Research
My research broadly seeks to understand why state and local governments use different sets of economic development policies, and what impact those policies have on economic development and growth. I am currently engaged in estimating the fiscal and economic impacts of the HUD CDBG program with a team of researchers at the University of Idaho.
Just for fun, I am creating maps that visualize my data over time. See my data visualization page.
PEER-REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS
Whose Neighborhood Needs? Assessing the Spatial Distribution of Federal Community Development Funds, with Michael Overton, Aaron Deslatte, and Christine Zhang.- Urban Affairs Review (2023)
Local governments must balance their growth ambitions against needs arising from social inequities. The Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program aims to redress these disparities by directing funds toward disinvested tracts. We ask whether a city's institutional design, public and private actor composition, and resource availability influence the decision to invest in communities with greater levels of social need. Utilizing a social equity framework, we connect place-level procedural fairness mechanisms with neighborhood-level access equity consequences. Combining U.S. local government survey data over two decades with census tract-level CDBG expenditures, we find that in neighborhood where 51 percent or more of the families are low-to-moderate income (LMI), its likelihood of receiving funds increases with its share of LMI population relative to the city's, but at a diminished rate compared to non-LMI tracts. Further, city-level factors moderate this relationship (e.g., including community development corporations in planning processes).
Structural Drivers of sustainability and resilience strategies in small(ish) cities: A text analysis of comprehensive planning in Indiana, with Aaron Deslatte and Juwon Chung. - Journal of Environmental Planning and Management (2023)
For decades, the world’s largest and most globally significant cities have been pledging to tackle climate change, resilience, sustainable development and social injustices through a proliferating ecology of plans. Far less is understood about what is happening in smaller communities. This study employs an institutional lens and automated text analysis to examine the resilience and sustainability “shared strategies” embedded in local land-use plans, which are used in many countries to guide the spatial distribution of development in metropolitan regions. We find evidence that communities that are more highly educated and less racially diverse focus more on “quality of life” amenities within their plans, such as pedestrian resources and environmental amenities. By contrast, communities that are more racially diverse focus greater attention on green stormwater infrastructure to address flooding. Plan “quality” is negatively associated with an amenities’ focus. Taken together, these findings suggest comprehensive land-use planning is both a means for reflecting exclusivity as well as pursuing community needs or goals related to specific resilience or sustainability themes.
Curating Novel Data for the Research Commons- A Data Science Approach. - Journal of Behavioral Public Administration (2023)
The growth of social media and digital trace data have opened new avenues for scientific inquiry. In the fields of public administration and public policy scholarship increasingly relies on data sources and emergent analytic techniques to answer novel questions. Despite the benefits to scholarly activity, there are "hidden steps" and decision points in these data that are glossed over, relegated to a footnote, or nonexistent. Each new project using data drawn from a social media platform requires assumptions and necessitates key decisions with little insight from the field as to best practices. I highlight many key decision points and processing steps required for using large-scale social media data (e.g., Twitter). I draw from my experience in an ongoing collaborative research effort with Dr. Ian Anson and Dr. Nate Jensen. In this project, we utilize Twitter data to understand attitudes regarding the second headquarters of Amazon (Amazon HQ2.0). As I identify these hidden steps, I make recommendations for points of collaboration in the hopes of developing a data infrastructure commons for the scholarly community. The costs of redundant processes for our field are steep, as are the learning costs of the tools and technologies we utilize. Thus, I advocate for collective engagement among scholars in the capture, curation, processing, and dissemination phases of projects relying on social media data.
Rethinking Development and Redistribution Policy: Testing the Local Expenditure Assumption using the Community Development Block Grant Program with Michael Overton. - Journal of Urban Affairs (2023)
Local governments make important public service decisions based on a critical assumption from urban political economy scholarship that development activities lead to economic growth, while redistributive activities do not (Peterson 1981, 2012). Using the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program, we test this local expenditure assumption by exploring the differential effectiveness of CDBG activities on individual and neighboring residential and commercial property values. To this end, we challenge the notion that development policies frequently improve economic returns while redistributive policies do not. We analyze the economic impact of 20 different CDBG activities on more than seven million properties between 2004 and 2017 in Dallas County, TX. We find strong evidence that, contrary to conventional wisdom, redistributive policies can yield positive economic returns while development expenditures have mixed results. These findings have important implications for local governments seeking to grow their economy equitably.
50 Years as the 4th Pillar of Public Administration: A Polycentric Extension of the Social Equity Framework with Megan Hatch and Michael Overton. - Public Administration (2022)
While public consideration of social equity pre‐dates Minnowbrook (Blessett et al., 2019; Burnier, 2021), the field formally recognized social equity as its fourth pillar after the conference (Frederickson, 1971). The National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA, 2000), Svara and Brunet (2004, 2005), and Johnson and Svara (2011) outlined a unified social equity framework along four dimensions: procedural fairness, access, quality, and outcomes. We build on this important work by offering a polycentric extension, which considers what social equity means when government programs are often place‐based and delivered in an intergovernmental context with multiple decision‐making units across spatial levels (e.g., state, city, neighborhood) simultaneously. Using the Community Development Block Grant as an example, we demonstrate the importance of careful consideration of geographic levels in the delivery of public goods for understanding the program's social equity implications. The polycentric framework can be a useful tool for evaluating the social equity of policies.
Keeping Policy Commitments: An Organizational Capacity Approach to Local Green Housing Equity with Aaron Deslatte, Serena Kim, and Christopher Hawkins. - Review of Policy Research (2022)
Affordable housing that incorporates sustainability goals into its design has the potential to address both health and economic disparities via enhanced energy-efficiency, structural durability and indoor environmental quality. Despite the potential for these win-win advances, survey data of U.S. local governments indicate these types of equity investments remain rare. This study explores barriers and pathways to distributional equity via energy-efficient housing. Using archival city sustainability survey data collected during a period of heightened U.S. federal investment in local government energy-efficiency programs, we combine machine learning (ML) and process-tracing approaches for modeling the complex drivers and barriers underlying these decisions. First, we ask, how do characteristics of a city's organizational learning methods—its administrative structure, past experience with housing programs, resources, stakeholder engagement and planning—predict policy commitments to green affordable housing? Using ensemble ML methods, we find that three specific modes of organizational learning—past experience with affordable housing programs, seeking assistance from neighborhood groups and the technical expertise of professional green organizations—are the most impactful features in determining city commitments to constructing green affordable housing. Our second stage uses process-tracing within a specific case identified by the ML models to determine the ordering of these factors and to provide more nuance on green-housing policy implementation.
Patterns in Local Economic Development in Light of COVID-19, with Bradley Johnson, Darrin Wilson, and Michael Overton. - State and Local Government Review (2022)
The COVID-19 pandemic pressured local governments to employ creative and untested economic development strategies to stabilize private businesses. To explore how the uncertainty of the pandemic impacted the priorities and strategies of economic development officials, we surveyed officials about their initial economic development response to the pandemic coupled with subsequent in-depth interviews in the Cincinnati metropolitan region. Our analysis suggests that local officials did not drastically alter their use of supply-side tools during the pandemic. However, they did start coupling supply-side with demand-side policies in unique ways compared to past economic crises. This study also finds that the pandemic affected collaboration processes, leading officials to deepen and forge relationships with other local governments. We find that these shifts have proven durable over the past year as municipalities continue to grapple with changing economic conditions due to COVID-19. As additional waves are likely, we suggest that administrators must consider the skills required to manage evolving economic conditions as well as both the supply and demand sides of local economic development.
Exploring the Trade-Offs Local Governments Make in the Pursuit of Economic Growth and Equity, with Aaron Deslatte, and Megan E. Hatch. - Urban Affairs Review (2021)
Economic development at the municipal level often necessitates that local governments make trade-offs between firm- and locality-based strategies. In recent decades, economic development researchers have described these efforts over time as exhibiting certain patterns and metaphors: as a series of waves, as embodying a type of lock-in effect, and as a policy layering process; however, the mechanisms behind these patterns remain unclear. This article draws upon 30 years of economic development policy decision making across the United States to understand what leads local governments to prioritize growth- or equity-oriented policies. We find that equity-enhancing economic development policies are more likely when local governments face less competitive pressure, have greater resource capacities, and experience greater intergovernmental involvement in the economic development planning process. Leveraging these factors can aid governments as they struggle to navigate a more sustainable path toward growth and equity.
