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Economics case studies

Covering micro as well as macro economics, some of IBSCDC's case studies require a prior understanding of certain economic concepts, while many case studies can be used to derive the underlying economic concepts. Topics like Demand and Supply Analysis, Market Structures (Perfect Competition, Monopoly, Monopolistic, etc.), Cost Structures, etc., in micro economics and national income accounting, monetary and fiscal policies, exchange rate dynamics, etc., in macro economics can be discussed through these case studies.

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Microeconomic Case Studies

Economist Zone

Welcome to our in-depth analysis of microeconomic case studies. This blog post aims to shed light on the fascinating world of microeconomics through real-world case studies. We will explore different scenarios, dissect the economic principles at play, and understand how these principles affect individuals, firms, and markets.

The Power of Supply and Demand: The Case of the Housing Market

Let's kick things off with a classic example of supply and demand in action - the housing market. The housing market is a perfect illustration of how changes in supply and demand can dramatically impact prices.

When demand for houses increases (due to factors like population growth or increased income), and supply remains constant, house prices tend to rise. Conversely, if the supply of houses increases (perhaps due to new construction) and demand remains constant, house prices usually fall.

An interesting case study is the San Francisco housing market. The city has seen a significant increase in demand due to the tech boom, but strict zoning laws have limited the supply of new housing. The result? Skyrocketing house prices.

This case study underscores the importance of understanding supply and demand dynamics. Policymakers, for instance, can use this understanding to address housing affordability issues.

The Impact of Government Policies: Minimum Wage Laws

Next, let's turn our attention to government policies, specifically minimum wage laws, and their impact on the labor market.

Minimum wage laws set a floor for wages. Employers must pay their workers at least the minimum wage. While the intention behind these laws is to protect low-income workers, they can have unintended consequences.

Consider the case of Seattle. In 2014, the city decided to gradually increase its minimum wage to $15 per hour. Some businesses, unable to afford the higher wages, reduced their workforce or closed down altogether. This led to a decrease in employment opportunities for low-skilled workers - the very group the policy aimed to help.

This case study highlights the importance of considering the potential unintended consequences of government policies. It also underscores the role of elasticity in labor demand.

The Role of Elasticity: The Case of Luxury Goods

Elasticity is a key concept in microeconomics. It measures how much the quantity demanded or supplied of a good changes in response to a change in price.

Luxury goods typically have high price elasticity of demand. This means that a small change in price can lead to a large change in quantity demanded.

Take the case of luxury cars. If the price of a luxury car increases by a small percentage, the quantity demanded can decrease significantly. This is because luxury cars are not a necessity, and consumers can easily switch to cheaper alternatives.

This case study demonstrates the importance of understanding elasticity for businesses. It can help them make informed pricing decisions and predict how changes in price will affect their sales.

Market Structures and Competition: The Case of the Tech Industry

Now, let's explore different market structures through the lens of the tech industry.

The tech industry is often characterized as an oligopoly, a market structure in which a few large firms dominate the market. These firms have significant market power and can influence prices.

A notable case study is the rivalry between Apple and Samsung in the smartphone market. Both companies have a significant share of the market and continuously innovate to outdo each other. This competition drives technological advancements and benefits consumers.

This case study illustrates the dynamics of competition in an oligopoly. It also highlights the role of innovation in competitive markets.

Externalities and Public Goods: The Case of Vaccination

Finally, let's delve into the concepts of externalities and public goods.

Vaccination is a classic example of a positive externality - a benefit that affects people who did not choose to incur that benefit. When a person gets vaccinated, they not only protect themselves from disease but also reduce the likelihood of disease transmission, benefiting society.

This case study emphasizes the role of government in addressing externalities. In the case of vaccination, governments often provide vaccines for free or at a subsidized cost to maximize societal benefits.

The Role of Information: The Case of Used Cars

Our last case study focuses on the role of information in markets, using the used car market as an example.

The used car market often suffers from a problem known as "information asymmetry" - a situation where one party has more or better information than the other. Sellers often have more information about the car's condition than buyers. This can lead to a "lemons problem," where only low-quality cars ("lemons") are offered for sale.

This case study highlights the importance of information in markets. It also underscores the role of institutions (like warranties or certification programs) in addressing information asymmetry.

