Economic development leaders are operating in an environment of heightened scrutiny and expectations for results. As incentive decisions grow more complex and consequential, state economic development agencies face persistent questions about their incentive portfolios:
- Which programs are delivering results?
- How should states evaluate success beyond jobs and capital investment
- How do leaders know when deploying an incentive is the right call?
This session will include time for states to share their own approaches and engage in peer discussion — an opportunity to learn how colleagues are navigating similar challenges in their own incentive programs.
Speakers
Ellen Harpel: Ellen brings extensive experience in incentive design, evaluation and policy analysis to these questions. The session will include discussion on evolving data center incentives, approaches to measuring program success, and what past projects can teach us about advancing economic development goals and demonstrating value to taxpayers.
Nicolas Miller: Nicholas Miller is a policy associate with NCSL’s Fiscal Affairs Program, where he supports work on economic development policy and state budgets. Previously, Miller spent time with the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He holds a bachelor’s degree in public policy with honors from the University of Chicago.
Jason El Koubi: Jason El Koubi serves as President and CEO at the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, where he leads VEDP’s overall strategy and operations to encourage, stimulate, and support the development and expansion of the economy of the Commonwealth. Prior to joining VEDP in July 2017 as Executive Vice President, El Koubi was previously President and CEO of One Acadiana, a regional economic development organization based in Lafayette, Louisiana. Previously, El Koubi served as Assistant Secretary of Louisiana Economic Development.
Read more below:
Incentives 101: The Essential Concepts — A primer that defines business incentives, surveys the main types governments use, and explains why incentive decisions should be treated as a strategic process tied to economic development goals rather than as one-off deals.
Incentives that Work: A guide for designing and managing effective programs — A guide drawing on program evaluations to identify the design features that make incentives effective and to frame incentive use as an investment partnership between governments and companies.
Incentives Best Practices — A brief from PFM and Smart Incentives that distills ten best practices for incentive design, implementation, and administration from dozens of state evaluations conducted since 2020.
Incentives for Entrepreneurial Firms — A Kauffman-funded report that maps the types of state and local incentives aimed at entrepreneurial firms, examines how they are used in practice, and offers guidance for improving their design given their limited role within the broader entrepreneurial ecosystem.