Sustainability Synergies or Silos? The Opportunity Costs of Local Government Organizational Capabilities, with Aaron Deslatte. - Public Administration Review (2020)
Public managers serve many sovereigns, work within fiscal constraints, and face competing demands for finite resources. This article applies a strategic management lens to local government sustainability capabilities to examine the conditions under which local governments diversify into new areas of service delivery and when they do not. Building on recent efforts to apply resource-based theories to the public sector, the authors distinguish between more and less fungible capabilities and posit that local government officials make such commitments to enhance the competitiveness of their communities. Two surveys of U.S. cities provide evidence that governments that rely on tax incentive-based development approaches may struggle to make sustainable development gains. Such cities are more likely to devote resources disproportionately to delivering benefits to firms at the risk of incurring increasing opportunity costs over time. Prior commitments to traditional, firm-based economic development capabilities appear to inhibit their ability to pursue broader sustainability policies. However, economic development strategic planning can also positively influence some investments in greenhouse gas reduction efforts. Moreover, cities facing more competition for development are more likely to integrate planning and performance measurement to assess their sustainability commitments
How Can Local Governments Address Pandemic Inequalities? with Aaron Deslatte, and Megan E. Hatch. Public Administration Review. (2020)
COVID‐19 is exposing a nexus between communities disproportionately suffering from underlying health conditions, policy‐reinforced disparities, and susceptibility to the disease. As the virus spreads, policy responses will need to shift from focusing on surveillance and mitigation to recovery and prevention. Local governments, with their histories of mutual aid and familiarity with local communities, are capable of meeting these challenges. However, funding must flow in a flexible enough fashion for local governments to tailor their efforts to preserve vital services and rebuild local economies. We argue in this article that the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) and the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG) programs are mechanisms for how to provide funds in a manner adaptable to local context while also focusing on increasing social equity. Administrators must emphasize the fourth pillar of public administration ‐‐ social equity ‐‐ in framing government responses to the pandemic.
Institutional Collective Action During COVID-19: Lessons in Local Economic Development, with Wilson, Johnson, and Overton. Public Administration Review. (2020)
At this point, little is known about local government responses to the economic crisis caused by COVID‐19. This crisis is happening on Main Streets around the nation. This article examines how some local governments are taking collective action in partnership with others as well as organizations at the local and regional levels. What is unique is that collective action is rare as it relates to traditional economic development practices, yet it is occurring and leading to the offerings of multi‐institutional grants and low interest loans. However, some newer supply‐ and demand‐side actions are the result of a lack of resources and need for expediency. Practitioners can learn about these collaborative economic development actions other governments are taking, and how these partnerships can stabilize their local economies.
Beyond Borders: Governmental Fragmentation and the American Political Market for Growth in American Cities, with A. Deslatte. - State and Local Government Review. (2020)
Political fragmentation has been conceptualized as a phenomenon which increases competition for mobile citizens and jobs between local governments within the same region. However, the empirical basis for this nexus between governmental fragmentation and increased competition for development is surprisingly lacking. Utilizing a newly constructed database that matches political fragmentation indices (horizontal, vertical, and bordered) to a nationwide survey of economic development officials in 2014, we begin to fill this gap by analyzing the influence fragmentation has on the use of tax incentives, regulatory flexibility, and community development tools in U.S. cities. Applying the political market framework and a Bayesian inferential approach, we find that the proliferation of local governments increases incentive use. However, more specialized governance increases the probability of using community development activities.
An Estimate of the Local Economic Impact of State-Level Earned Income Tax Credits - Economic Development Quarterly. (2019)
This study investigates the impact of state-level earned income tax credits on local economic outcomes (employment, wages, and establishments). The study employs difference-in-differences and triple-difference models to estimate the impact of these credits at the border of metropolitan areas where one side of the border adopts the credit between 1986 and 2012, and the other side of the border does not. Separate analyses are conducted for specific industries and subindustries. Synthetic control methods are used as a robustness check. The analyses suggest that state-level earned income tax credits do not have a significant impact on the local economic outcomes of metropolitan areas. At least one potential reason offered is that while these impacts are not a direct goal of the program, the credits may not be large enough to realize positive economic gains.
Handing over the Keys: Nonprofit Economic Development Corporations and Their Implications for Accountability and Inclusion, with A. Deslatte and A. Schatteman - Public Performance & Management Review, (2018)
Public organizations have explored service-delivery with nonprofit organizations to help alleviate the strain on their long-term fiscal sustainability. This interdependence has ramifications for fairness and responsiveness in service-delivery that are poorly understood. One area where government-nonprofit collaborative activity has not been explored is within the context of sustainable development. This study utilizes surveys of U.S. cities at multiple time periods to examine the comparative use of nonprofit economic development corporations and their performance on smart-growth and social equity policy activities. This study first explores the roles played by the two most common types of local nonprofit organizations—nonprofit Local Development Corporations (LDCs) and Community-Based Development Organizations (CBDOs)—in use of performance information and accountability mechanisms in local economic development activities. In turning to policy outcomes, the use of LDCs is negatively associated with land use policies intended to advance social inclusion.
Hierarchies of Need in Sustainable Development: A Resource Dependence Approach for Local Governance, with Aaron Deslatte - Urban Affairs Review. (2017)
Urban sustainability is a burgeoning focus for urban scholarship but rarely examined within the larger context of local government economic activities. Why should cities focusing on cutback management and competition for tax revenues be expected to devote all but the fleetest of attention to carbon footprints or metropolitan-wide environmental or social problems? To address this question, we utilize a resource dependence (RD) theoretical framework to conceptualize sustainable development as a pattern of contractual arrangements between governments and firms shaped by resource constraints. Utilizing survey data of U.S. cities and a Bayesian methodological approach, we present evidence that municipal job-recruitment efforts reduce the probability of observing an overall sustainability policy commitment. Cities which placed greater emphasis on retaining and developing existing businesses are also more committed to sustainability.
Accounting for State Authorization in Local Economic Development Policy Usage - State and Local Government Review. (2017)
This article empirically tests the impact of failing to account for state-level authorization when explaining the factors that lead municipalities to use tax abatements, tax increment financing, and enterprise zones. Although existing research implicitly assumes that state-level authorization exists, this article demonstrates that this unfounded assumption leads to biased estimates using the 1999, 2004, and 2009 International City/County Management Association (ICMA) Economic Development Survey data on a nationwide set of municipalities. This article refines what is known about the factors, leading to the usage of these three policies before offering implications for practitioners and researchers of local economic development.
Testing the Differential Effect of Business Incubators on Firm Growth, with Lyke Thompson and Robert J. Mahu - Economic Development Quarterly. (2015)
This research examines whether business incubators produce a differential effect on the growth of firms. Given that there is no direct estimate for the counterfactual (simultaneously measuring the economic growth of a firm outside and inside of an incubator), the authors use a propensity score matching technique to control for the factors that are related to both firm growth and the probability that an incubator manager would accept that firm for incubation. The analysis indicates that incubators have a significant positive impact on firm job creation, and this impact is not reduced if a matched comparison group is used. Furthermore, this study finds that incubated firms receive five times as many business services (legal, financial, marketing, etc.) as their nonincubated cohort. This may account for the networking effect found in previous studies.
Manufacturing Job Loss in U.S. Deindustrialized Regions- Its Consequences and Implications for the Future, with Hal Wolman and Howard Wial - Economic Development Quarterly. (2015)
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 of them supported by the data. In particular, we find that, given their industrial structure some of these areas performed better than expected, that long-term economic distress was not inevitable, that manufacturing remains an important component in many metropolitan area economies, and that much of the growth in the service sector is based upon or complementary to the existence of manufacturing. We also find that low growth in these deindustrialized areas was due more to these regions losing their market share of individual industries to other U.S. regions than it was to the areas having an adverse industrial structure, that economies that were more diversified in 1980 did not have greater employment growth from 1980-2011 than those that were less diverse, and that declines in manufacturing did result in a movement of jobs from relatively high-wage to relatively low-wage industries and thus a decline in earnings per jobs.
Testing Rubin's Model 25 Years Later: A Multilevel Approach to Local Economic Development Incentive Adoption - Economic Development Quarterly. (2015)
Rubin sounded an alarm indicating that economic development practitioners were less than strategic in their economic development incentive adoption when he declared that developers “shoot anything that flies, claim anything that falls.” This article builds on the work of those who have focused on the determinants of incentive adoption in three ways. First, relying on matched cases of survey respondents to the 1999 and 2004 International City/County Management Association Economic Development Survey improves on using a single survey. Second, unlike previous efforts that relied mostly on ordinary least squares estimators to predict the total number of approaches adopted, this article uses a count model and distinguishes between types of approaches. Finally, this article accounts for city- and state-level impacts. This article finds that economic development decision making is strategic, partly determined by state-level effects, and is dependent on the types of economic development practices.
