsuits and decisions to drill in Louisiana,” the ECONorthwest report states.

Dr. Ed Whitelaw is the founder of ECONorthwest. He specializes in urban and regional economics, natural resource and environmental economics, and the economic consequences of policy decisions. As an expert witness, he has testified in litigation cases in state and federal trials and dozens of administrative, legislative, congressional, and judicial bodies on a variety of economic issues.

The series also includes contributions from the American Society of Landscape Architects and the Water Environment Federation.

Mark Buckley, Senior Economist of ECONorthwest and one of the report's authors noted, "this report addresses the real economic tradeoffs facing local utilities and developers as they consider green vs. conventional infrastructure."

The report’s top findings are:

• Not only can the green infrastructure option cost less, but these practices can further reduce costs of treating large amounts of polluted runoff.

• Green infrastructure can help municipalities reduce energy expenses.

• Green infrastructure can reduce flooding and related flood damage.

• Green infrastructure improves public health -- it reduces bacteria and pollution in rivers and streams, preventing gastrointestinal illnesses in swimmers and boaters.

The report series also includes two case studies authored by ECONorthwest, The Economic Benefits of Green Infrastructure in the Great Lakes Region and the Economic Benefits of Green Infrastructure in the Chesapeake Bay. Together, these reports measure the savings and benefits municipalities and their residents enjoy from the innovative green infrastructure techniques used in Montgomery County, MD; Washington, DC; Prince George's County, MD; Milwaukee, WI; and Ann Arbor, MI.

Policy Analysts Tom Souhlas and Sarah Reich, who specialize in environmental policy and economics, also contributed to this report.

The conference will be held at the Red Lion On The River in Portland on Tuesday and Wednesday, April 17th and 18th. Ed MacMullan will speak on Wednesday, April 18th in Track 1, Sustainable Landscapes, from 1:30-3:15 pm.

For more information, or to register for the conference, visit http://www.jgpress.com/westcoast/2012/index.html#.

Ed MacMullan is a nationally recognized expert on ecosystem services and the economics of low impact development. He currently serves on the Hydrology Subcommittee of the Sustainable Sites Initiative, where he helped develop the guidelines and performance benchmarks for the SITES rating system. In his project work and alongside other staff at ECONorthwest, Ed regularly helps regulators, decisionmakers, and stakeholders at the local, state and national level understand the economic aspects of stormwater management and green infrastructure.

Our EB-5 work includes:

• Developing business plans and cash flow models for businesses and regional centers seeking EB-5 investor funding;
• Conducting market and economic impact analyses of proposed businesses;
• Constructing regional center organization models;
• Helping clients blend EB-5 funding with other leveraged resources such as New Market Tax Credits and Historic Tax Credits; and
• Preparing marketing strategies.

The recent acceptance of the EB-5 application for a Saipan-based international airline further demonstrates our expertise in the USCIS’ EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program.

John Tapogna, President of ECONorthwest, noted "OSU's economic contributions take many forms. Whether it’s building the skills of an emerging workforce or sparking innovation in engineering, forestry and agriculture, the university has played a central role in strengthening the state's short- and long-term economic prospects.”

Here's the video:

Download the report and learn more at Powered By Orange.

Economists Alec Jospehson and Paul Thoma contributed to this report.

The event is free to Sustainable Future Section members and $10 for nonmembers. Attorneys can earn 1 hour of CLE credits by attending this program.

Date/Time:     Wednesday, April 11, 2012 from Noon to 1:15 PM
Location:        Markowitz Herbold Glade & Mehlhaf
                          1211 SW Fifth Avenue,  Suite 3000,  Portland, Oregon
                          Take Elevator to 29th Floor

For more information, or to RSVP, visit http://osbsustainablefuture.org/.

Dr. Ed Whitelaw is the Founder of ECONorthwest. He specializes in urban and regional economics, natural resource and environmental economics, and the economic consequences of policy decisions. Dr. Bryce Ward is a Senior Economist who speicalizes in natural resource, urban, and labor economics.