Wrapping Up Our Journey Through Microeconomic Case Studies

We've journeyed through various microeconomic case studies, each highlighting a different economic principle. From the power of supply and demand in the housing market to the role of information in the used car market, these case studies offer a glimpse into the fascinating world of microeconomics. They underscore the relevance of microeconomic principles in our daily lives and the importance of understanding these principles for decision-making, whether as consumers, business owners, or policymakers.

Home > Case Studies

Case Studies

Discover all the ways our 2,000 customers succeed, thrive and grow with Oxford Economics. Read success stories from Oxford Economics' clients in sectors such as pensions, energy and Real Estate. Learn how they solved their business challenges, supported their businesses' growth and adapted to new markets using Oxford Economics market-leading consulting and subscription services.

Case Study | Multinational Drinks Company

Bespoke dashboards and agile on-demand economics support

Background Today’s turbulent macroeconomic and consumer environment makes strategy and planning particularly difficult for firms in the business-to-consumer sector. The pandemic, major global conflicts and geopolitical tensions have caused major supply-side disruptions. At the same time, the ever-changing consumer environment, recent unprecedented levels of inflation and the ensuing cost of living crisis have been a...

Case Study | Royal London

Exploring the implications of higher pension contributions

Many households fail to save adequately for retirement. Using in-house models, the study assesses the impact of higher pension contributions on both pension savings and UK economic growth.

Case Study | A global aggregate and building materials provider

Constructing Success by Capitalising on Long-Term Opportunities

Helping a strategy department identify its 10-year growth opportunities

Case Study | Semiconductor Industry Association

A unique policy-driven impact scenario for CHIPS Act

How Oxford Economics engaged the world’s largest chip manufacturers to develop an industry-wide impact assessment of the CHIPS and Sciences Act.

Case Study | Building material manufacturer

Benchmarking Success: Building a Global Market Demand Indicator

Creating a new demand measure to enable a building material manufacturer to gauge its performance.

Case Study | Multinational services company

Quantifying the impact of climate on customers

Leveraging industry-specific climate forecasts to future-proof revenue.

Case Study | Energy UK

Achieving net zero advocacy goals

Highlighting the economic opportunities the energy transition presents and the consequences of not grasping them.

Charting a course for global growth in the shipping industry

Empowering a leading shipping company to enhance its strategic planning and identify new routes for growth

Global macroeconomic and risk scenario tool

Enabling a major automotive manufacturer to anticipate and respond effectively to evolving market dynamics across its global operations.

Risk signal identification, prioritisation and monitoring evaluation model

Despite existing internal risk management processes, a major automotive manufacturer was unprepared for and failed to anticipate and mitigate significant risks and shocks that have significantly affected its operations in recent years, including its sales, supply chain and financing.

Bespoke automotive sector sales forecasting

Automotive companies face many challenges: regulations, emission controls, litigation, political uncertainty, complex and problematic supply chains and disruptive technology are perhaps among the most pressing.

Case Study | Australian Finance Industry Association

The economic impact of Buy Now Pay Later in Australia

Governments globally are realising the importance of payments and financial services efficiency to economic growth, financial wellbeing and social participation.  The Australian Finance Industry Association (AFIA) recognises innovation, competition, market efficiency, economic growth and consumer protection are interrelated and, therefore, must be addressed collectively. An informed understanding of the Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) sector...

Case Study | City of Sydney

City of Sydney’s 2022 Business Needs Survey Report

The City of Sydney required an advisor with the capability to develop a high-impact, user-focused report to: The report had to be engaging and highly visual, containing a range of different devices to communicate economic insights to a range of readers. The solution Oxford Economics Australia developed a rich and compelling report to engage and...

Case Study | Leading Australian Law Firm

Expert Witness Report on property market influences and outlook

The repudiation of an existing development agreement resulted in Supreme Court proceedings whereby residential property market forecasts were required to demonstrate the outlook for the Darwin residential market at that time. Separate sale price and rent projections were needed (on an annual basis) for detached house and attached dwellings for the period of 2017-2030. Importantly,...

Case Study | QBE LMI

The Annual Housing Outlook 2022 – the Green Edition

The objective of this work was to reinforce QBE LMI’s position by providing an outlook of housing market performance and stimulate informed discussion about environmental sustainability within the housing market and a state by state performance analysis of housing market prices and rents. The solution The project was approached collaboratively with the QBE LMI project...