Whose Neighborhood Needs? Assessing the Spatial Distribution of Federal Community Development Funds, with Michael Overton, Aaron Deslatte, and Christine Zhang.- Urban Affairs Review (2023)
Local governments must balance their growth ambitions against needs arising from social inequities. The Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program aims to redress these disparities by directing funds toward disinvested tracts. We ask whether a city's institutional design, public and private actor composition, and resource availability influence the decision to invest in communities with greater levels of social need. Utilizing a social equity framework, we connect place-level procedural fairness mechanisms with neighborhood-level access equity consequences. Combining U.S. local government survey data over two decades with census tract-level CDBG expenditures, we find that in neighborhood where 51 percent or more of the families are low-to-moderate income (LMI), its likelihood of receiving funds increases with its share of LMI population relative to the city's, but at a diminished rate compared to non-LMI tracts. Further, city-level factors moderate this relationship (e.g., including community development corporations in planning processes).
Structural Drivers of sustainability and resilience strategies in small(ish) cities: A text analysis of comprehensive planning in Indiana, with Aaron Deslatte and Juwon Chung. - Journal of Environmental Planning and Management (2023)
For decades, the world’s largest and most globally significant cities have been pledging to tackle climate change, resilience, sustainable development and social injustices through a proliferating ecology of plans. Far less is understood about what is happening in smaller communities. This study employs an institutional lens and automated text analysis to examine the resilience and sustainability “shared strategies” embedded in local land-use plans, which are used in many countries to guide the spatial distribution of development in metropolitan regions. We find evidence that communities that are more highly educated and less racially diverse focus more on “quality of life” amenities within their plans, such as pedestrian resources and environmental amenities. By contrast, communities that are more racially diverse focus greater attention on green stormwater infrastructure to address flooding. Plan “quality” is negatively associated with an amenities’ focus. Taken together, these findings suggest comprehensive land-use planning is both a means for reflecting exclusivity as well as pursuing community needs or goals related to specific resilience or sustainability themes.
Curating Novel Data for the Research Commons- A Data Science Approach. - Journal of Behavioral Public Administration (2023)
The growth of social media and digital trace data have opened new avenues for scientific inquiry. In the fields of public administration and public policy scholarship increasingly relies on data sources and emergent analytic techniques to answer novel questions. Despite the benefits to scholarly activity, there are "hidden steps" and decision points in these data that are glossed over, relegated to a footnote, or nonexistent. Each new project using data drawn from a social media platform requires assumptions and necessitates key decisions with little insight from the field as to best practices. I highlight many key decision points and processing steps required for using large-scale social media data (e.g., Twitter). I draw from my experience in an ongoing collaborative research effort with Dr. Ian Anson and Dr. Nate Jensen. In this project, we utilize Twitter data to understand attitudes regarding the second headquarters of Amazon (Amazon HQ2.0). As I identify these hidden steps, I make recommendations for points of collaboration in the hopes of developing a data infrastructure commons for the scholarly community. The costs of redundant processes for our field are steep, as are the learning costs of the tools and technologies we utilize. Thus, I advocate for collective engagement among scholars in the capture, curation, processing, and dissemination phases of projects relying on social media data.
Rethinking Development and Redistribution Policy: Testing the Local Expenditure Assumption using the Community Development Block Grant Program with Michael Overton. - Journal of Urban Affairs (2023)
Local governments make important public service decisions based on a critical assumption from urban political economy scholarship that development activities lead to economic growth, while redistributive activities do not (Peterson 1981, 2012). Using the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program, we test this local expenditure assumption by exploring the differential effectiveness of CDBG activities on individual and neighboring residential and commercial property values. To this end, we challenge the notion that development policies frequently improve economic returns while redistributive policies do not. We analyze the economic impact of 20 different CDBG activities on more than seven million properties between 2004 and 2017 in Dallas County, TX. We find strong evidence that, contrary to conventional wisdom, redistributive policies can yield positive economic returns while development expenditures have mixed results. These findings have important implications for local governments seeking to grow their economy equitably.
50 Years as the 4th Pillar of Public Administration: A Polycentric Extension of the Social Equity Framework with Megan Hatch and Michael Overton. - Public Administration (2022)
While public consideration of social equity pre‐dates Minnowbrook (Blessett et al., 2019; Burnier, 2021), the field formally recognized social equity as its fourth pillar after the conference (Frederickson, 1971). The National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA, 2000), Svara and Brunet (2004, 2005), and Johnson and Svara (2011) outlined a unified social equity framework along four dimensions: procedural fairness, access, quality, and outcomes. We build on this important work by offering a polycentric extension, which considers what social equity means when government programs are often place‐based and delivered in an intergovernmental context with multiple decision‐making units across spatial levels (e.g., state, city, neighborhood) simultaneously. Using the Community Development Block Grant as an example, we demonstrate the importance of careful consideration of geographic levels in the delivery of public goods for understanding the program's social equity implications. The polycentric framework can be a useful tool for evaluating the social equity of policies.
Keeping Policy Commitments: An Organizational Capacity Approach to Local Green Housing Equity with Aaron Deslatte, Serena Kim, and Christopher Hawkins. - Review of Policy Research (2022)
Affordable housing that incorporates sustainability goals into its design has the potential to address both health and economic disparities via enhanced energy-efficiency, structural durability and indoor environmental quality. Despite the potential for these win-win advances, survey data of U.S. local governments indicate these types of equity investments remain rare. This study explores barriers and pathways to distributional equity via energy-efficient housing. Using archival city sustainability survey data collected during a period of heightened U.S. federal investment in local government energy-efficiency programs, we combine machine learning (ML) and process-tracing approaches for modeling the complex drivers and barriers underlying these decisions. First, we ask, how do characteristics of a city's organizational learning methods—its administrative structure, past experience with housing programs, resources, stakeholder engagement and planning—predict policy commitments to green affordable housing? Using ensemble ML methods, we find that three specific modes of organizational learning—past experience with affordable housing programs, seeking assistance from neighborhood groups and the technical expertise of professional green organizations—are the most impactful features in determining city commitments to constructing green affordable housing. Our second stage uses process-tracing within a specific case identified by the ML models to determine the ordering of these factors and to provide more nuance on green-housing policy implementation.
Patterns in Local Economic Development in Light of COVID-19, with Bradley Johnson, Darrin Wilson, and Michael Overton. - State and Local Government Review (2022)
The COVID-19 pandemic pressured local governments to employ creative and untested economic development strategies to stabilize private businesses. To explore how the uncertainty of the pandemic impacted the priorities and strategies of economic development officials, we surveyed officials about their initial economic development response to the pandemic coupled with subsequent in-depth interviews in the Cincinnati metropolitan region. Our analysis suggests that local officials did not drastically alter their use of supply-side tools during the pandemic. However, they did start coupling supply-side with demand-side policies in unique ways compared to past economic crises. This study also finds that the pandemic affected collaboration processes, leading officials to deepen and forge relationships with other local governments. We find that these shifts have proven durable over the past year as municipalities continue to grapple with changing economic conditions due to COVID-19. As additional waves are likely, we suggest that administrators must consider the skills required to manage evolving economic conditions as well as both the supply and demand sides of local economic development.
Exploring the Trade-Offs Local Governments Make in the Pursuit of Economic Growth and Equity, with Aaron Deslatte, and Megan E. Hatch. - Urban Affairs Review (2021)
Economic development at the municipal level often necessitates that local governments make trade-offs between firm- and locality-based strategies. In recent decades, economic development researchers have described these efforts over time as exhibiting certain patterns and metaphors: as a series of waves, as embodying a type of lock-in effect, and as a policy layering process; however, the mechanisms behind these patterns remain unclear. This article draws upon 30 years of economic development policy decision making across the United States to understand what leads local governments to prioritize growth- or equity-oriented policies. We find that equity-enhancing economic development policies are more likely when local governments face less competitive pressure, have greater resource capacities, and experience greater intergovernmental involvement in the economic development planning process. Leveraging these factors can aid governments as they struggle to navigate a more sustainable path toward growth and equity.