ECONorthwest has decades of experience identifying and analyzing shifts in economic and environmental trends, such as climate change, and helping public and private entities make decisions that reinforce the long-term health of our environment and our economy.

The article asks "Will a better educated work force translate into a more prosperous Oregon?" To answer, the Register Guard sat down with John Tapogna, President of ECONorthwest and a senior policy analyst who has built practice areas in education, labor economics, and work force development.

Tapogna explains:

Routine jobs are being sent overseas or done by computers or machines...Computer chip manufacturer Intel, for example, sends some work overseas, but is expanding its Hillsboro work force, home to its high-end research and development activities. But nothing ties residents to the state that educated them, and people migrate when they can’t find work locally...Supplying the work force is one thing; having other policies in place to attract business and industry is another...(Education) does need to be married with all the other levers that a state and a governor have to pull in order to make this an attractive place to live and do business.

Governor Kitzhaber is not alone in this venture. Many states and metropolitan regions have set ambitious goals to dramatically boost the educational attainment of their populations and retrain adults as they move through their prime working years. Robust and efficient workforce development systems will be critical to meeting these goals. At ECONorthwest, we help workforce agencies, colleges, and nonprofit service providers identify and communicate their impact in a clear and concise manner.

In an Op-Ed published in Wednesday's Oregonian, Trip Goodall, the high school director at Portland Public Schools, reports on Portland's "stubbornly low" graduation rate. He points out:

This year, PPS' on-time graduation rate rose 5 percentage points to 59 percent. This number remains unacceptable -- as PPS Superintendent Carole Smith said, "No one at PPS will be satisfied until every student completes school with a diploma."

With the help of ECONorthwest's data and analysis, PPS has created more reliable records, which has helped the organization more accurately record and track student graduation.  Goodall notes:

It...turned out that many no-show students had actually transferred out of Portland Public Schools. In the past, if PPS had no record of a student who transferred out-of-state, these students counted as dropouts. That deflated PPS' graduation rate (reported at 54 percent in past years). Now schools have more reliable records. The lesson is clear: Effective interventions improve the accuracy of data. More accurate data help schools know what is working (and what is not) to keep students engaged. All of these efforts improve Portland's graduation rate.

ECONorthwest's analysis has also helped PPS identify other factors that improve graduation rates, beyond better data. For example:

Partners such as Step Up mentor and tutor students. Master teachers coach their peers on ways to deliver better instruction. Teachers collaborate to find ways to help struggling students. The whole school is engaged in shifting to a college-going culture with high expectations for all students.

There are other signs of progress. In the past two years, significantly more PPS students entered 10th grade having passed their core classes and on pace to graduate. These results are due to targeted efforts to prevent students from falling behind and dropping out.

This project is the latest in a series of partnerships in which ECONorthwest has paired with public and private nonprofit partners to think about what's working in education and what needs to be redesigned.

ECONorthwest—the Pacific Northwest's leading economic consulting firm—announced today that five senior managers have purchased the privately held company. The new Oregon-based owners include Carl Batten, Mark Buckley, Andrew Dyke, Lorelei Juntunen and John Tapogna. 

"The new owners intend to build ECONorthwest’s reputation for high-quality analysis and innovative solutions and expand our ability to serve more clients in more places. We’ll continue to grow our national work by teaming with valued partners in the Northwest and across the nation,” said John Tapogna, President. Tapogna will continue as ECONorthwest's President and will guide business strategy and operations in close collaboration with COO Paul Mallon.

The firm is seeing a growing demand for its services in the current economic climate. As a result, ECONorthwest will rebuild its staff presence in Seattle and Boise.

“Our public and private-sector clients find themselves in a complex environment,” said Tapogna.
“Income growth has been slow, well-educated boomers are poised to retire and the tab for ill-designed pension programs has come due. Our fragile economy and challenging demography reduces the margin for error. We’ll overcome these challenges, but it’s going to require a more rigorous understanding of the short- and long-term economic consequences of our public and private decisions.”

