Among the findings of the CFED research team was that in some cases, towns, cities and counties are coming up with more subsidies than the state. Yet, these jurisdictions have a less developed “infrastructure” for holding the firms accountable and for coming up with rational bids.  They also are often less savvy when it comes to negotiating with firms.  Additionally, a study of the effectiveness of inducing increased private investment in economically struggling rural economies finds that they have not made much of a difference in North Carolina. Schweke recommended that would be better if the state redirected some subsidy dollars to community development and capacity building, entrepreneurship, business retention/expansion/modernization, and upgrading workforce skills.

(Even if they boast a good batting average in the recruit new business contest)  We can only have a limited effect on our home turf.

Now, here are the reasons, absent evidence, rhetoric, or polemic:

French economist Daniel Cohen’s books on today’s economy deserve wide readership among policy makers, activists and intellectuals.

Hardly a household name or common feature of the American talk show circuit, (or is the proper word “circus”?), economist Daniel Cohen has authored a series of readable, challenging and illuminating works. He is a master of the book-long essay and is big on irony.

Cohen’s core arguments and diverting digressions offer little ideological solace to right or left. Both views are found wanting. Solutions that he proposes tend to draw from each side of the political spectrum.

Economic development is not a single strategy, such as business attraction efforts or cutting high marginal income tax rates or earmarking more funds for in-state research and development.  Instead, it should be regarded as a broader dynamic process that these initiatives may affect positively or negatively.  To quote Kenneth Boulding: “Economic progress (or development) involves the discovery and implementation of better ways to address our wants.”  Such a definition could be elaborated into a series of goal statements and relevant data indicators.  So, economic development is not a collection of large capital projects, such new plants and convention centers.  It is an adaptation process, involving how smoothly, swiftly, profitably, and humanely, a sub-national economy can adjust to changes in demography, technology, resource availability and costs, and competition from abroad and within the U.S.

Thesis 2: On the other hand, entrepreneurial initiative in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors is almost synonymous with the process of economic development.

Entrepreneurship involves moving resources from lower yielding investments to higher returning ones.  It may involve incremental productivity changes, breakthrough technologies and products, a new startup, or ideas from the shop floor.

Edited by Alan Jenkins and Brian Smedley, All Things Being Equal: Instigating Opportunity in an Inequitable Time, is the first publication of a new organization that they run, The Opportunity Agenda.