Sustainability Synergies or Silos? The Opportunity Costs of Local Government Organizational Capabilities, with Aaron Deslatte. - Public Administration Review (2020)
Public managers serve many sovereigns, work within fiscal constraints, and face competing demands for finite resources. This article applies a strategic management lens to local government sustainability capabilities to examine the conditions under which local governments diversify into new areas of service delivery and when they do not. Building on recent efforts to apply resource-based theories to the public sector, the authors distinguish between more and less fungible capabilities and posit that local government officials make such commitments to enhance the competitiveness of their communities. Two surveys of U.S. cities provide evidence that governments that rely on tax incentive-based development approaches may struggle to make sustainable development gains. Such cities are more likely to devote resources disproportionately to delivering benefits to firms at the risk of incurring increasing opportunity costs over time. Prior commitments to traditional, firm-based economic development capabilities appear to inhibit their ability to pursue broader sustainability policies. However, economic development strategic planning can also positively influence some investments in greenhouse gas reduction efforts. Moreover, cities facing more competition for development are more likely to integrate planning and performance measurement to assess their sustainability commitments
How Can Local Governments Address Pandemic Inequalities? with Aaron Deslatte, and Megan E. Hatch. Public Administration Review. (2020)
COVID‐19 is exposing a nexus between communities disproportionately suffering from underlying health conditions, policy‐reinforced disparities, and susceptibility to the disease. As the virus spreads, policy responses will need to shift from focusing on surveillance and mitigation to recovery and prevention. Local governments, with their histories of mutual aid and familiarity with local communities, are capable of meeting these challenges. However, funding must flow in a flexible enough fashion for local governments to tailor their efforts to preserve vital services and rebuild local economies. We argue in this article that the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) and the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG) programs are mechanisms for how to provide funds in a manner adaptable to local context while also focusing on increasing social equity. Administrators must emphasize the fourth pillar of public administration ‐‐ social equity ‐‐ in framing government responses to the pandemic.
Institutional Collective Action During COVID-19: Lessons in Local Economic Development, with Wilson, Johnson, and Overton. Public Administration Review. (2020)
At this point, little is known about local government responses to the economic crisis caused by COVID‐19. This crisis is happening on Main Streets around the nation. This article examines how some local governments are taking collective action in partnership with others as well as organizations at the local and regional levels. What is unique is that collective action is rare as it relates to traditional economic development practices, yet it is occurring and leading to the offerings of multi‐institutional grants and low interest loans. However, some newer supply‐ and demand‐side actions are the result of a lack of resources and need for expediency. Practitioners can learn about these collaborative economic development actions other governments are taking, and how these partnerships can stabilize their local economies.
Beyond Borders: Governmental Fragmentation and the American Political Market for Growth in American Cities, with A. Deslatte. - State and Local Government Review. (2020)
Political fragmentation has been conceptualized as a phenomenon which increases competition for mobile citizens and jobs between local governments within the same region. However, the empirical basis for this nexus between governmental fragmentation and increased competition for development is surprisingly lacking. Utilizing a newly constructed database that matches political fragmentation indices (horizontal, vertical, and bordered) to a nationwide survey of economic development officials in 2014, we begin to fill this gap by analyzing the influence fragmentation has on the use of tax incentives, regulatory flexibility, and community development tools in U.S. cities. Applying the political market framework and a Bayesian inferential approach, we find that the proliferation of local governments increases incentive use. However, more specialized governance increases the probability of using community development activities.
An Estimate of the Local Economic Impact of State-Level Earned Income Tax Credits - Economic Development Quarterly. (2019)
This study investigates the impact of state-level earned income tax credits on local economic outcomes (employment, wages, and establishments). The study employs difference-in-differences and triple-difference models to estimate the impact of these credits at the border of metropolitan areas where one side of the border adopts the credit between 1986 and 2012, and the other side of the border does not. Separate analyses are conducted for specific industries and subindustries. Synthetic control methods are used as a robustness check. The analyses suggest that state-level earned income tax credits do not have a significant impact on the local economic outcomes of metropolitan areas. At least one potential reason offered is that while these impacts are not a direct goal of the program, the credits may not be large enough to realize positive economic gains.
Handing over the Keys: Nonprofit Economic Development Corporations and Their Implications for Accountability and Inclusion, with A. Deslatte and A. Schatteman - Public Performance & Management Review, (2018)
Public organizations have explored service-delivery with nonprofit organizations to help alleviate the strain on their long-term fiscal sustainability. This interdependence has ramifications for fairness and responsiveness in service-delivery that are poorly understood. One area where government-nonprofit collaborative activity has not been explored is within the context of sustainable development. This study utilizes surveys of U.S. cities at multiple time periods to examine the comparative use of nonprofit economic development corporations and their performance on smart-growth and social equity policy activities. This study first explores the roles played by the two most common types of local nonprofit organizations—nonprofit Local Development Corporations (LDCs) and Community-Based Development Organizations (CBDOs)—in use of performance information and accountability mechanisms in local economic development activities. In turning to policy outcomes, the use of LDCs is negatively associated with land use policies intended to advance social inclusion.
Hierarchies of Need in Sustainable Development: A Resource Dependence Approach for Local Governance, with Aaron Deslatte - Urban Affairs Review. (2017)
Urban sustainability is a burgeoning focus for urban scholarship but rarely examined within the larger context of local government economic activities. Why should cities focusing on cutback management and competition for tax revenues be expected to devote all but the fleetest of attention to carbon footprints or metropolitan-wide environmental or social problems? To address this question, we utilize a resource dependence (RD) theoretical framework to conceptualize sustainable development as a pattern of contractual arrangements between governments and firms shaped by resource constraints. Utilizing survey data of U.S. cities and a Bayesian methodological approach, we present evidence that municipal job-recruitment efforts reduce the probability of observing an overall sustainability policy commitment. Cities which placed greater emphasis on retaining and developing existing businesses are also more committed to sustainability.
Accounting for State Authorization in Local Economic Development Policy Usage - State and Local Government Review. (2017)
This article empirically tests the impact of failing to account for state-level authorization when explaining the factors that lead municipalities to use tax abatements, tax increment financing, and enterprise zones. Although existing research implicitly assumes that state-level authorization exists, this article demonstrates that this unfounded assumption leads to biased estimates using the 1999, 2004, and 2009 International City/County Management Association (ICMA) Economic Development Survey data on a nationwide set of municipalities. This article refines what is known about the factors, leading to the usage of these three policies before offering implications for practitioners and researchers of local economic development.
Testing the Differential Effect of Business Incubators on Firm Growth, with Lyke Thompson and Robert J. Mahu - Economic Development Quarterly. (2015)
This research examines whether business incubators produce a differential effect on the growth of firms. Given that there is no direct estimate for the counterfactual (simultaneously measuring the economic growth of a firm outside and inside of an incubator), the authors use a propensity score matching technique to control for the factors that are related to both firm growth and the probability that an incubator manager would accept that firm for incubation. The analysis indicates that incubators have a significant positive impact on firm job creation, and this impact is not reduced if a matched comparison group is used. Furthermore, this study finds that incubated firms receive five times as many business services (legal, financial, marketing, etc.) as their nonincubated cohort. This may account for the networking effect found in previous studies.
Manufacturing Job Loss in U.S. Deindustrialized Regions- Its Consequences and Implications for the Future, with Hal Wolman and Howard Wial - Economic Development Quarterly. (2015)
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 of them supported by the data. In particular, we find that, given their industrial structure some of these areas performed better than expected, that long-term economic distress was not inevitable, that manufacturing remains an important component in many metropolitan area economies, and that much of the growth in the service sector is based upon or complementary to the existence of manufacturing. We also find that low growth in these deindustrialized areas was due more to these regions losing their market share of individual industries to other U.S. regions than it was to the areas having an adverse industrial structure, that economies that were more diversified in 1980 did not have greater employment growth from 1980-2011 than those that were less diverse, and that declines in manufacturing did result in a movement of jobs from relatively high-wage to relatively low-wage industries and thus a decline in earnings per jobs.
Testing Rubin's Model 25 Years Later: A Multilevel Approach to Local Economic Development Incentive Adoption - Economic Development Quarterly. (2015)
Rubin sounded an alarm indicating that economic development practitioners were less than strategic in their economic development incentive adoption when he declared that developers “shoot anything that flies, claim anything that falls.” This article builds on the work of those who have focused on the determinants of incentive adoption in three ways. First, relying on matched cases of survey respondents to the 1999 and 2004 International City/County Management Association Economic Development Survey improves on using a single survey. Second, unlike previous efforts that relied mostly on ordinary least squares estimators to predict the total number of approaches adopted, this article uses a count model and distinguishes between types of approaches. Finally, this article accounts for city- and state-level impacts. This article finds that economic development decision making is strategic, partly determined by state-level effects, and is dependent on the types of economic development practices.
