Norman Walzer
Norman Walzer
Ph. D, Professor of Economics and Director Emeritus
Stipes 520
309-298-1031
N-Walzer@wiu.edu
Norman Walzer earned a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Illinois (Urbana) and is professor of economics and the founding director of the Illinois Institute for Rural Affairs which is located at Western Illinois University. He stepped aside as IIRA director in July 2005 returning to the faculty in IIRA and the Department of Economics. He retired from WIU in January 2006 and now does special projects for IIRA.
His specialties include urban and regional economic analysis, state and local public finance, entrepreneurship, infrastructure, and various issues in rural economic development. He regularly teaches in the Department of Economics including a graduate class introducing students to small community development and a junior level class on urban economics.
Walzer contributes regularly to the literature on community development and local public finance with more than 350 articles, reports, and monographs including 165 authored or edited books on local economic development, transportation, partnerships for economic development, and local public finance including contracting for services.
He also regularly presents research to a variety of scholarly and professional organization meetings and serves on the governing boards of several rural organizations having raised and managed more than $15 million in funded research. He served as interim co-editor of Community Development: Journal of the Community Development Society in 2006-2007.
Walzer spent 10 years directing the research efforts of the Cities and Villages Municipal Problems Commission of the Illinois General Assembly during the 1970s and has worked with many state and local government agencies on a variety of issues, mainly related to financing local public services.
In the mid-1980s, he advised the Task Force on the Future of Rural Illinois that recommended formation of the Governors Rural Affairs Council and the Illinois Institute for Rural Affairs. Since that time, he has worked with the Council, Rural Partners and many other state and local government agencies on programs designed to help rural governments with economic development issues.
He currently is completing an edited volume Entrepreneurship as a Local Development Strategy to be published by Lexington Books in late summer 2007. This volume describes many of the issues involved in designing and applying entrepreneurship strategies such as creating an entrepreneurship culture, designing a system of education and technical assistance, working with youth entrepreneurs, and the role of entrepreneurs and microenterprises in regional development. The book will also contain several best practices that illustrate the application of these principles.
Current research includes editing a volume on Visioning and Planning in nonmetropolitan areas and conducting research on business attraction and retention practices. He is also analyzing information from a survey of infrastructure financing practices in municipalities.
A second recent volume, co-edited by Christopher Merrett examines issues faced by New Generation Cooperatives and their roles in local economic development issues. This book is an extension of an earlier volume, A Cooperative Approach to Local Economic Development, published by Quorum in 2000.
Walzer recently published work on "Internet Purchases by Rural Residents" in the Journal of Community Development based on the 2000 Illinois Rural Life Panel conducted by the Institute. This research pays special attention to the characteristics of rural residents who have access to the Internet and who have purchased on-line.
His current research involves work with Gisele F. Hamm on ways in which municipalities have incorporated brownfields into their economic development strategies. Several reports and papers have been generated in this project and the reports are available on the IIRA publications data base.
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