Christa Court

University of Florida | UF · Food and Resource Economics Department

Imports can contribute to economic activity and have positive backward and forward linkages in national and regional economies, particularly in the presence of limited domestic supply. Seafood in the United States (U.S.) is a remarkable example of import dependence since most consumption by both processing industries and households relies on import...

This publication provides a summary of the economic contributions of the citrus industry in the State of Florida during the 2020-2021 citrus marketing year. Additional details on the data sources, methodologies, and results are published in the most recent report on the economic contributions of the citrus industry in Florida from the University of...

Extension professionals were, and in many cases still are, heavily involved in assessing how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted agribusiness operations and the broader food system. This publication describes the process that a core project team of Extension professionals and researchers from the University of Florida and Florida Gulf Coast University f...

This publication describes why science and research are critical to the future success of agriculture. It provides an overview of challenges to evaluating outcomes of research investments and some common approaches to measuring returns. The authors summarize emerging federal science and research priorities significant for Florida agriculture. The p...

Multiple federal and state agencies provide assistance to qualified agricultural producers following a natural disaster, such as a hurricane. However, the programs change over time, and many producers are not aware of the programs available. The purpose of this publication is to list and briefly describe disaster assistance resources available to a...

Florida's pest management industry is one of the nation’s leaders, accounting for more than 14 percent of pest management establishments in 2021. Among other services, this industry provides insect extermination and control, bedbug extermination, mosquito control, termite extermination and control, and rodent control and extermination. The market s...

Florida's pest management industry is one of the nation’s leaders, accounting for more than 14 percent of pest management establishments in 2021. Among other services, this industry provides insect extermination and control, bedbug extermination, mosquito control, termite extermination and control, and rodent control and extermination. The market s...

Understanding the economic importance of fisheries and coastal resources is vitally important for making good management decisions that affect human communities, local businesses, and environment and ecological sustainability. However, economic “importance” is not a very specific term, and can mean completely different things to different people. W...

This publication provides a summary of the economic contributions of the agriculture, natural resource, and food industries in the state of Florida in calendar year 2019. Additional details on the data sources, methodologies, and results are published in an annual report from the University of Florida, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (U...

Chikungunya virus (CHIKV), a mosquito-borne illness, is increasing in prevalence worldwide, and experts have warned of the imminence of an outbreak in the Southern Gulf Region of the United States (U.S.). Tourist destinations such as Miami and Orlando in Florida are among the most likely places for an outbreak to occur. The decline in attractivenes...

Florida has one of the most diverse agricultural economies in the United States, producing several dozen types of fruits and vegetables that are consumed within the state, across the country, and around the world. The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting policy responses occurred during the peak of spring harvest season for many crops in Florida, abrupt...

Increasing demand for ecological restoration has resulted in the development of a “restoration economy” in the United States. Often, the implementation phase of restoration efforts involves substantial capital and labor investments, the short-term economic impacts of which should not be ignored when evaluating the outcomes of restoration efforts. T...

The Delphi technique is a qualitative technique which consists of a series of systematic steps to combine the knowledge and opinion of experts regarding a specific topic and reach a consensus as a means of scenario building and forecasting. This technique is rarely used in tourism, albeit it has been recommended since 1990 (Green, H., Hunter, C., &...

Visible disruptions of appropriate food distribution for end consumers during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic prompted calls for an urgent, renewed look at how the U.S. agri-food system is impacted by and responds to pandemics, natural disasters, and human-made crises. Previous studies suggest the COVID-19 pandemic yielded uneven impacts across...

The forest industry is a significant contributor to many local and state economies in the United States (US). Informed public policy at state and national levels requires that decision makers have accurate and defensible information on the value and structure of these economic contributions. However, different methods and modeling assumptions used...

In this chapter, we present a global look at how to monitor, measure, and interpret the impacts of our seas, coasts, and oceans on human health and well-being, including specifically designed public health activities and efforts to monitor ocean characteristics to reduce human health risks, with a particular focus on harmful algal and cyanobacteria...

Diseases are increasing in prevalence around the world. American travelers are at greater risk of contracting the disease when traveling outside the country to an endemic region. The safety of visitors to mosquito-endemic destinations is more important than ever. Because a vaccine does not exist for prevention or as a prophylactic, tourists are in...

Subnational input–output (IO) tables capture industry- and region-specific production, consumption, and trade of commodities and serve as a common basis for regional and multi-regional economic impact analysis. However, subnational IO tables are not made available by national statistical offices, especially in the United States (US), nor have they...

To comprehensively model the macroeconomic impacts that result from changes in long-term energy-economy forecasts, the United States (U.S.) Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) partnered with West Virginia University (WVU)’s Regional Research Institute to develop the NETL/WVU econometric input-output (ECIO) model. The...