Case Study | Australia Energy Market

Forecasts and scenarios to inform the future of Australia’s energy market

Oxford Economics Australia was commissioned to produce macroeconomic and commodity scenario projections that could be used to generate long-term gas and electricity demand and supply projections across a range of energy transition scenarios. The solution We worked closely with the client’s team and their stakeholders to produce long-term (30-year) macroeconomic and commodity price forecasts, across...

Case Study | National Bureau of Statistics

Developing a leading statistical ecosystem to empower decision makers in government, the private sector​ and ​broader society

The National Bureau of Statistics asked Oxford Economics to redesign its existing statistical publications to make them more user-focused.  This included: The solution Oxford Economics worked closely with the National Bureau of Statistics over a period of six months to develop 57 redesigned publication templates. The work was completed in two broad stages: The final...

Case Study | Schroders

Understanding climate-related implications on investment strategies

As global awareness of climate change continues to increase, investors are beginning to consider how climate risks and opportunities may affect long-term investment strategies and returns. Our client, Schroders, a large asset manager, is no exception, which is why they switched to our Global Climate Service as the economic foundation for their long-run asset class publication.

Case Study | Life insurance company

Improved research processes and forecasting accuracy

A leading life insurance company has used Oxford Economics' Global Economic Model to improve their global economic research processes and increase the accuracy of their own economic forecasts.

Case Study | Large global pension fund

Supporting investment strategy with long-term perspectives

Overview To make long-term investments, investors need long-term thinking. That’s why one of the largest pension funds globally subscribed to Oxford Economics’ Global Macro Service, Global Cities Service and Regional City Services. They currently use our macroeconomic forecasts as one of the references in reviewing market fundamentals for investment. The Challenge As long-term investors, our...

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The case method can be a powerful tool to teach economic concepts and frameworks. Topics in this section cover a wide range of real-life examples from around the world on a host of issues including infrastructure, trade, taxation, regulation and development.

Integrating Systems at Scale: Coordinating Health Care in Houston

Publication Date: November 8, 2023

 This case concerns the Patient Care Intervention Center (PCIC) a values-based health technology social enterprise in Houston, Texas. This organization was founded to tackle fundamental problems in social and health services in the United...

A User-Centered Design Process for Data-Driven Policymaking

Publication Date: August 22, 2023

Well-conceived, user-friendly data visualizations have the potential to bring fresh perspectives derived from analyzing, visualizing, and presenting data to inform evidence-based policymaking. This case uses the Metroverse project from the...

Leadership and Negotiation: Ending the Western Hemisphere’s Longest Running Border Conflict

Publication Date: October 4, 2022

For centuries, Ecuador and Peru each claimed sovereignty over a historically significant, but sparsely inhabited tract of borderland in the Amazonian highlands. The heavily disputed area had led the two nations to war—or the brink of...

Pratham: The Challenge of Converting Schooling to Learning in India

Publication Date: November 18, 2020

This multimedia case brings video, text, and graphics together to offer a rare, immersive experience inside one of the developing world's most pressing challenges, low levels of learning. Pratham, counted among India's largest non-profits, has...

Video Series: Public Policy Applications of Microeconomic Concepts

Publication Date: September 24, 2019

MATERIALS FOR VIDEO CASEThe materials for this case are included in the teaching plan and are for registered instructors to use in class. If you do not have Educator Access, please register here (notification received within 2 business days). Abstract:...

Evaluating the Impact of Solar Lamps in Uganda

Publication Date: August 26, 2019

IDinsight, an evaluation company founded by graduates of the Harvard Kennedy School, designs and conducts evaluations that best suit the needs of clients across the developing world, offering timely and rigorous evidence to help decision making...

Untapped Potential: Renewable Energy in Argentina (Sequel)

Publication Date: October 6, 2020

In 2015, Mauricio Macri became President of Argentina and declared solving the energy crisis one of his top priorities. When Macri attempted to raise utility tariffs, however, he faced loud protests from citizens. In search of solutions to...

Untapped Potential: Renewable Energy in Argentina

Publication Date: August 23, 2019

Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF

Publication Date: August 20, 2018

This case covers the career of Christine Lagarde from 2011 to 2018 as she takes the helm of troubled multilateral organization during a time of deepening economic turmoil. As the first female leader of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and...

