Although globalization presents difficult challenges for rural areas through fiercer competition in their traditional commodity markets, the ever-changing nature of the global marketplace brings these areas new opportunities to widen their potential markets for their products and services. As a result, quickly finding and exploiting regional excellence to best advantage in the global marketplace is the key to helping regions compete in the new millennium. In the March 2004 edition of the Main Street Economist, published by the Center for the Study of Rural America at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, Stephan Weiler, assistant vice president and economist, examines why forward-looking measures of competitiveness to help rural regions understand their strengths are important and how such measures might be constructed. The author explores five building blocks of competitive capacity that seem critical for measuring regional competitiveness: workforce, lifestyle, innovation, financial, and informational. Among these categories, each contains several possible forward-looking indicators. Upcoming issues of the Main Street Economist will further develop these new measures of regional competitiveness and will examine how communities can use these measures to take better advantage of the global marketplace. This article and past issues of The Main Street Economist are available on the Bank’s Web site at www.kc.frb.org. # # # Return to www.kansascityfed.org
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