Microsimulation for urban and regional policy analysis

Ask a roomful of regional scientists what the biggest problems facing the discipline are today, and you can count on them to give you an mournful earful. Declining enrollments, imminent program termination or consolidation, low pay and prestige compared to other social scientists, philosophical quandaries will probably rank high among them. But, likely to be identified as the biggest indicator of the ongoing marginalization of this discipline is the decreasing availability and quality of regional data. In the U.S., at least, the trend has been towards fewer and fewer government issued regional economic series. It has been going on unabated for about 15 years and shows no sign of ebbing.