This paper simulates job and fiscal impacts of Michigan’s MEGA tax credit program for job creation. Under plausible assumptions about how such credits affect business location decisions, the net costs per job created of the MEGA program are simulated to be of modest size. The job creation...

This review essay debates the policy issues raised by the book Retooling for Growth: Building a 21st Century Economy in America’s Older Industrial Areas, edited by Richard M. McGahey and Jennifer S. Vey (Brookings Institution Press, 2008). I argue that the main rationale for adopting policies...

This paper estimates that Michigan's MEGA tax credit program to attract and retain businesses has large employment and fiscal benefits. MEGA provides discretionary tax credits to businesses, with the tax credit tied to the personal income taxes paid by employees on the new or retained jobs. We...

This chapter seeks to provide useful advice for local government policy towards economic development programs. The chapter: reviews the size and scope of local economic development programs in the United States; critically analyzes the various rationales offered for these programs; makes...

This paper examines the effects of expansions in higher educational institutions and the medical service industry on the economic development of a metropolitan area. This examination pulls together previous research and provides some new empirical evidence. We provide quantitative evidence of...

This paper reviews what we currently know about the benefits and costs of different varieties of a "living wage": a local government requirement, now adopted by over 50 local governments, for wages above the federal minimum imposed on employers with some financial link to the local government....

In the first comprehensive account of the Kalamazoo Promise, Miller-Adams addresses both the potential and challenges inherent in place-based universal scholarship programs and explains why this unprecedented experiment in education-based economic renewal is being emulated by scores of citites...

This paper provides new information on what proportion of individuals spend their adult work lives in their childhood metropolitan area or state. I also examine how this proportion varies across different demographic groups, and with the size and growth rate of the metropolitan area. I find that...

State incentive granting for the purpose of firm retention or recruitment remains highly controversial and is often portrayed as antithetical to long-range economic development planning. This paper uses quasi-experimental methods to measure the impact of state-level economic development...

This book explores the causes, character, and potential remedies for the problems caused by the growing spatial competition for capital in the United States, Europe, and other nations.