The loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States has been widely noted in the popular press as well as in public policy debate. We examine several of the most prominently made assertions about manufacturing decline and its consequences for deindustrializing metropolitan areas and find not all...

This research focuses on the relative impact of place luck and economic development policy in contributing to long-term economic growth. Using a unique national data set composed of surveys of public officials, three decades of census data, and a variety of other data covering climate, health,...

This article lays out two broad criteria for crafting a particular brain drain policy at the state level. The first, which we are calling “supply or demand,†asks whether a state experiencing brain drain is below average in high-tech labor demand or above average in high-tech labor...

This article describes a comprehensive study of regionalism conducted by a joint team of economists and economic development specialists for the U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA). The project consisted of two main activities: an examination of the factors associated with economic...

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 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...

After the U.S. Supreme Court upheld in the Kelo decision the use of eminent domain for private-to-private transfer of property for economic development, public outrage was followed by attempts to restrict such use of eminent domain. Opponents of restrictions predicted dire consequences for state...

Use of business incentives is one of the most common local economic development strategies. The authors analyze national surveys of 700 to 1,000 local governments from 1994, 1999, and 2004 to track use of business incentives over time. They find a shift from primary reliance on business...

This article addresses a public policy question: Does state government regulation foster or deter economic development? The authors estimate a system of simultaneous equations for income growth, regulation growth, and growth in the number of new enterprises. It is found that regulation does not...

Research into tax increment financing (TIF) effectiveness has yielded mixed results, often under extensive controls. Until recently, no study had considered or controlled for the potential effects of internal management practices, including preproject planning and postimplementation performance...