Do Targeted Business Subsidies Improve Income and Reduce Poverty? A Synthetic Control Approach

Abstract

Interstate competition for economic development has led many states to adopt targeted economic development incentive programs known as deal-closing funds. Deal-closing funds allow state officials to provide discretionary cash grants to select businesses to attract and retain economic development projects. However, whether these targeted business subsidies increase prosperity in the local economy remains unclear. The authors use evidence from Arkansas’s Quick Action Closing Fund to analyze how effective deal-closing funds are at increasing incomes and decreasing poverty. Specifically, the causal effects of the Quick Action Closing Fund on Arkansas’s county-level per capita personal income and poverty rates are estimated using a synthetic control approach. The results largely suggest that the business subsidy program fails to increase incomes and lower poverty rates over the long term, at least at the county level. These findings should serve as a caution to policy makers who wish to improve incomes and poverty rates with targeted business subsidies.