| Summary: | Economic development practitioners and theorists recognize that community-based strategies offer the best opportunity for rural economic development. But, rural communities also need assistance in identifying and implementing their strategies. Two key needs are financial support and technical assistance. In this article, the authors describe a benchmarking tool that provides rural communities in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada with a means to identify their individual strengths and weaknesses, and how they compare with immediate peers. This is the typical benchmarking function, but the tool also provides a way to show individual communities the benefits of regional agglomerations at different levels of geography. Unlike most benchmarking exercises that simply provide lists of indicators, the authors link the indicators through a simplified structural model of the local economy. By focusing on composite indicators, the Rural Economic Capacity Index provides community leaders with a sense of the “big picture†that can help them in the process of framing a development strategy. community development; rural development; industry; state and local economic development policy; economic development incentives/tools; benchmarking
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