This presentation was made at the 63rd annual meeting of the Association of University Business and Economic Research (AUBER) in Austin, TX on October 18, 2009 as part of a session called “Making University Economic Impact Studies Respectable: Lessons learned since Siegfried, Sanderson and McHenry.”  It describes methodological aspects of a statewide study of the economic impact of public higher study conducted at the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service and addresses how it handled issues related to criticisms made by Siegfried, Sanderson and McHenry (2007)* of college/university impact studies.

*Siegfried, John J., Allen R. Sanderson, and Peter Mc Henry.  2007.  The economic impact of colleges and universities.  Economics of Education Review 26, 5: 546-558.