Christine Lagarde (B): Being a Public Servant

This case covers the career of Christine Lagarde from 2005 to 2011 after she joins the French Government. After serving several grueling years as Finance Minister during the financial crises that started in 2007/2008, she is being considered as...

Christine Lagarde (A): A French Prime Minister Calls

This case covers formative events and influences in Christine Lagarde's childhood and her trajectory from studying political science and law to heading the world's largest law firm. As she prepares to transition back to practice in 2005, the new...

Christine Lagarde (Extended)

For a modular presentation of the same material, please see Christine Lagarde (A): A French Prime Minister Calls (2136.0), Christine Lagarde (B): Being a Public Servant (2137.0), and Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF (2138.0). These...

Improving economics teaching and learning for over 20 years

Case Studies for Teaching Economics

This is an index of case studies in economics. Teaching case studies are on another part of the site.

Introductory

• Principles (General) (1)
• Principles of Macroeconomics (5)
• Principles of Microeconomics (4)
• Applied Economics (2)
• Statistics for Economists (1)

Intermediate

• Public-sector Economics and Public Choice Theory (1)
• International Economics (1)
• Managerial and Business Economics (3)
• Development Economics (2)
• European Economics (1)
• Law and Economics (1)
• Intermediate Macroeconomics (1)
• Intermediate Microeconomics (1)
• Advanced Applied Economics (1)

Latest Addition

The AEA provide this index to recent, accessible research summary articles from the Journal of Economic Perspectives , collected under the concept that each article illustrates. The resulting list gives alternatives to the standard examples for topics like asymmetrical information, externalities, or incentives.

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• Understanding Poverty
• Environment

The Economic Case for Nature

• Economies rely on the flow of goods and services generated by nature (such as food, raw materials, pollination, water filtration and climate regulation), but nature is under unprecedented threat.
• A new World Bank report, The Economic Case for Nature, uses innovative economic modelling techniques to estimate how changes in select ecosystem services impact the economy, helping decision-makers understand the cost of inaction.
• The report also lays out options for nature-smart policies that reduce the risk of ecosystem collapse and are “win-win” in terms of biodiversity and economic outcomes.

The Economic Case for Nature  is part of a series of papers by the World Bank that lays out the economic rationale for investing in nature and recognizes how economies rely on nature for services that are largely underpriced. This report presents a first-of-its-kind integrated ecosystem-economy modelling exercise to assess economic policy responses to the global biodiversity crisis. Modeling the interaction between nature’s services and the global economy to 2030, the report points to a range and combination of policy scenarios available to reduce the impact of nature’s loss on economies. This modeling framework represents an important stepping-stone towards ‘nature-smart’ decision-making, as it seeks to support policymakers who face complex tradeoffs involving the management of natural capital, and hence achieving growth that is resilient and inclusive.

This report presents a novel modeling framework that integrates select ecosystem services into a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model. This allows the study of the impact of changes in select ecosystem services on the global economy and vice versa between 2021 and 2030. The report assesses the link between the decline of select ecosystem services—pollination of crops by wild pollinators, climate regulation from carbon storage and sequestration, provision of food from marine fisheries and provision of timber—and the performance of key sectors that rely on these services, such as agriculture, forestry, and fisheries sectors, and related industries.

METHODOLOGY

The integrated model is used to compare the baseline (economy-only) scenario with a set of scenarios that simulate the interactions between ecosystems and the global economy to   2030. First, the ‘business-as-usual’ scenario where economic growth leads to a decline in the ecosystem services analyzed, and two, a ‘partial ecosystem collapse’ scenario where pressure on select ecosystems pushes them to tipping points, with dire economic consequences. A third set of scenarios assesses the effects of introducing various nature-smart policy reforms on environmental and economic outcomes in 2030.

Finding Solutions to Development Challenges in Nature

• PRESS RELEASE: Protecting Nature Could Avert Global Economic Losses of $2.7 Trillion Per Year
• REPORT: The Economic Case for Nature
• INFOGRAPHIC: The Economic Case for Nature
• KEY FINDINGS: The Economic Case for Nature
• World Bank and Environment
• World Bank and Biodiversity
• Global Program on Sustainability

Top 40 Most Popular Case Studies of 2021

Two cases about Hertz claimed top spots in 2021's Top 40 Most Popular Case Studies

Two cases on the uses of debt and equity at Hertz claimed top spots in the CRDT’s (Case Research and Development Team) 2021 top 40 review of cases.

