Business Incentives and Economic Development Expenditures: An Overview of Program Investments and Outcomes
Across the country, state economic development incentives have evolved into a complex mixture of programs with diverse structures and goals. The Council for Community and Economic Research (C2ER) and the Center for Regional Economic Competitiveness (CREC) have been working to catalog and document the range of available state programs through the C2ER State Business Incentives Database, which includes detailed information about almost 2,000 state-administered incentive programs from every state; and the C2ER State Economic Development Expenditures Database, a compilation of economic development expenditure budget data from every state.
The following reports build on that work by taking a deeper look at an individual state's full array of incentive programs and includes an analysis of the available outcome data that is used by state policymakers and program administrators to gauge program effectiveness. In order to create a comprehensive picture of the economic development landscape, we reviewed and culled data from a range of state statutes, reports, and websites, including available tax expenditure reports. The numbers contained in this report are CREC and C2ER's best estimate of the dollars spent on economic development incentives for the particular state.