This is a global study of government subsidies to attract investment. The book shows how corporations use site selection as rent extraction, with developing countries investing more than developed ones. It demonstrates that incentive use is rarely a good policy, especially for countries without adequate education and infrastructure.

Urban and Regional Policy and Its Effects, the second in a series, sets out to inform policymakers, practitioners, and scholars about the effectiveness of select policy approaches, reforms, and experiments in addressing key social and economic problems facing cities, suburbs, and metropolitan areas. The chapters analyze responses to six key policy challenges that most metropolitans areas and local communities face: • Creating quality neighborhoods for families • Governing effectively • Building human capital • Growing the middle class • Growing a competitive economy through industry-based strategies • Managing the spatial pattern of metropolitan growth and development Each chapter discusses a specific policy topic under one of these challenges. The authors present the essence of what is known, as well as the likely implications, and identify the knowledge gaps that need to be filled for the successful formulation and implementation of urban and regional policy. Contributors: Karen Chapple and Rick Jacobus (University of California, Berkeley and Burlington Associates), Jeffrey R. Henig and Elisabeth Thurston Fraser (Teachers College, Columbia University), W. Norton Grubb (University of California, Berkeley), Harry J. Holzer (Georgetown University and Urban Institute), Susan Christopherson and Michael H. Belzer (Cornell University and Wayne State University), and Rolf Pendall (Cornell University)

Reinventing economic development as if small business mattered In cities and towns across the nation, economic development is at a crossroads. A growing body of evidence has proven that its current cornerstone—incentives to attract and retain large, globally mobile businesses—is a dead end. Even those programs that focus on local business, through buy-local initiatives, for example, depend on ongoing support from government or philanthropy. The entire practice of economic development has become ineffective and unaffordable and is in need of a makeover. The Local Economy Solution suggests an alternative approach in which states and cities nurture a new generation of special kinds of businesses that help local businesses grow. These cutting-edge companies, which Shuman calls “pollinator businesses,” are creating jobs and the conditions for future economic growth, and doing so in self-financing ways. Pollinator businesses are especially important to communities that are struggling to lift themselves up in a period of economic austerity, when municipal budgets are being slashed. They also promote locally owned businesses that increase local self-reliance and evince high labor and environmental standards. The book includes nearly two dozen case studies of successful pollinator businesses that are creatively facilitating business and neighborhood improvements, entrepreneurship, local purchasing, local investing, and profitable business partnerships. Examples include Main Street Genome (which provides invaluable data to improve local business performance), Supportland (which is developing a powerful loyalty card for local businesses), and Fledge (a business accelerator that finances itself through royalty payments). It also shows how the right kinds of public policy can encourage the spread of pollinator businesses at virtually no cost.

This book addresses the growing interest in cluster and targeted economic developments, reviewing the socioeconomic theoretical foundations of industry targeting and suggesting alternative methods of identifying industries for targeting.

Origination: The Geographies of Brands and Branding offers innovative theoretical and conceptual frameworks relating to the ways that actors create meaning and value in commodity brands and branding through processes of geographical association. Provides innovative conceptualization and theorization to facilitate an understanding of the geographical dimensions of brands and branding Challenges current interpretations of brands as vehicles of homogenization in globalization Establishes the theoretical and conceptual foundations of a more geographically sensitive approach through rigorous empirical examination of the under-researched geographical differentiation of commodity brands and branding Presents innovative new research and analysis of the socio-spatial biographies of the Newcastle Brown Ale, Burberry and Apple brands Forges strong new connections between political and cultural economy approaches within geography Provides a distinctive and incisive conceptual and theoretical framework capable of engaging other branded commodities and their branding in other times and places

Bartik provides a clear and concise overview of how state and local governments employ economic development incentives in order to lure companies to set up shop—and provide new jobs—in needy local labor markets. He shows that many such incentive offers are wasteful and he provides guidance, based on decades of research, on how to improve these programs.

Shared Prosperity in America's Communities examines the degree to which place matters in the geography of economic opportunity; offers strategies to address the challenges of place-based inequality; and shows how communities across the nation are implementing change and building a future of shared prosperity.

This volume embodies a problem-driven and theoretically informed approach to bridging frontier research in urban economics and urban/regional planning. The authors focus on the interface between these two subdisciplines that have historically had an uneasy relationship. Although economists were among the early contributors to the literature on urban planning, many economists have been dismissive of a discipline whose leading scholars frequently favor regulations over market institutions, equity over efficiency, and normative prescriptions over positive analysis. Planners, meanwhile, even as they draw upon economic principles, often view the work of economists as abstract, not sensitive to institutional contexts, and communicated in a formal language spoken by few with decision making authority. Not surprisingly, papers in the leading economic journals rarely cite clearly pertinent papers in planning journals, and vice versa. Despite the historical divergence in perspectives and methods, urban economics and urban planning share an intense interest in many topic areas: the nature of cities, the prosperity of urban economies, the efficient provision of urban services, efficient systems of transportation, and the proper allocation of land between urban and environmental uses. In bridging this gap, the book highlights the best scholarship in planning and economics that address the most pressing urban problems of our day and stimulates further dialog between scholars in urban planning and urban economics.