Analytical Tools for Local Economic Analysis

We propose to develop a tool which enables Marines and Soldiers to assess local economic conditions and develop courses of action to positively impact the economy. Several innovations are: semi-automated techniques to identify key economic components; automated methods which tell service members what, who, where, when, and how to gather data; rapid data intake; sophisticated analysis which integrates situational factors, service members"field data, and state-of-the-art models to recommend courses of action and estimate second and third order effects. We emphasize that our approach does not require much data. Useful recommendations are obtainable within a few minutes of data entry. However, the tool increases specificity and usefulness as more data is entered. With full input, the system can recommend: who to obtain data from; what questions to ask and when to ask them; and how to administer specific economic interventions. It is oriented towards service members without college degrees and requires less than 2 hours of training.