Hertz (A) took the top spot. The case details the financial structure of the rental car company through the end of 2019. Hertz (B), which ranked third in CRDT’s list, describes the company’s struggles during the early part of the COVID pandemic and its eventual need to enter Chapter 11 bankruptcy. 

The success of the Hertz cases was unprecedented for the top 40 list. Usually, cases take a number of years to gain popularity, but the Hertz cases claimed top spots in their first year of release. Hertz (A) also became the first ‘cooked’ case to top the annual review, as all of the other winners had been web-based ‘raw’ cases.

Besides introducing students to the complicated financing required to maintain an enormous fleet of cars, the Hertz cases also expanded the diversity of case protagonists. Kathyrn Marinello was the CEO of Hertz during this period and the CFO, Jamere Jackson is black.

Sandwiched between the two Hertz cases, Coffee 2016, a perennial best seller, finished second. “Glory, Glory, Man United!” a case about an English football team’s IPO made a surprise move to number four.  Cases on search fund boards, the future of malls,  Norway’s Sovereign Wealth fund, Prodigy Finance, the Mayo Clinic, and Cadbury rounded out the top ten.

Other year-end data for 2021 showed:

• Online “raw” case usage remained steady as compared to 2020 with over 35K users from 170 countries and all 50 U.S. states interacting with 196 cases.
• Fifty four percent of raw case users came from outside the U.S..
• The Yale School of Management (SOM) case study directory pages received over 160K page views from 177 countries with approximately a third originating in India followed by the U.S. and the Philippines.
• Twenty-six of the cases in the list are raw cases.
• A third of the cases feature a woman protagonist.
• Orders for Yale SOM case studies increased by almost 50% compared to 2020.
• The top 40 cases were supervised by 19 different Yale SOM faculty members, several supervising multiple cases.

CRDT compiled the Top 40 list by combining data from its case store, Google Analytics, and other measures of interest and adoption.

All of this year’s Top 40 cases are available for purchase from the Yale Management Media store .

And the Top 40 cases studies of 2021 are:

1.   Hertz Global Holdings (A): Uses of Debt and Equity

2.   Coffee 2016

3.   Hertz Global Holdings (B): Uses of Debt and Equity 2020

4.   Glory, Glory Man United!

5.   Search Fund Company Boards: How CEOs Can Build Boards to Help Them Thrive

6.   The Future of Malls: Was Decline Inevitable?

7.   Strategy for Norway's Pension Fund Global

8.   Prodigy Finance

9.   Design at Mayo

10. Cadbury

11. City Hospital Emergency Room

13. Volkswagen

14. Marina Bay Sands

15. Shake Shack IPO

16. Mastercard

17. Netflix

18. Ant Financial

19. AXA: Creating the New CR Metrics

20. IBM Corporate Service Corps

21. Business Leadership in South Africa's 1994 Reforms

22. Alternative Meat Industry

23. Children's Premier

24. Khalil Tawil and Umi (A)

25. Palm Oil 2016

26. Teach For All: Designing a Global Network

27. What's Next? Search Fund Entrepreneurs Reflect on Life After Exit

28. Searching for a Search Fund Structure: A Student Takes a Tour of Various Options

30. Project Sammaan

31. Commonfund ESG

32. Polaroid

33. Connecticut Green Bank 2018: After the Raid

34. FieldFresh Foods

35. The Alibaba Group

36. 360 State Street: Real Options

37. Herman Miller

38. AgBiome

39. Nathan Cummings Foundation

40. Toyota 2010

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Solving Case Study in Economics: A Complete Guide

case study in economics

Case studies are invaluable in economics education, providing students with real-world scenarios to apply theoretical concepts and analytical skills. However, solving a case study in economics requires a structured approach that combines research, critical thinking, and a deep understanding of economic principles. This post presents a comprehensive guide on effectively solving a case study in economics , ensuring a thorough analysis and a grasp of practical implications.

Understanding the Case Study

Read carefully: .

Begin by reading the case study thoroughly. Pay attention to the details, context, and objectives presented. Identify the main issues, stakeholders, and the economic concepts at play.