Whose Neighborhood Needs? Assessing the Spatial Distribution of Federal Community Development Funds, with Michael Overton, Aaron Deslatte, and Christine Zhang.- Urban Affairs Review (2023)
Local governments must balance their growth ambitions against needs arising from social inequities. The Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program aims to redress these disparities by directing funds toward disinvested tracts. We ask whether a city's institutional design, public and private actor composition, and resource availability influence the decision to invest in communities with greater levels of social need. Utilizing a social equity framework, we connect place-level procedural fairness mechanisms with neighborhood-level access equity consequences. Combining U.S. local government survey data over two decades with census tract-level CDBG expenditures, we find that in neighborhood where 51 percent or more of the families are low-to-moderate income (LMI), its likelihood of receiving funds increases with its share of LMI population relative to the city's, but at a diminished rate compared to non-LMI tracts. Further, city-level factors moderate this relationship (e.g., including community development corporations in planning processes).
Structural Drivers of sustainability and resilience strategies in small(ish) cities: A text analysis of comprehensive planning in Indiana, with Aaron Deslatte and Juwon Chung. - Journal of Environmental Planning and Management (2023)
For decades, the world’s largest and most globally significant cities have been pledging to tackle climate change, resilience, sustainable development and social injustices through a proliferating ecology of plans. Far less is understood about what is happening in smaller communities. This study employs an institutional lens and automated text analysis to examine the resilience and sustainability “shared strategies” embedded in local land-use plans, which are used in many countries to guide the spatial distribution of development in metropolitan regions. We find evidence that communities that are more highly educated and less racially diverse focus more on “quality of life” amenities within their plans, such as pedestrian resources and environmental amenities. By contrast, communities that are more racially diverse focus greater attention on green stormwater infrastructure to address flooding. Plan “quality” is negatively associated with an amenities’ focus. Taken together, these findings suggest comprehensive land-use planning is both a means for reflecting exclusivity as well as pursuing community needs or goals related to specific resilience or sustainability themes.
Curating Novel Data for the Research Commons- A Data Science Approach. - Journal of Behavioral Public Administration (2023)
The growth of social media and digital trace data have opened new avenues for scientific inquiry. In the fields of public administration and public policy scholarship increasingly relies on data sources and emergent analytic techniques to answer novel questions. Despite the benefits to scholarly activity, there are "hidden steps" and decision points in these data that are glossed over, relegated to a footnote, or nonexistent. Each new project using data drawn from a social media platform requires assumptions and necessitates key decisions with little insight from the field as to best practices. I highlight many key decision points and processing steps required for using large-scale social media data (e.g., Twitter). I draw from my experience in an ongoing collaborative research effort with Dr. Ian Anson and Dr. Nate Jensen. In this project, we utilize Twitter data to understand attitudes regarding the second headquarters of Amazon (Amazon HQ2.0). As I identify these hidden steps, I make recommendations for points of collaboration in the hopes of developing a data infrastructure commons for the scholarly community. The costs of redundant processes for our field are steep, as are the learning costs of the tools and technologies we utilize. Thus, I advocate for collective engagement among scholars in the capture, curation, processing, and dissemination phases of projects relying on social media data.
Rethinking Development and Redistribution Policy: Testing the Local Expenditure Assumption using the Community Development Block Grant Program with Michael Overton. - Journal of Urban Affairs (2023)
Local governments make important public service decisions based on a critical assumption from urban political economy scholarship that development activities lead to economic growth, while redistributive activities do not (Peterson 1981, 2012). Using the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program, we test this local expenditure assumption by exploring the differential effectiveness of CDBG activities on individual and neighboring residential and commercial property values. To this end, we challenge the notion that development policies frequently improve economic returns while redistributive policies do not. We analyze the economic impact of 20 different CDBG activities on more than seven million properties between 2004 and 2017 in Dallas County, TX. We find strong evidence that, contrary to conventional wisdom, redistributive policies can yield positive economic returns while development expenditures have mixed results. These findings have important implications for local governments seeking to grow their economy equitably.
50 Years as the 4th Pillar of Public Administration: A Polycentric Extension of the Social Equity Framework with Megan Hatch and Michael Overton. - Public Administration (2022)
While public consideration of social equity pre‐dates Minnowbrook (Blessett et al., 2019; Burnier, 2021), the field formally recognized social equity as its fourth pillar after the conference (Frederickson, 1971). The National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA, 2000), Svara and Brunet (2004, 2005), and Johnson and Svara (2011) outlined a unified social equity framework along four dimensions: procedural fairness, access, quality, and outcomes. We build on this important work by offering a polycentric extension, which considers what social equity means when government programs are often place‐based and delivered in an intergovernmental context with multiple decision‐making units across spatial levels (e.g., state, city, neighborhood) simultaneously. Using the Community Development Block Grant as an example, we demonstrate the importance of careful consideration of geographic levels in the delivery of public goods for understanding the program's social equity implications. The polycentric framework can be a useful tool for evaluating the social equity of policies.
Keeping Policy Commitments: An Organizational Capacity Approach to Local Green Housing Equity with Aaron Deslatte, Serena Kim, and Christopher Hawkins. - Review of Policy Research (2022)
Affordable housing that incorporates sustainability goals into its design has the potential to address both health and economic disparities via enhanced energy-efficiency, structural durability and indoor environmental quality. Despite the potential for these win-win advances, survey data of U.S. local governments indicate these types of equity investments remain rare. This study explores barriers and pathways to distributional equity via energy-efficient housing. Using archival city sustainability survey data collected during a period of heightened U.S. federal investment in local government energy-efficiency programs, we combine machine learning (ML) and process-tracing approaches for modeling the complex drivers and barriers underlying these decisions. First, we ask, how do characteristics of a city's organizational learning methods—its administrative structure, past experience with housing programs, resources, stakeholder engagement and planning—predict policy commitments to green affordable housing? Using ensemble ML methods, we find that three specific modes of organizational learning—past experience with affordable housing programs, seeking assistance from neighborhood groups and the technical expertise of professional green organizations—are the most impactful features in determining city commitments to constructing green affordable housing. Our second stage uses process-tracing within a specific case identified by the ML models to determine the ordering of these factors and to provide more nuance on green-housing policy implementation.
Patterns in Local Economic Development in Light of COVID-19, with Bradley Johnson, Darrin Wilson, and Michael Overton. - State and Local Government Review (2022)
The COVID-19 pandemic pressured local governments to employ creative and untested economic development strategies to stabilize private businesses. To explore how the uncertainty of the pandemic impacted the priorities and strategies of economic development officials, we surveyed officials about their initial economic development response to the pandemic coupled with subsequent in-depth interviews in the Cincinnati metropolitan region. Our analysis suggests that local officials did not drastically alter their use of supply-side tools during the pandemic. However, they did start coupling supply-side with demand-side policies in unique ways compared to past economic crises. This study also finds that the pandemic affected collaboration processes, leading officials to deepen and forge relationships with other local governments. We find that these shifts have proven durable over the past year as municipalities continue to grapple with changing economic conditions due to COVID-19. As additional waves are likely, we suggest that administrators must consider the skills required to manage evolving economic conditions as well as both the supply and demand sides of local economic development.
Exploring the Trade-Offs Local Governments Make in the Pursuit of Economic Growth and Equity, with Aaron Deslatte, and Megan E. Hatch. - Urban Affairs Review (2021)
Economic development at the municipal level often necessitates that local governments make trade-offs between firm- and locality-based strategies. In recent decades, economic development researchers have described these efforts over time as exhibiting certain patterns and metaphors: as a series of waves, as embodying a type of lock-in effect, and as a policy layering process; however, the mechanisms behind these patterns remain unclear. This article draws upon 30 years of economic development policy decision making across the United States to understand what leads local governments to prioritize growth- or equity-oriented policies. We find that equity-enhancing economic development policies are more likely when local governments face less competitive pressure, have greater resource capacities, and experience greater intergovernmental involvement in the economic development planning process. Leveraging these factors can aid governments as they struggle to navigate a more sustainable path toward growth and equity.