Increases in the incidence or severity of hazard events significantly alter the attractiveness of tourism destinations and tourism inflow. In 2018, a significant red tide event limited access to marine and coastal areas in Florida, heavily impacting the tourist sector. The purpose of this study was to estimate the economic impacts of red tides in t...

Algal blooms occur when natural algae in lakes, rivers, and coastal zones are stimulated to grow out of control through natural processes or by elevated levels of nutrients in the water. Algal blooms that produce dangerous toxins that are detrimental to the plants, animals, people, and ecosystems in the affected areas are known as harmful algal blo...

Increasing demand for ecological restoration in the in the pursuit of long-term persistence of resource benefits has resulted in the development of a “restoration economy” in the United States, which has provided opportunity for business growth associated with ecological sustainability. Nearly all the restoration monitoring and evaluation efforts f...

Although great progress has been made to advance the scientific understanding of oil spills, tools for integrated assessment modeling of the long-term impacts on ecosystems, socioeconomics and human health are lacking. The objective of this study was to develop a conceptual framework that could be used to answer stakeholder questions about oil spil...

Production processes depend on fragmented and interdependent value chains; nowadays, a single product often includes components produced in dozens of countries. Many public health measures being implemented to prevent the spread of COVID-19 have dampened economic activity of ‘non-essential’ sectors. The decreased production affects other industries...

Public health measures enacted to mitigate the spread of COVID‐19 have dampened economic activity by shuttering businesses that provide “nonessential” goods and services. Not surprisingly, these actions directly impacted demand for nonessential goods and services but the full impact of this shock on the broader economy will depend on the nature and...

Home vegetable gardening has numerous documented benefits, including savings on the family food bill. How can a gardener calculate cost savings from a garden? Which vegetables cost more to grow in the garden and which cost less? This 10-page fact sheet written by Kevin Athearn, Hannah Wooten, Liz Felter, Catherine G. Campbell, Jessica M. Ryals, Mat...

Regional economic assessments (REAs), including economic contribution and impact analyses, are often used in resource-based industries to inform policymakers, elected officials, and the general public of an industry’s role within the regional economy. However, REAs have been difficult to conduct for the aquaculture industry due to issues with data...

Several past presidents of the Southern Regional Science Association (SRSA) have used the occasion of the presidential address to reflect on the past and contemplate the future of both the association and regional science more broadly. In this paper, I revisit a group of addresses focused on the relevance and broader impact of regional science, tou...

Florida’s Apalachicola Bay has long been known for its oyster harvesting and processing industry, but a steady decline in oyster landings in the Bay has threatened the industry. The complex nature of the human and natural systems that together affect Apalachicola’s oyster reefs has created uncertainty about the long-term sustainability of the oyste...

A preliminary assessment of the impacts from Hurricane Sally, to various agricultural operations in the region.

The purpose of this study is to estimate the economic contributions of the citrus industry to the State of Florida in marketing year 2018-19 and to provide comparisons to marketing years 2017-18 and 2016-17. The analysis was conducted using the IMPLAN© regional economic modeling system and associated databases (IMPLAN Group, LLC) with modifications...

announced that the County Fairgrounds and the Alachua County Cooperative Extension Offices would permanently relocate to the Alachua County Agricultural and Equestrian Center (23100 W. Newberry Road, Newberry) – formerly known as the Canterbury Equestrian Showplace. Potential economic impacts of the Alachua County U.S. Army Reserve ECS were estimat...

Agriculture, natural resources, and food industries represent a broad set of economic activities generating employment and income, and producing goods and services that contribute to the economic growth and development of Florida and the United States. Florida has over 7 million acres of cropland, pasture and grazing land, and grassland used in agr...

Economic activity associated with commercial and recreational fisheries in the northern Gulf of Mexico can be dampened when there are significant impacts to the biophysical environment and human communities due to natural or man-made disaster events. Due to its size and scope, the Deepwater Horizon incident caused extensive damage to marine and sho...

Collectively, the agriculture, natural resources, and food industries are significant contributors to the economy of the state of Florida. This 5-page fact sheet written by Christa D. Court, Alan W. Hodges, and Mohammad Rahmani and published by the UF/IFAS Food and Resource Economics Department outlines the economic contributions of these industrie...

The World Economic Forum has consistently ranked water crises as one of the top five most impactful issues facing humanity, alongside but not completely separate from issues such as climate change and natural disasters (World Economic Forum, 2019). A growing population and changing climate will only further stress the constrained water system. Acut...

The state of Florida is half woods, with 26,807 square miles of forestland. Our extensive natural and planted pine and hardwood forests are used for production of a wide variety of wood building materials, consumer paper and packaging products, chemicals, and renewable biomass fuels. In addition to industrial forest-related activity, public forestl...

