Guidelines for Economic Impact Analysis with IMPLAN

Excerpts: NRCS economists typically use IMPLAN to estimate the economic impact of NRCS conservation expenditures. IMPLAN’s detail, scalability, and ease of use make it a flexible model that can generate results for any size project. Used properly, IMPLAN provides valuable information on the support that NRCS expenditures provide to local, State, and regional economies. This technical note was developed to guide NRCS staff in using IMPLAN appropriately and consistently. The diversity of NRCS conservation programs and projects to which IMPLAN can be applied makes it difficult to define a single recipe to follow for all analyses. So, this guidance focuses on general principles that need to be followed when conducting economic impact analysis with IMPLAN. It assumes that readers are familiar with IMPLAN and how to use it.