Define the Problem: 

Clearly define the economic problem or challenge presented in the case study. What are the fundamental problems that ought to be handled? Understanding the problem is crucial before proceeding with analysis.Identify the central economic problem or challenge that the case study presents. This could involve issues related to demand and supply, market structures, externalities, government interventions, or any other economic concept.

Gathering Relevant Information

Research: .

Conduct thorough research to gather additional information relevant to the case study. This may involve exploring economic theories, statistical data, and industry trends. Reliable sources such as academic journals, government reports, and reputable news outlets are valuable.

Identify Variables: 

Identify the variables affecting the situation presented in the case study. These could include economic indicators, market conditions, government policies, etc.

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Applying Economic Concepts

Use relevant theories: .

Apply relevant economic theories and concepts to analyze the case study. Consider concepts like supply and demand, elasticity, market structure, cost analysis, and utility theory, depending on the case context.

Quantitative Analysis:  

If applicable, use quantitative methods such as calculations, graphs, and charts to illustrate your analysis. These tools can help visualize economic relationships and trends.

Data Interpretation

Cause and effect:.

 Identify the cause-and-effect relationships driving the economic situation in the case study. Analyze how changes in one variable can impact others and lead to specific outcomes.

Consider Alternatives: 

Explore solutions or strategies to address the issues presented. Consider the possible benefits and drawbacks of each option.

Making Recommendations

Informed decisions: .

Based on your analysis, make informed recommendations for addressing the challenges outlined in the case study in economics. Your recommendations should be rooted in economic theories and supported by your gathered data.

Justify Your Recommendations: 

Clearly explain the rationale behind your recommendations. How will they positively impact the stakeholders involved? Justify your choices with economic logic.

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Tips for Success

Practice: .

The more case studies you solve, the more comfortable you’ll become with the process. Practice hones your analytical skills and enables you to apply economic concepts effectively.

Collaborate: 

Engage in discussions with peers or instructors. Collaborative analysis can offer diverse perspectives and deepen your understanding of the case.

Real-World Context: 

Relate the case study to real-world economic scenarios. Understanding the practical implications of your analysis adds depth to your recommendations.

Stay Updated:

 Case study in economics is a dynamic field. Stay updated with current economic trends, policy changes, and market developments to enhance the relevance of your analysis.

Read the Case Thoroughly

Begin by reading the case study attentively. Familiarize yourself with the context, characters, and economic issues presented. Take notes as you read to highlight key information and identify the main problems.

 Apply Relevant Economic Concepts

Next, apply the economic concepts and theories you’ve learned in your coursework to the identified problem. Consider how concepts like elasticity, opportunity cost, marginal analysis, and cost-benefit analysis can be applied to the situation.

 Collect Data and Information

Gather relevant data and information that can support your analysis. This may include statistical data, market trends, historical information, and other relevant sources that substantiate your arguments.

Analyze and Evaluate

Conduct a thorough analysis of the situation. Identify the factors contributing to the problem and evaluate their impact. Use graphs, charts, and diagrams to represent your analysis and provide clarity visually.

 Explore Alternatives

Generate possible solutions or alternatives to address the identified problem. Consider the pros and cons of each solution, keeping in mind economic feasibility, ethical implications, and potential outcomes.

 Apply Economic Theories

When formulating solutions, apply economic theories and principles that align with the situation. For instance, if you’re dealing with a market failure, explore how government intervention or corrective measures can be applied based on economic theories like externalities or public goods.

Quantitative Analysis

If applicable, perform quantitative analysis using relevant mathematical or statistical tools. This could involve calculating elasticity break-even points or analyzing cost structures to support your recommendations.

 Justify Your Recommendations

Ensure that your solutions are well-justified and backed by solid economic reasoning. Explain how each solution addresses the problem and aligns with economic theories.

 Consider Real-World Constraints

Acknowledge any real-world constraints that might affect the implementation of your recommendations. This could include budgetary limitations, political considerations, or social factors.

Solving an case study in economics writing is an enriching experience that bridges theory and practice. It requires a structured approach, from understanding the case to making well-informed recommendations. By thoroughly analyzing the economic concepts, interpreting data, and applying relevant theories, you can arrive at strategic solutions that align with economic principles.