This 2-page fact sheet written by Christa D. Court, Alan W. Hodges, Mohammad Rahmani, and Thomas H. Spreen and published by the UF/IFAS Food and Resource Economics Department describes the economic contributions of the citrus industry to the state of Florida in fiscal year 2015/16, updating previous studies for 2012/13 and 2014/15 and previous esti...

This paper presents estimates of the economic impacts of cancelled recreational trips to coastal counties in Northwest Florida due to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, which were developed for legal claims by the State of Florida. A survey of households in 13 states indicated that 1.88 million planned visitor-trips to the region were cancell...

This analysis was conducted using the Implan regional economic modeling system and associated state and county databases (IMPLAN Group LLC) to estimate economic multipliers and contributions for over 500 different industry sectors. Multipliers capture the indirect and induced economic activity generated by re-spending of income or sales revenues in...

"The characteristics and economic contributions of the environmental horticulture industry in Florida in 2015 were evaluated through mail and internet surveys of industry firms conducted in 2016."

This study briefly delineates the types of metrics and methodologies that can be used to quantify the economic impacts of materials modelling from a variety of perspectives including R&D stakeholders, industry stakeholders, and society. The study also investigates how materials modelling impacts the industrial R&D process and outlined the value and...

The paper examines a method to attribute hazardous waste streams to regional production and consumption activity, and to connect these same waste streams through to different management options. We argue that a method using an input–output framework provides useful intelligence for decision makers seeking to connect elements of the management of th...

The Conservative Party won the 2010 General Election in the United Kingdom, gaining the most votes and seats of any single party. Using Bayesian spatial econometric methods, we show that significant spatial dependence exists in Conservative voting behaviour and select the spatial Durbin model as the best model to explain this phenomenon. This paper...

Jensen C. D., McIntyre S., Munday M. and Turner K. Responsibility for regional waste generation: a single region extended input-output analysis for Wales, Regional Studies. This paper uses a regional input-output framework and data derived on waste generation by industry to examine different aspects of regional waste accountability. In addition to...

Input-output analysts are often confronted with requests for impacts assessments for economic shocks that stretch uncomfortably the assumptions of standard input-output modeling. This chapter presents an approach to confronting a subset of these challenges straightforwardly in a way that ameliorates some of the more restrictive input-output assumpt...

Amid changing attitudes about the environment and emerging sustainability concerns in the late 1960s and 1970s, countries around the world began regulating multiple aspects of solid and hazardous wastes. Initial regulations and those occurring since all share the broader goal of curbing waste generation, especially that of hazardous wastes; but wit...

The most recent boom in fossil fuel extraction is noteworthy through its extensive use of advanced technologies called hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling. The papers in this issue demonstrate the role that regional science can and should play in guiding policy, usefully complementing research from physical science and engineering discipli...

The Conservative Party emerged from the 2010 United Kingdom General Election as the largest single party, but their support was not geographically uniform. In this paper, we estimate a hierarchical Bayesian spatial probit model that tests for the presence of regional voting effects. This model allows for the estimation of individual region-specic e...

The Conservative Party won the recent General Election in the United Kingdom (UK), gaining the most votes and seats of any single party. Conservatives simultaneously performed particularly well in some areas of the UK and poorly in others. In attempting to explain the variation in voting behaviour during this election, we consider an analysis invol...

Despite increased public interest, policy makers have been slow to enact targets based on limiting emissions under full consumption accounting measures (such as carbon footprints). We argue that this may be due to the fact that policy makers in one jurisdiction do not have control over production technologies used in other jurisdictions. We use a r...

In this paper we provide an applied example for calculating the so-called effects estimates of LeSage and Pace (Introduction to Spatial, Econometrics, CRC Press, Boca Raton, 2009) for partitions of the impacts over space. While the partitioning of the impacts by orders of neighbors over space for the spatial autoregressive model is a relatively str...

This article reports the authors' efforts to construct a baseline input-output (IO) model with environmental accounts for use in modeling geographically specific e-waste recycling systems. The authors address conceptual and practical issues that arise when recyclable end-of-life (EOL) commodities and related activities are incorporated into the tra...

PurposeMayan towns in the Guatemalan highlands hold periodic markets on specific days of the week. A market is attended by local townspeople, by peasants residing in the town’s hinterland, and by vendors bringing wares from other towns. This study aims to determine the effects of physical, environmental, and cultural differences on the number of ve...

Amid changing attitudes about the environment and increasing sustainability concerns, many countries around the world aim to curb waste generation, especially the generation of hazardous wastes. Beginning in the late 1970's and occurring increasingly since, governments and international bodies are passing legislation and treaties dealing with the r...

We use a regional input output (IO) framework and data derived on waste generation by industry to examine regional accountability. In addition to estimating a series of industry waste-output coefficients, the paper considers a series of methods for waste attribution, and practical use for policymakers. The paper first considers perspectives on attr...