About

Tessa Conroy is an economist who focuses on rural America and the Wisconsin economy. Her work includes analyzing rural inflation, highlighting that official inflation numbers often do not account for people living outside of cities, and showing that rural populations may be experiencing higher inflation. She has also studied the rise of nonemployer businesses, finding early evidence that their growth is connected to diverse populations. Additionally, Conroy has contributed to research on broadband access in rural communities, emphasizing its importance for economic well-being. Her findings link broadband availability to better business performance, increased farm profits, enhanced opportunities for rural entrepreneurship, higher home values, and improved educational outcomes at both grade school and high school levels. She is affiliated with the University of Wisconsin-Madison and can be contacted via email at tessa.conroy@wisc.edu.

Research topics

• Business
• Telecommunications
• Economics
• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Economic growth
• Geography
• Industrial organization
• Marketing
• Demographic economics
• Finance
• Econometrics

Selected publications

• WIndicators: The Impact of Housing Financial Stress on Community Well-Being

  Minds at UW (University of Wisconsin) · 2026-04-08

  reportOpen access

  The cost of housing in Wisconsin has been steadily increasing, resulting in more households facing housing financial stress. Housing financial stress is more common among renters than homeowners. Wisconsin housing financial stress is resulting in negative health outcomes, such as forgone medical care, but this is more likely among older home-owning residents.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• WIndicator: Understanding Wisconsin Prosperity in the National Context

  Minds at UW (University of Wisconsin) · 2026-04-08

  reportOpen access

  Wisconsin is at the center of a national prosperity hotspot, but where prosperity is concentrated in the state and the drivers of prosperity have shifted over time. Prosperity is a dynamic process that changes over time; it is not a static state. There are hundreds of pathways to prosperity, suggesting the need for a nuanced, place-specific interpretation of what makes somewhere a good place to live. Prosperity is not restricted by metro status: rural places routinely have some of the highest place prosperity scores.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The rise of nonemployer businesses in the United States: an analysis by geography

  Small Business Economics · 2026-02-10

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract During the first two decades of the 2000s, the number of nonemployer businesses grew remarkably, far outpacing the growth in the number of employer businesses. We analyze the factors that may be driving the growth of nonemployer businesses per capita at the county level. We pay particular attention to geography, namely the rural and urban contexts and potential spatial spillovers between counties. We find that nonemployer growth is highest in places with large non-White populations as well as low incomes and home values, suggesting that nonemployer business ownership may be a form of necessity entrepreneurship that is more common in low-wealth areas. Yet, nonemployer growth is also higher in places with more small business lending, indicating the important role of capital even for very small businesses. Using a panel Spatial Durbin Model and Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) to assess the importance of spatial spillovers, we find that the main results are largely robust to spatial models, but the GWR model highlights important local insights.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Housing financial stress and community well-being: Is there an urban-rural dimension

  Journal of Rural Studies · 2026-03-20

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Prosperity Across the United States: Revisiting the Isserman, Feser, and Warren Prosperity Index Using Sequence Analysis

  International Regional Science Review · 2025-09-18 · 2 citations

  article

  Why do some places prosper while others do not? Measuring community-level prosperity is of widespread academic concern and public interest. While quality of life research on urban places is well established, insights into the prosperity of rural places are less developed. Further, much of the rural-oriented literature focuses on economic growth, which has the potential to mask non-growth prosperity characteristics. We follow Isserman et al. (2009) in their efforts to measure community-level prosperity outside the growth-paradigm for U.S. counties. We use geographic sequence analysis to build on their “prosperity index” by extending it longitudinally to measure prosperity at four (approximated) points in time (1990, 2000, 2008–2012, 2018–2022). Sequence analysis allows us to organize multivariate, longitudinal data into prosperity sequence sets – what we term “prosperity pathways” – thus highlighting the importance of time and history into a spatially-informed analysis of prosperity. Our findings enable us to confirm what is ostensibly true in that prosperity is a dynamic and evolutionary process with significant geographic variation.

  PublisherDOI

• 7Rural Entrepreneurship is Declining … or Is It?

  2025-03-08

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Childcare availability and Women’s earnings in the U.S

  Review of Economics of the Household · 2025-07-15 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Extensive research shows that women earn less than men, and mothers earn less than women without children. In fact, the “motherhood penalty” accounts for much of the remaining gender wage gap. Since having children can reduce women’s earnings, access to childcare may play a crucial role in mitigating this effect and boosting women’s income. In this study we consider descriptive evidence of the relationship between childcare availability, defined geographically at the county level, and local women’s earnings. To account for potential spatial spillovers from childcare markets extending beyond county boundaries, we employ a spatial econometric model. This method is well suited for studying childcare markets which function regionally and their local economic effects, as well as for considering variation in this relationship by rurality. We find that in places with greater access to childcare, annual median women earnings are higher as is the ratio of female to male earnings. We also find evidence of interactions between neighboring places, highlighting the reality of cross-community childcare demand and need for regionally-informed childcare policies.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• On the Brink of Business Transition in the U.S.

  2025-05-12

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  The average age of business owners in the U.S. has been increasing for decades. The trend is largely driven by the large cohort of business leaders in the baby boomer generation, the oldest of whom reached retirement age in 2013. By 2030 all baby boomers will be 65 years or older. The increasing number of business owners at or near retirement age has led many to anticipate a wave of business transitions as these owners pass their companies to new ownership. The large-scale transition of businesses, however, has been slow to accelerate. This chapter will explore the demographic trends in business ownership as they relate to the transition of U.S. businesses as well as a range of considerations that can positively or negatively impact business succession. We close with a discussion of the opportunities to support business owners as they transition their business to new ownership.

  PublisherDOI

• WIndicator: Understanding Wisconsin Prosperity in the National Context

  Minds at UW (University of Wisconsin) · 2025-01-01

  reportOpen access

  Wisconsin is at the center of a national prosperity hotspot, but where prosperity is concentrated in the state and the drivers of prosperity have shifted over time. Prosperity is a dynamic process that changes over time; it is not a static state. There are hundreds of pathways to prosperity, suggesting the need for a nuanced, place-specific interpretation of what makes somewhere a good place to live. Prosperity is not restricted by metro status: rural places routinely have some of the highest place prosperity scores.

  PublisherOA PDF

• Multidimensional measures of quality of life: A comparison of methods using U.S. county-level data

  Papers of the Regional Science Association · 2025-11-16 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Steven C. Deller

  University of Wisconsin–Extension

  47 shared

• Alexandra Tsvetkova

  12 shared

• Stephan Weiler

  9 shared

• Sarah A. Low

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  7 shared

• Matthew Kures

  Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation

  7 shared

• Philip Watson

  Heidelberg University

  4 shared

• Jean‐Claude Thill

  3 shared

• Matt Kures

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  3 shared