Place-Based Policy: What Have We Learned, What Comes Next?

For decades, place-based economic policy largely meant competing for individual firms — tax abatements, relocation packages, and deals struck one at a time. That is no longer where the field is. Policymakers are now increasingly working in terms of production ecosystems, supply chains, local labor markets, and regional industrial strategy, and empirical research has begun to study what these broader portfolios accomplish — and how much we still don't know about the newest ones.

Tim Bartik (W.E. Upjohn Institute), Susan Helper (Case Western Reserve University), and Gordon Hanson (Harvard Kennedy School) take stock of that shift from three vantage points: the trade and technology shocks that redrew the economic map, and how slowly local labor markets adjust to them; the institutions, relationships, and complementary capabilities that let a place build durable productive capacity; and the incentives, labor market policies, and investments in workers that make up a local policy portfolio — including whether that portfolio should target distress or reinforce growth.