The N.C. Budget and Tax Center released a special report this morning that finds North Carolina’s economic development incentive programs could be made more effective through strategic public investments.

Due to high unemployment and a sluggish economic recovery, state leaders have lately been scrutinizing the effectiveness of the state’s economic development incentive programs in generating employment growth. These programs offer cash assistance to individual firms to induce investment and job creation in North Carolina.

The BTC report (“Mediated Incentives: Making North Carolina’s Economic Development Incentive Programs Work Better through Strategic Investments”) finds that the state’s incentive programs could be more effective at job creation if these subsidies were attached to strategic public investments in targeted, growing sectors of the state’s economy through a process called “mediation.” Read More…