Sustainability Synergies or Silos? The Opportunity Costs of Local Government Organizational Capabilities, with Aaron Deslatte. - Public Administration Review (2020)
Public managers serve many sovereigns, work within fiscal constraints, and face competing demands for finite resources. This article applies a strategic management lens to local government sustainability capabilities to examine the conditions under which local governments diversify into new areas of service delivery and when they do not. Building on recent efforts to apply resource-based theories to the public sector, the authors distinguish between more and less fungible capabilities and posit that local government officials make such commitments to enhance the competitiveness of their communities. Two surveys of U.S. cities provide evidence that governments that rely on tax incentive-based development approaches may struggle to make sustainable development gains. Such cities are more likely to devote resources disproportionately to delivering benefits to firms at the risk of incurring increasing opportunity costs over time. Prior commitments to traditional, firm-based economic development capabilities appear to inhibit their ability to pursue broader sustainability policies. However, economic development strategic planning can also positively influence some investments in greenhouse gas reduction efforts. Moreover, cities facing more competition for development are more likely to integrate planning and performance measurement to assess their sustainability commitments
How Can Local Governments Address Pandemic Inequalities? with Aaron Deslatte, and Megan E. Hatch. Public Administration Review. (2020)
COVID‐19 is exposing a nexus between communities disproportionately suffering from underlying health conditions, policy‐reinforced disparities, and susceptibility to the disease. As the virus spreads, policy responses will need to shift from focusing on surveillance and mitigation to recovery and prevention. Local governments, with their histories of mutual aid and familiarity with local communities, are capable of meeting these challenges. However, funding must flow in a flexible enough fashion for local governments to tailor their efforts to preserve vital services and rebuild local economies. We argue in this article that the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) and the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG) programs are mechanisms for how to provide funds in a manner adaptable to local context while also focusing on increasing social equity. Administrators must emphasize the fourth pillar of public administration ‐‐ social equity ‐‐ in framing government responses to the pandemic.
Institutional Collective Action During COVID-19: Lessons in Local Economic Development, with Wilson, Johnson, and Overton. Public Administration Review. (2020)
At this point, little is known about local government responses to the economic crisis caused by COVID‐19. This crisis is happening on Main Streets around the nation. This article examines how some local governments are taking collective action in partnership with others as well as organizations at the local and regional levels. What is unique is that collective action is rare as it relates to traditional economic development practices, yet it is occurring and leading to the offerings of multi‐institutional grants and low interest loans. However, some newer supply‐ and demand‐side actions are the result of a lack of resources and need for expediency. Practitioners can learn about these collaborative economic development actions other governments are taking, and how these partnerships can stabilize their local economies.
Beyond Borders: Governmental Fragmentation and the American Political Market for Growth in American Cities, with A. Deslatte. - State and Local Government Review. (2020)
Political fragmentation has been conceptualized as a phenomenon which increases competition for mobile citizens and jobs between local governments within the same region. However, the empirical basis for this nexus between governmental fragmentation and increased competition for development is surprisingly lacking. Utilizing a newly constructed database that matches political fragmentation indices (horizontal, vertical, and bordered) to a nationwide survey of economic development officials in 2014, we begin to fill this gap by analyzing the influence fragmentation has on the use of tax incentives, regulatory flexibility, and community development tools in U.S. cities. Applying the political market framework and a Bayesian inferential approach, we find that the proliferation of local governments increases incentive use. However, more specialized governance increases the probability of using community development activities.
An Estimate of the Local Economic Impact of State-Level Earned Income Tax Credits - Economic Development Quarterly. (2019)
This study investigates the impact of state-level earned income tax credits on local economic outcomes (employment, wages, and establishments). The study employs difference-in-differences and triple-difference models to estimate the impact of these credits at the border of metropolitan areas where one side of the border adopts the credit between 1986 and 2012, and the other side of the border does not. Separate analyses are conducted for specific industries and subindustries. Synthetic control methods are used as a robustness check. The analyses suggest that state-level earned income tax credits do not have a significant impact on the local economic outcomes of metropolitan areas. At least one potential reason offered is that while these impacts are not a direct goal of the program, the credits may not be large enough to realize positive economic gains.
Handing over the Keys: Nonprofit Economic Development Corporations and Their Implications for Accountability and Inclusion, with A. Deslatte and A. Schatteman - Public Performance & Management Review, (2018)
Public organizations have explored service-delivery with nonprofit organizations to help alleviate the strain on their long-term fiscal sustainability. This interdependence has ramifications for fairness and responsiveness in service-delivery that are poorly understood. One area where government-nonprofit collaborative activity has not been explored is within the context of sustainable development. This study utilizes surveys of U.S. cities at multiple time periods to examine the comparative use of nonprofit economic development corporations and their performance on smart-growth and social equity policy activities. This study first explores the roles played by the two most common types of local nonprofit organizations—nonprofit Local Development Corporations (LDCs) and Community-Based Development Organizations (CBDOs)—in use of performance information and accountability mechanisms in local economic development activities. In turning to policy outcomes, the use of LDCs is negatively associated with land use policies intended to advance social inclusion.
Hierarchies of Need in Sustainable Development: A Resource Dependence Approach for Local Governance, with Aaron Deslatte - Urban Affairs Review. (2017)
Urban sustainability is a burgeoning focus for urban scholarship but rarely examined within the larger context of local government economic activities. Why should cities focusing on cutback management and competition for tax revenues be expected to devote all but the fleetest of attention to carbon footprints or metropolitan-wide environmental or social problems? To address this question, we utilize a resource dependence (RD) theoretical framework to conceptualize sustainable development as a pattern of contractual arrangements between governments and firms shaped by resource constraints. Utilizing survey data of U.S. cities and a Bayesian methodological approach, we present evidence that municipal job-recruitment efforts reduce the probability of observing an overall sustainability policy commitment. Cities which placed greater emphasis on retaining and developing existing businesses are also more committed to sustainability.
Accounting for State Authorization in Local Economic Development Policy Usage - State and Local Government Review. (2017)
This article empirically tests the impact of failing to account for state-level authorization when explaining the factors that lead municipalities to use tax abatements, tax increment financing, and enterprise zones. Although existing research implicitly assumes that state-level authorization exists, this article demonstrates that this unfounded assumption leads to biased estimates using the 1999, 2004, and 2009 International City/County Management Association (ICMA) Economic Development Survey data on a nationwide set of municipalities. This article refines what is known about the factors, leading to the usage of these three policies before offering implications for practitioners and researchers of local economic development.
Testing the Differential Effect of Business Incubators on Firm Growth, with Lyke Thompson and Robert J. Mahu - Economic Development Quarterly. (2015)
This research examines whether business incubators produce a differential effect on the growth of firms. Given that there is no direct estimate for the counterfactual (simultaneously measuring the economic growth of a firm outside and inside of an incubator), the authors use a propensity score matching technique to control for the factors that are related to both firm growth and the probability that an incubator manager would accept that firm for incubation. The analysis indicates that incubators have a significant positive impact on firm job creation, and this impact is not reduced if a matched comparison group is used. Furthermore, this study finds that incubated firms receive five times as many business services (legal, financial, marketing, etc.) as their nonincubated cohort. This may account for the networking effect found in previous studies.
Manufacturing Job Loss in U.S. Deindustrialized Regions- Its Consequences and Implications for the Future, with Hal Wolman and Howard Wial - Economic Development Quarterly. (2015)
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 of them supported by the data. In particular, we find that, given their industrial structure some of these areas performed better than expected, that long-term economic distress was not inevitable, that manufacturing remains an important component in many metropolitan area economies, and that much of the growth in the service sector is based upon or complementary to the existence of manufacturing. We also find that low growth in these deindustrialized areas was due more to these regions losing their market share of individual industries to other U.S. regions than it was to the areas having an adverse industrial structure, that economies that were more diversified in 1980 did not have greater employment growth from 1980-2011 than those that were less diverse, and that declines in manufacturing did result in a movement of jobs from relatively high-wage to relatively low-wage industries and thus a decline in earnings per jobs.
Testing Rubin's Model 25 Years Later: A Multilevel Approach to Local Economic Development Incentive Adoption - Economic Development Quarterly. (2015)
Rubin sounded an alarm indicating that economic development practitioners were less than strategic in their economic development incentive adoption when he declared that developers “shoot anything that flies, claim anything that falls.” This article builds on the work of those who have focused on the determinants of incentive adoption in three ways. First, relying on matched cases of survey respondents to the 1999 and 2004 International City/County Management Association Economic Development Survey improves on using a single survey. Second, unlike previous efforts that relied mostly on ordinary least squares estimators to predict the total number of approaches adopted, this article uses a count model and distinguishes between types of approaches. Finally, this article accounts for city- and state-level impacts. This article finds that economic development decision making is strategic, partly determined by state-level effects, and is dependent on the types of economic development practices.
