remarkably heterogeneous across places. State and local policy-makers use economic development incentives to promote local … economic growth, and, presumably, provide employment opportunities. However, incentives may have unintended consequences. We … combine detailed industry-level detail on incentives with proprietary county-level industry employment data and two methods …

the productivity gap in a number of services gives bigger gains in aggregate productivity than closing it in agriculture … removal of these distortions on aggregate productivity using the input-output model and find that this could increase … productivity up to 68%, depending on whether the rents from distortions stay in the economy or not. …