At this point, little is known about local government responses to the economic crisis caused by COVID‐19. This crisis is happening on Main Streets around the nation. This article examines how some local governments are taking collective action in partnership with other governments as well as with organizations at the local and regional levels. What is unique is that collective action is rare as it relates to traditional economic development practices, yet it is occurring and leading to offerings of multi‐institutional grants and low‐interest loans. However, some newer supply‐ and demand‐side actions are the result of a lack of resources and need for expediency. Practitioners can learn about the collaborative economic development actions that governments are taking and how these partnerships can stabilize their local economies.
Competition among local governments for business investment and residents is a key feature of metropolitan governance scholarship. Despite the excellent work exploring interjurisdictional competition, the conceptualization and operationalization of competition still lack the necessary complexity to fully capture the determinants of competition. In reality, the degree of competition between local governments is a multidimensional concept. How do the different dimensions of competition impact a city's own-source revenue yield? Using a Spatial Durbin Model (SDM) to analyze a sample of 2,299 U.S. cities, this study finds that household income differentiation and manufacturing differentiation are important in a city's revenue yield, and both types of differentiation limit head-to-head competition among local governments. In addition, the results indicate that entry barriers and collaboration affect a city's revenue yields, while the number of cities in a metropolitan statistical area (MSA) does not influence those collections.
Public administration is struggling to contend with a substantial shift in practice fueled by the accelerating adoption of information technology. New skills, competencies and pedagogies are required by the field to help overcome the data-skills gap. As a means to address these deficiencies, we introduce the Data Science Literacy Framework, a heuristic for incorporating data science principles into public administration programs. The framework suggests that data literacy is the dominant principle underlying a shift in professional practice, accentuated by an understanding of computational science, statistical methodology, and data-adjacent domain knowledge. A combination of new and existing skills meshed into public administration curriculums help implement these principles and advance public administration education.
Partnerships that bring together public, private, and nonprofit organizations have become widely used by local governments. But we lack knowledge about the distinct contributions of collaborators to the partnership. This study uses tax increment financing (TIF) in Dallas, Texas, to assess the distinctive roles of public and private partners in achieving mutually beneficial policy outcomes. We find that, while public investment is essential to the partnership’s success, private investment directly increases property values. The city’s greatest contribution is to leverage private investment to create added taxable value in the TIF district. The increased property value provides revenue that is used for public purposes benefiting TIF district occupants. As with other quasi-private institutions that have gained popularity in the new order of governance, the appeal of TIF is its capacity to create public goods with bounded benefits. In addition, both institutional and operational knowledge contribute to the partnership’s success. The city’s experience at establishing new TIF districts and administering existing ones increases taxable value.
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