Comparing Multipliers in two different counties

Hello Brian, It sounds like you would like to use IMPLAN Multipliers to estimate whether a region is rural or urban? It seems plausible that a rural area may have a larger Multiplier for agriculture, but a smaller Multiplier for manufacturing. On the other hand, it seems plausible that an urban area may have a larger Multiplier for manufacturing, but a smaller Multiplier for agriculture. However, we are not aware of any studies that answer this question directly. It would be interesting to compare industry Multipliers against other measures of urbanization to see if there is any correlation that exists between certain industry Multipliers and certain levels of urbanization. It sounds like a very interesting research question. If you are using IMPLAN Multipliers for both counties, you probably don't need to normalize them in order to compare. Since both sets of Multipliers are produced using the same methodology, differences in Multipliers across counties would indicate differences in the economic structure of those counties. However, you would still need to compare the Multipliers against an external measure of urbanization to get a sense of any correlation that may exist between industry Multipliers and the urban/rural divide. Hope this helps! Please let me know if this addresses your concern or if you have any additional questions.