Whose Neighborhood Needs? Assessing the Spatial Distribution of Federal Community Development Funds, with Michael Overton, Aaron Deslatte, and Christine Zhang.- Urban Affairs Review (2023)
Local governments must balance their growth ambitions against needs arising from social inequities. The Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program aims to redress these disparities by directing funds toward disinvested tracts. We ask whether a city's institutional design, public and private actor composition, and resource availability influence the decision to invest in communities with greater levels of social need. Utilizing a social equity framework, we connect place-level procedural fairness mechanisms with neighborhood-level access equity consequences. Combining U.S. local government survey data over two decades with census tract-level CDBG expenditures, we find that in neighborhood where 51 percent or more of the families are low-to-moderate income (LMI), its likelihood of receiving funds increases with its share of LMI population relative to the city's, but at a diminished rate compared to non-LMI tracts. Further, city-level factors moderate this relationship (e.g., including community development corporations in planning processes).
Structural Drivers of sustainability and resilience strategies in small(ish) cities: A text analysis of comprehensive planning in Indiana, with Aaron Deslatte and Juwon Chung. - Journal of Environmental Planning and Management (2023)
For decades, the world’s largest and most globally significant cities have been pledging to tackle climate change, resilience, sustainable development and social injustices through a proliferating ecology of plans. Far less is understood about what is happening in smaller communities. This study employs an institutional lens and automated text analysis to examine the resilience and sustainability “shared strategies” embedded in local land-use plans, which are used in many countries to guide the spatial distribution of development in metropolitan regions. We find evidence that communities that are more highly educated and less racially diverse focus more on “quality of life” amenities within their plans, such as pedestrian resources and environmental amenities. By contrast, communities that are more racially diverse focus greater attention on green stormwater infrastructure to address flooding. Plan “quality” is negatively associated with an amenities’ focus. Taken together, these findings suggest comprehensive land-use planning is both a means for reflecting exclusivity as well as pursuing community needs or goals related to specific resilience or sustainability themes.
Curating Novel Data for the Research Commons- A Data Science Approach. - Journal of Behavioral Public Administration (2023)
The growth of social media and digital trace data have opened new avenues for scientific inquiry. In the fields of public administration and public policy scholarship increasingly relies on data sources and emergent analytic techniques to answer novel questions. Despite the benefits to scholarly activity, there are "hidden steps" and decision points in these data that are glossed over, relegated to a footnote, or nonexistent. Each new project using data drawn from a social media platform requires assumptions and necessitates key decisions with little insight from the field as to best practices. I highlight many key decision points and processing steps required for using large-scale social media data (e.g., Twitter). I draw from my experience in an ongoing collaborative research effort with Dr. Ian Anson and Dr. Nate Jensen. In this project, we utilize Twitter data to understand attitudes regarding the second headquarters of Amazon (Amazon HQ2.0). As I identify these hidden steps, I make recommendations for points of collaboration in the hopes of developing a data infrastructure commons for the scholarly community. The costs of redundant processes for our field are steep, as are the learning costs of the tools and technologies we utilize. Thus, I advocate for collective engagement among scholars in the capture, curation, processing, and dissemination phases of projects relying on social media data.
Rethinking Development and Redistribution Policy: Testing the Local Expenditure Assumption using the Community Development Block Grant Program with Michael Overton. - Journal of Urban Affairs (2023)
Local governments make important public service decisions based on a critical assumption from urban political economy scholarship that development activities lead to economic growth, while redistributive activities do not (Peterson 1981, 2012). Using the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program, we test this local expenditure assumption by exploring the differential effectiveness of CDBG activities on individual and neighboring residential and commercial property values. To this end, we challenge the notion that development policies frequently improve economic returns while redistributive policies do not. We analyze the economic impact of 20 different CDBG activities on more than seven million properties between 2004 and 2017 in Dallas County, TX. We find strong evidence that, contrary to conventional wisdom, redistributive policies can yield positive economic returns while development expenditures have mixed results. These findings have important implications for local governments seeking to grow their economy equitably.
50 Years as the 4th Pillar of Public Administration: A Polycentric Extension of the Social Equity Framework with Megan Hatch and Michael Overton. - Public Administration (2022)
While public consideration of social equity pre‐dates Minnowbrook (Blessett et al., 2019; Burnier, 2021), the field formally recognized social equity as its fourth pillar after the conference (Frederickson, 1971). The National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA, 2000), Svara and Brunet (2004, 2005), and Johnson and Svara (2011) outlined a unified social equity framework along four dimensions: procedural fairness, access, quality, and outcomes. We build on this important work by offering a polycentric extension, which considers what social equity means when government programs are often place‐based and delivered in an intergovernmental context with multiple decision‐making units across spatial levels (e.g., state, city, neighborhood) simultaneously. Using the Community Development Block Grant as an example, we demonstrate the importance of careful consideration of geographic levels in the delivery of public goods for understanding the program's social equity implications. The polycentric framework can be a useful tool for evaluating the social equity of policies.
Keeping Policy Commitments: An Organizational Capacity Approach to Local Green Housing Equity with Aaron Deslatte, Serena Kim, and Christopher Hawkins. - Review of Policy Research (2022)
Affordable housing that incorporates sustainability goals into its design has the potential to address both health and economic disparities via enhanced energy-efficiency, structural durability and indoor environmental quality. Despite the potential for these win-win advances, survey data of U.S. local governments indicate these types of equity investments remain rare. This study explores barriers and pathways to distributional equity via energy-efficient housing. Using archival city sustainability survey data collected during a period of heightened U.S. federal investment in local government energy-efficiency programs, we combine machine learning (ML) and process-tracing approaches for modeling the complex drivers and barriers underlying these decisions. First, we ask, how do characteristics of a city's organizational learning methods—its administrative structure, past experience with housing programs, resources, stakeholder engagement and planning—predict policy commitments to green affordable housing? Using ensemble ML methods, we find that three specific modes of organizational learning—past experience with affordable housing programs, seeking assistance from neighborhood groups and the technical expertise of professional green organizations—are the most impactful features in determining city commitments to constructing green affordable housing. Our second stage uses process-tracing within a specific case identified by the ML models to determine the ordering of these factors and to provide more nuance on green-housing policy implementation.
Patterns in Local Economic Development in Light of COVID-19, with Bradley Johnson, Darrin Wilson, and Michael Overton. - State and Local Government Review (2022)
The COVID-19 pandemic pressured local governments to employ creative and untested economic development strategies to stabilize private businesses. To explore how the uncertainty of the pandemic impacted the priorities and strategies of economic development officials, we surveyed officials about their initial economic development response to the pandemic coupled with subsequent in-depth interviews in the Cincinnati metropolitan region. Our analysis suggests that local officials did not drastically alter their use of supply-side tools during the pandemic. However, they did start coupling supply-side with demand-side policies in unique ways compared to past economic crises. This study also finds that the pandemic affected collaboration processes, leading officials to deepen and forge relationships with other local governments. We find that these shifts have proven durable over the past year as municipalities continue to grapple with changing economic conditions due to COVID-19. As additional waves are likely, we suggest that administrators must consider the skills required to manage evolving economic conditions as well as both the supply and demand sides of local economic development.
Exploring the Trade-Offs Local Governments Make in the Pursuit of Economic Growth and Equity, with Aaron Deslatte, and Megan E. Hatch. - Urban Affairs Review (2021)
Economic development at the municipal level often necessitates that local governments make trade-offs between firm- and locality-based strategies. In recent decades, economic development researchers have described these efforts over time as exhibiting certain patterns and metaphors: as a series of waves, as embodying a type of lock-in effect, and as a policy layering process; however, the mechanisms behind these patterns remain unclear. This article draws upon 30 years of economic development policy decision making across the United States to understand what leads local governments to prioritize growth- or equity-oriented policies. We find that equity-enhancing economic development policies are more likely when local governments face less competitive pressure, have greater resource capacities, and experience greater intergovernmental involvement in the economic development planning process. Leveraging these factors can aid governments as they struggle to navigate a more sustainable path toward growth and equity.
