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How Does Place-Based Policy Work in the United States?

2024-11-18

Time: 10:00 am- 11:30 am, Nov. 18th, 2024

Speaker: Gordon Hanson

(Harvard University)

Venue: 1F, Wanzhong Building, Langrun Garden, Peking University

Platform: Zoom

Meeting ID: 994 5991 6531

Passcode: inse

 

 

Abstract:

Place-base based policies appear to be back in vogue. Over the last two decades, U.S. state and local governments have expanded their efforts to recruit large companies, invest in low-income communities, promote small business, and retrain dislocated workers, often supported by federal funds. Recent literature clarifies theoretical rationales for place-based policy and estimates the causal impacts of specific interventions. Yet, we still know little about how policies are designed and implemented, the magnitude and targeting of resource flows, and the coordination of policies across various levels of government. We examine how place-based policy works in the United States by (1) tracking resource flows by policy domain across regions and time, (2) identifying the actors involved in allocating and managing these flows, and (3) evaluating how well flows target regional levels of and changes in economic distress. The fragmentation of policy across government entities (due to earlier efforts to decentralize decision-making) devolves authority to local actors, who are a mix of public, public-private, and nonprofit entities. The result is wide regional variation in policy-making capacity and choices. For many policies, constraints on local capacity combine with federal spending rules to channel resources not to distressed places but to ones with high employment rates and other indicators of success.

 

 

Speaker:

 

 

Gordon H. Hanson is the Peter Wertheim Professor in Urban Policy and Academic Dean for Strategy and Engagement at Harvard Kennedy School. He is best known for his research on the labor market consequences of globalization, including pioneering work on the China trade shock. Hanson's current research addresses the causes and consequences of regional job loss, the effectiveness of place-based policies in alleviating regional economic distress, and how the energy transition will affect local labor markets. This work is part of the Reimagining the Economy project at the Kennedy School, which Hanson co-directs with Dani Rodrik. Hanson's related scholarship touches upon immigration, the globalization of production, and economic geography. He has published extensively in top economics journals, is widely cited for his research by scholars from across the social sciences, and is frequently quoted in major media outlets. Hanson is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and past co-editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectivesthe Review of Economics and Statistics, and the Journal of Development Economics. He received his PhD in economics from MIT in 1992 and his BA in economics from Occidental College in 1986. Prior to joining Harvard in 2020, he spent two decades at UC San Diego, where held the Pacific Economic Cooperation Chair in International Economic Relations at UC San Diego and was founding director of the Center on Global Transformation. Hanson previously served on the economics faculties of the University of Michigan and the University of Texas.