Abstract
The Main Street Program is a popular smaller-scale economic development strategy used to revitalize historic town centers across the rural United States. In this article, a difference-in-differences design using longitudinal business establishment data is implemented to estimate the program’s causal impact on job and establishment growth in downtown retail districts. Using a pooled sample of four Midwest states, the author found no significant effect of Main Street Program adoption on downtown jobs or establishments. However, for each individual state, a substantial degree of structural heterogeneity across states exists. Iowa emerges as a state where the Main Street Program appears to yield its hypothesized economic benefits to the downtown business districts of participating communities. These findings suggest that Main Street Program participation effects are not generalizable across states and that implementation and local context matter.
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