Over the past 37 years, ECONorthwest has become known for the objectivity and rigor of its economic consulting services and expert testimony. Founded by University of Oregon Professor Ed Whitelaw, the firm gained prominence through its analysis of damages associated with the Exxon Valdez oil spill and since has worked for a long list of high-profile clients including Intel, Nike, Facebook and the US State Department. Whitelaw and founding owners, Ernie Niemi and Terry Moore, will continue as practice leaders and mentor the firm's next generation of consultants.

About ECONorthwest

Established in 1974, ECONorthwest has over three decades of experience helping clients make sound decisions based on rigorous economic planning and financial analysis. With a staff of 50 economists, planners and policy analysts, ECONorthwest provides professional consulting services and expert testimony and litigation support for a variety of clients worldwide. For more information, visit www.econw.com.

So where exactly do internet companies build their data centres?

Last year, Facebook allowed photographers into its new computing centre in the US state of Oregon.

The server farm is 147,000 sq ft (13,656 sq m) and cost $210m (£132m) to build, according to a report by ECONorthwest, which was commissioned by Facebook.

Photographs show the giant servers Facebook uses to help accommodate the 800 million people worldwide who access the site.

The rest of the article is available from BBC, here.

Oregon's community hospitals generated 59,580 full- and part-time jobs and 69,700 so-called secondary jobs in 2010. That accounts for about 5.9 percent of the state's total employment, according to an economic impact study conducted by ECONorthwest for the Oregon Association of Hospitals and Health Systems.

Alec Josephson, Senior Economist, conducted the study. Read more in the Portland Business Journal.

That footprint totals $2.06 billion, according to Eugene-based consultants ECONorthwest.
Compared to Oregon's other public and private colleges and universities, Ray said, the 25,000-student OSU has the greatest financial impact in the state.

“OSU's economic contributions take many forms,” said John Tapogna, president of ECONorthwest. “Whether it’s building the skills of an emerging workforce or sparking innovation in engineering, forestry and agriculture, the university has played a central role in strengthening the state's short- and long-term economic prospects.”

Read more in the Corvallis Gazette Times.

Download the report and learn more at Powered By Orange.

Alec Josephson, Senior Economist, conducted the study with Paul Thoma, Economist.

During the past quarter century, we barely talked about whether we had enough jobs in America. With unemployment rates comfortably in the single digits there were plenty of jobs to go around. This world came to an abrupt end with the financial crisis in 2008, as the monthly unemployment rate spiked. It has since remained stubbornly high, and many of the jobs lost in the Great Recession have not come back. In response, some have suggested that older workers “step aside” as a way to free up jobs for younger workers.

Why are people singling out older workers? One reason is the sharp increase in the number of older Americans over the past decade, a product of the aging baby boomers. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of people aged 65 and older in the labor force (i.e., working or looking for work) increased from 4.2 million in 2000 to 6.7 million in 2010. Over the same time period, the number of people aged 16 to 19 in the labor force declined from around 8.4 million to 5.9 million, largely because of increases in school enrollment. Some have interpreted these data and concluded that older workers are crowding out younger ones as they both compete for a scarce resource-jobs.

The rest of the piece is available here.

Dr. Kevin E. Cahill specializes in the economics of aging, labor and health economics, and statistical methods. He is a senior economist and the managing director of ECONorthwest's new office in Boise, Idaho. Read more about ECONorthwest's expanding presence in Idaho.

Prepared by ECONorthwest, the report measures Intel’s operations between 2005 and 2009, with a focus on the economic impacts in 2009.

For that year, the total economic impacts attributed to Intel’s operations, capital spending, contributions and taxes amounted to almost $14.6 billion in activity, including $4.3 billion in personal income and 59,990 jobs.

In addition, the report found that every 10 Intel jobs create another 31 jobs in the community.

Although the report showed a small decline of 1.1 percent of employment at Intel from 2007 to 2009, that was much less than the 8.8 percent experienced by other private employers in Oregon. In 2009, the average gross income for Intel employees was $117,000, more than twice the average of other Washington County employees. Average incomes increased 17.8 percent at Intel from 2005 to 2009, compared to 10.4 percent for other private employers.

