Economic developers at the local and state levels have increasingly used cost-of-doing-business studies to compare their jurisdictions against others. The cost of doing business is enormously difficult to demonstrate in practice because: (1) there are many different types of business costs, many...

This study adds to the abundant and rich literature on the Tiebout sorting hypothesis by investigating the motivation for intra-county migration within a state, the move from one municipality to another municipality within the same county. Using the data available from the Census on intra-county...

In his Presidential Address, Professor Woodward uses South Carolina’s economic development experience as a case study of significant challenges in regional development. The state has re-industrialized and emerged as a leader in attracting capital investment through generous financial...

We analyze the impact of economic development policies and highway infrastructure improvements on growth of per capita income and jobs in Michigan counties. The policies considered for analysis have significant impact on growth outcomes. However, this effect is non-linear. Significant...

Using U.S. county data from 1990 and 2000, a family of spatial models examining growth in population and employment are reported. Special attention is paid to the role of microenterprises--firms with less than five employees--in predicting economic growth. Results suggest that microenterprises...

Urban sprawl has been criticized for its disproportionate impact on the environment. Yet urban areas are in fact less land-intensive than recent rural development patterns. Residential first-movers into such virgin areas may spark waves of ensuing development without incorporating the true...

The concept of regional competitiveness is increasingly popular among academics and policymakers as indicated by reports that rank or grade regional economies. Competitiveness in these studies generally is measured by growth rates in population, employment, and per capita income. This paper...

Although the traditional economic base model remains a useful tool for regional analysis, in a multi-region context it fails to account for feedback effects. In addition, since the model is typically applied to individual regions, formal assessment of variation in the magnitude of regional...

We examine the empirical relationship between public investment and per capita income growth in the Spanish regions over 1965-1997. Using a neoclassical growth model with public and human capital, a convergence equation is derived and estimated using panel data techniques. Besides providing...

Considerable ambiguity exists regarding the assessment of regional economic development. Alternative measures often produce conflicting conclusions. Even if economic development progress is defined as improvement in economic welfare, it is not directly measurable. Therefore, this paper develops...