Sustainability Synergies or Silos? The Opportunity Costs of Local Government Organizational Capabilities, with Aaron Deslatte. - Public Administration Review (2020)
Public managers serve many sovereigns, work within fiscal constraints, and face competing demands for finite resources. This article applies a strategic management lens to local government sustainability capabilities to examine the conditions under which local governments diversify into new areas of service delivery and when they do not. Building on recent efforts to apply resource-based theories to the public sector, the authors distinguish between more and less fungible capabilities and posit that local government officials make such commitments to enhance the competitiveness of their communities. Two surveys of U.S. cities provide evidence that governments that rely on tax incentive-based development approaches may struggle to make sustainable development gains. Such cities are more likely to devote resources disproportionately to delivering benefits to firms at the risk of incurring increasing opportunity costs over time. Prior commitments to traditional, firm-based economic development capabilities appear to inhibit their ability to pursue broader sustainability policies. However, economic development strategic planning can also positively influence some investments in greenhouse gas reduction efforts. Moreover, cities facing more competition for development are more likely to integrate planning and performance measurement to assess their sustainability commitments
How Can Local Governments Address Pandemic Inequalities? with Aaron Deslatte, and Megan E. Hatch. Public Administration Review. (2020)
COVID‐19 is exposing a nexus between communities disproportionately suffering from underlying health conditions, policy‐reinforced disparities, and susceptibility to the disease. As the virus spreads, policy responses will need to shift from focusing on surveillance and mitigation to recovery and prevention. Local governments, with their histories of mutual aid and familiarity with local communities, are capable of meeting these challenges. However, funding must flow in a flexible enough fashion for local governments to tailor their efforts to preserve vital services and rebuild local economies. We argue in this article that the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) and the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG) programs are mechanisms for how to provide funds in a manner adaptable to local context while also focusing on increasing social equity. Administrators must emphasize the fourth pillar of public administration ‐‐ social equity ‐‐ in framing government responses to the pandemic.
Institutional Collective Action During COVID-19: Lessons in Local Economic Development, with Wilson, Johnson, and Overton. Public Administration Review. (2020)
At this point, little is known about local government responses to the economic crisis caused by COVID‐19. This crisis is happening on Main Streets around the nation. This article examines how some local governments are taking collective action in partnership with others as well as organizations at the local and regional levels. What is unique is that collective action is rare as it relates to traditional economic development practices, yet it is occurring and leading to the offerings of multi‐institutional grants and low interest loans. However, some newer supply‐ and demand‐side actions are the result of a lack of resources and need for expediency. Practitioners can learn about these collaborative economic development actions other governments are taking, and how these partnerships can stabilize their local economies.
Beyond Borders: Governmental Fragmentation and the American Political Market for Growth in American Cities, with A. Deslatte. - State and Local Government Review. (2020)
Political fragmentation has been conceptualized as a phenomenon which increases competition for mobile citizens and jobs between local governments within the same region. However, the empirical basis for this nexus between governmental fragmentation and increased competition for development is surprisingly lacking. Utilizing a newly constructed database that matches political fragmentation indices (horizontal, vertical, and bordered) to a nationwide survey of economic development officials in 2014, we begin to fill this gap by analyzing the influence fragmentation has on the use of tax incentives, regulatory flexibility, and community development tools in U.S. cities. Applying the political market framework and a Bayesian inferential approach, we find that the proliferation of local governments increases incentive use. However, more specialized governance increases the probability of using community development activities.
An Estimate of the Local Economic Impact of State-Level Earned Income Tax Credits - Economic Development Quarterly. (2019)
This study investigates the impact of state-level earned income tax credits on local economic outcomes (employment, wages, and establishments). The study employs difference-in-differences and triple-difference models to estimate the impact of these credits at the border of metropolitan areas where one side of the border adopts the credit between 1986 and 2012, and the other side of the border does not. Separate analyses are conducted for specific industries and subindustries. Synthetic control methods are used as a robustness check. The analyses suggest that state-level earned income tax credits do not have a significant impact on the local economic outcomes of metropolitan areas. At least one potential reason offered is that while these impacts are not a direct goal of the program, the credits may not be large enough to realize positive economic gains.
Handing over the Keys: Nonprofit Economic Development Corporations and Their Implications for Accountability and Inclusion, with A. Deslatte and A. Schatteman - Public Performance & Management Review, (2018)
Public organizations have explored service-delivery with nonprofit organizations to help alleviate the strain on their long-term fiscal sustainability. This interdependence has ramifications for fairness and responsiveness in service-delivery that are poorly understood. One area where government-nonprofit collaborative activity has not been explored is within the context of sustainable development. This study utilizes surveys of U.S. cities at multiple time periods to examine the comparative use of nonprofit economic development corporations and their performance on smart-growth and social equity policy activities. This study first explores the roles played by the two most common types of local nonprofit organizations—nonprofit Local Development Corporations (LDCs) and Community-Based Development Organizations (CBDOs)—in use of performance information and accountability mechanisms in local economic development activities. In turning to policy outcomes, the use of LDCs is negatively associated with land use policies intended to advance social inclusion.
Hierarchies of Need in Sustainable Development: A Resource Dependence Approach for Local Governance, with Aaron Deslatte - Urban Affairs Review. (2017)
Urban sustainability is a burgeoning focus for urban scholarship but rarely examined within the larger context of local government economic activities. Why should cities focusing on cutback management and competition for tax revenues be expected to devote all but the fleetest of attention to carbon footprints or metropolitan-wide environmental or social problems? To address this question, we utilize a resource dependence (RD) theoretical framework to conceptualize sustainable development as a pattern of contractual arrangements between governments and firms shaped by resource constraints. Utilizing survey data of U.S. cities and a Bayesian methodological approach, we present evidence that municipal job-recruitment efforts reduce the probability of observing an overall sustainability policy commitment. Cities which placed greater emphasis on retaining and developing existing businesses are also more committed to sustainability.
Accounting for State Authorization in Local Economic Development Policy Usage - State and Local Government Review. (2017)
This article empirically tests the impact of failing to account for state-level authorization when explaining the factors that lead municipalities to use tax abatements, tax increment financing, and enterprise zones. Although existing research implicitly assumes that state-level authorization exists, this article demonstrates that this unfounded assumption leads to biased estimates using the 1999, 2004, and 2009 International City/County Management Association (ICMA) Economic Development Survey data on a nationwide set of municipalities. This article refines what is known about the factors, leading to the usage of these three policies before offering implications for practitioners and researchers of local economic development.
Testing the Differential Effect of Business Incubators on Firm Growth, with Lyke Thompson and Robert J. Mahu - Economic Development Quarterly. (2015)
This research examines whether business incubators produce a differential effect on the growth of firms. Given that there is no direct estimate for the counterfactual (simultaneously measuring the economic growth of a firm outside and inside of an incubator), the authors use a propensity score matching technique to control for the factors that are related to both firm growth and the probability that an incubator manager would accept that firm for incubation. The analysis indicates that incubators have a significant positive impact on firm job creation, and this impact is not reduced if a matched comparison group is used. Furthermore, this study finds that incubated firms receive five times as many business services (legal, financial, marketing, etc.) as their nonincubated cohort. This may account for the networking effect found in previous studies.
Manufacturing Job Loss in U.S. Deindustrialized Regions- Its Consequences and Implications for the Future, with Hal Wolman and Howard Wial - Economic Development Quarterly. (2015)
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 of them supported by the data. In particular, we find that, given their industrial structure some of these areas performed better than expected, that long-term economic distress was not inevitable, that manufacturing remains an important component in many metropolitan area economies, and that much of the growth in the service sector is based upon or complementary to the existence of manufacturing. We also find that low growth in these deindustrialized areas was due more to these regions losing their market share of individual industries to other U.S. regions than it was to the areas having an adverse industrial structure, that economies that were more diversified in 1980 did not have greater employment growth from 1980-2011 than those that were less diverse, and that declines in manufacturing did result in a movement of jobs from relatively high-wage to relatively low-wage industries and thus a decline in earnings per jobs.
Testing Rubin's Model 25 Years Later: A Multilevel Approach to Local Economic Development Incentive Adoption - Economic Development Quarterly. (2015)
Rubin sounded an alarm indicating that economic development practitioners were less than strategic in their economic development incentive adoption when he declared that developers “shoot anything that flies, claim anything that falls.” This article builds on the work of those who have focused on the determinants of incentive adoption in three ways. First, relying on matched cases of survey respondents to the 1999 and 2004 International City/County Management Association Economic Development Survey improves on using a single survey. Second, unlike previous efforts that relied mostly on ordinary least squares estimators to predict the total number of approaches adopted, this article uses a count model and distinguishes between types of approaches. Finally, this article accounts for city- and state-level impacts. This article finds that economic development decision making is strategic, partly determined by state-level effects, and is dependent on the types of economic development practices.