The report was prepared by Alec Josephson, senior economist, and Carsten Jensen, research analyst. The complete report is available online, here.

In the din of the legislative session, the most polarizing issues take center stage. Yet, quietly this month, legislation for a common sense solution that helps Oregon's most vulnerable citizens became law. The governor signed House Bill 3375 after it received unanimous support in the Legislature.

HB3375 strengthens the growing momentum towards a statewide 2-1-1 system by rewriting outdated language and solidifying relationships with telecommunications providers. Oregon's 2-1-1 network is funded in many diverse Oregon counties through nonprofit, local government and philanthropic support.

The toll-free phone telephone number 2-1-1 serves more than 65 percent of Oregonians in 10 counties. Similar to 9-1-1, 2-1-1 is available from most phones and helps people connect with nonprofit, government and faith-based health and social service resources. 2-1-1 acts like an air-traffic controller that is able to see the landscape of resources and guide those who need services to the organizations that can help. In doing so, 2-1-1 empowers people to find solutions for seemingly intractable situations.

The rest of the piece is available here.

John has been an ECONW team member since 1997 and specializes in social and fiscal policy. He has built practices in education, healthcare, human services, and tax policy.

Ed Whitelaw "So what we were talking about is the values of say a Mt. Hood, Intel, the corner grocery, or the Oregon Coast."

Whitelaw says one way to attack comparative value is to think about it as if you were deciding whether to buy a business.

Ed Whitelaw "One of the concepts in valuing something is how long it's going to last."

Let's say you wanted to buy a company. You'd look at its value. You'd start thinking about whether it's something people will still need ten, twenty, or thirty years down the road. Could it become obsolete? If the corporation risks becoming obsolete, you discount its value accordingly.

Ed Whitelaw "If you're talking Intel, you're talking decades. I'd bet in 30 years, it won't be around, there's a lot of flux, a lot of turnaround."

Now, Whitelaw says, think about how long Mt. Hood will provide its unique value in Oregon.

Ed Whitelaw "If you're talking about Mt. Hood you're talking millennia"

Just as Mt. Hood was here long before Western settlers first came, Whitelaw says the odds are very good it'll probably be here longer than any Oregon company you can name.

Ed is the Founder of ECONorthwest. He specializes in urban and regional economics, natural resource and environmental economics, and the economic consequences of policy decisions.

The report, Early Evidence of Learning Gains at Seattle's South Shore School, evaluates the South Shore School, an elementary school in Seattle, that is the result of an innovative public/private partnership between The New School Foundation and Seattle Public Schools. South Shore's program is based on rigorous, evidence-based interventions that includes high-quality pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten, small class sizes in early grades, and extra supports for students and faculty. ECONorthwest evaluated the impacts of South Shore on student performance compared to its neighboring schools and to all Seattle Public Schools.

Examining student-level data across multiple school years, ECONorthwest finds that attendance at South Shore is associated with improved scores on the 3rd and 4th grade WASL (Washington Assessment of Student Learning) and an increased likelihood of meeting the state benchmarks in math and reading. These effects are large and statistically meaningful, particularly in math.

Last November, Bill Gates Sr. lost an awkward fight with the CEO of his son's company, Microsoft's Steve Ballmer. Like several before him, the elder Gates failed to persuade Washingtonians to adopt a state income tax. Washington voters have rejected the idea five times since 1934. So the effort was futile for sure, but well short of the nine times Oregon voters have turned down a sales tax. In light of the combined 0-14 record the two states have compiled, an easier path to tax reform would be consolidating the two states and averaging their tax systems.

Which begs a question: Why two states?

Given our substantially similar political, environmental, coffee and beer leanings, the benefits of consolidation extend well beyond tax policy. A consolidated Northwest state could find some easy efficiencies overseeing virtually identical education, health care and corrections systems. Couldn't one education department devise standards and report test scores for students from Bellingham to Ashland? And couldn't one health department implement the federal Medicaid program?

The rest of the piece is available here.

John W. Tapogna, a former economist with the Congressional Budget Office who now leads an economics consulting firm in the Pacific Northwest, said the situation facing counties in this part of Oregon could soon become a crisis that might help force the state to look more broadly at its tax structure.

If that happens, Mr. Tapogna is among many people who believe that the first order of business should be to do away with Oregon’s so-called kicker law, a unique instrument among states and one that underscores Oregon’s distaste for taxes. When times are good, the state sends kicker refunds to residents from revenue that exceeds forecasts by state economists. In December 2007, just as the country was entering the recession, Oregon returned $1.1 billion to residents, bounty from the previous boom year, because of the kicker law. By the spring of 2009, as Oregon’s unemployment rate was on its way to becoming one of the highest in the nation, the Legislature was voting to raise taxes by $727 million, the increase now before voters.

“On the one hand, we are handing big checks back, and then we’re saying we don’t have enough to pay for services,” Mr. Tapogna said. “It’s an absurd process.” In 2007, the checks averaged about $600 per taxpayer, substantially more than previous kickers had averaged. He added, “The point is, regardless of what happens on Jan. 26, the system is broken, and there’s an awful lot of work left to do.”

John has been with ECONorthwest since 1997 and specializes in social and fiscal policy. He has built practices in education, healthcare, human services, and tax policy.

In the report, "An Overview of Potential Economic Costs to Oregon of a Business-As-Usual Approach to Climate Change," ECONorthwest describes and quantifies some of the potential economic costs of a business-as-usual approach to addressing climate change in Oregon. ECONorthwest also produced similar reports for Washington and New Mexico.

In the report, ECONorthwest quantified the statewide and per-household potential costs in each state in 2020, 2040, and 2080 associated with impacts on energy use, agricultural production, forest and range, fish and wildlife, storm damages, and human health.

The analyses examined economic costs that would arise from undesirable changes in climate, such as increased morbidity and mortality from longer periods of higher temperatures. They also described costs that would arise from climate-related changes in ecosystems. The reports also described other potential impacts for which there exists sufficient information to conclude that potential changes in climate likely would impose an economic cost in these states, but not enough to develop a credible estimate of the expected cost.

The three reports were prepared with extensive peer review by ten economists who serve on the Steering Committee for the Program on Climate Economics. CLI is a social science-based global climate change research and technical assistance program.

The reports were also covered in the Oregonian, the Portland Business Journal, and Newswise.

The article also speaks to ECONorthwest's reliability, accuracy, and reputation for unbiased, thorough economic analysis. The article recalls a 2004 report, in which the University of Oregon asked ECONorthwest to study the economic feasibility of a new basketball stadium. The Journal notes that "ECONorthwest projected that an arena would generate $4.1 million in annual revenue, far below a projection of $10.5 million to $16.1 million that another firm, CSL International, came up with in 2007." The Journal quotes John Tapgogna, President, who notes that despite the fact that a principal of the firm is a University of Oregon professor, "the fact that the firm nonetheless came up with figures that seemed appropriately conservative was 'a shining moment.'"

You can read the rest of the review from the Portland Business Journal, here.

In the report, The Potential Economic Effects of the Proposed Water Bottling Facilty in McCloud, ECONorthwest analyzed the potential economic effects of a large-scale water-bottling facility that Nestlé proposed to build in McCloud, a small community in northern California.  The information provided in ECONW’s report helped decision makers recognize the long-run impacts of the proposed water-bottling facility in McCloud.

ECONorthwest presented a conceptual framework for analyzing natural-resource decisions in the context of trends shaping demand for natural resources such as water from the springs near McCloud.  This framework included describing current socioeconomic conditions as well as long-run economic and social trends in the U.S. and California; providing background information on the water-bottling industry and how it generates economic costs and benefits; summarizing the components of the contract with Nestlé as it relates to water quantities and prices; identifying long-run trends affecting water resources; reporting prices paid elsewhere to acquire water for bottling and for other uses; and reporting the likely effects of the proposed facility on local employment, property taxes, population, housing, schools, traffic, other public services, and natural-resource amenities.