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Understanding the Cases for Economic Equity

This post is the third in a four-part series titled “ The State of Economic Equity .” Written by Institute for Economic Equity staff, this series examines the challenges facing vulnerable workers in 2023 and the opportunities that more equitable participation in the economy may provide.

This blog post presents economic cases that each offer an analytical framework for understanding the importance of economic equity. The key conclusion of these cases is that persistent inequity has adverse effects and consequences for the entire economy, not just vulnerable people The Institute for Economic Equity defines “vulnerable” groups as those that include (but are not limited to): young adults (ages 16 to 24); adults with no more than a high school diploma; men and women who are Black, Latino, Asian, American Indian or Alaska Natives; people with a disability; and adults who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer and/or questioning (LGBTQ+). and low- and moderate-income (LMI) communities. Thus, everyone can gain from greater economic equity.

The cases for economic equity are the following: These were presented in an August 2022 Bridges article . This blog post provides greater detail on each one.

• the historical case
• the resource-based case
• the deferred maintenance case
• the business case

Historical Case

In his March 1966 essay for The Nation , Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. outlined the economic challenges that Black people continued to face despite the political gains won by the Civil Rights movement.

King pointed out that the challenges faced by Black Americans included bearing the brunt of layoffs—which made them typically the first fired and the last rehired—and continued discrimination—which hindered long-term employment and, in turn, made it harder to build seniority, a key ingredient that reduced the odds of layoff.

“Statistics that picture declining rates of unemployment veil the reality that Negro jobs are still substandard and evanescent,” he wrote at a time when the U.S. was experiencing its best economic performance since World War II. “The instability of employment reflects itself in the fragile character of Negro ambitions and economic foundations.”

King then identified the workforce needs of Black people: full-time and full-year employment, promotion and development opportunities, and employment that fed, clothed, educated and stabilized a family.

King wrote that essay more than 50 years ago, yet the themes he raised remain relevant today.

• Black people continue to have lower full-time and full-year employment than white people. Figure 1 shows that in 2021, about 45% of Black men worked full time and year-round in the preceding 12 months. Just over 52% of white men worked full time and year-round. The percentages for Black and white people are based on my calculations using data from Table 2 of the 2021 “Work Experience of the Population” release.
• Black workers still experience less-stable employment. In calculations using the Current Population Survey, I found that Black workers, on average, still have greater displacement rates and less job tenure than their white peers. The gaps in the displacement rate and in job tenure are larger among those with less potential labor market experience. (See Figure 2.)
• Black workers still face higher hurdles when seeking employment. In numerous field experiments conducted by researchers, white applicants received, on average, 36% more invitations to job interviews than Black applicants.
• Economic security remains disproportionately elusive for people of color. Even though 29 million (57%) of the 51 million  asset limited, income constrained, employed (ALICE) In 2009, the United Way of Northern New Jersey published its first ALICE report . The acronym represents a community’s households that can’t afford a “survival” budget. households are white, a disproportionate share of households of color don’t earn enough to cover the expenses of the minimum household basics necessary to live and work (which is known as the ALICE threshold ): Black (60%), American Indian/Alaska Native (57%) and Latino (56%) versus white (36%). This means more than half of these households of color can’t afford the cost of household basics.

Figure 1: The Share of Black People and White People with Full-Time, Year-Round Employment

SOURCES: Bureau of Labor Statistics’ “Work Experience of the Population-2021” and author’s calculations.

NOTE: Percentage of people employed full time and year round in the preceding 12 months.

Figure 2: Black Workers Face a Disparate Labor Market Experience

SOURCES: Current Population Survey, January 2020; 2022 Displaced Worker, Employee Tenure, and Occupational Mobility supplement; and author’s calculations.

NOTES: The displacement rate represents the percentage of workers age 20 and older who lost a job or were forced to leave a job during the previous three years, and job tenure is the number of months that an employee has been working continuously at a job with his or her present employer. Potential work experience is equal to age minus years of schooling minus 6; it represents the most possible years a worker is in the labor force.

Resource-Based Case

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, 42% of U.S. households were below the ALICE threshold. These are households that earn above the federal poverty level but have difficulty covering the costs of basic expenses. Compared with higher-income families, ALICE households differ in how they pay for an emergency expense of $400 .

The table below shows the major budget lines that ALICE households must cover each month. The adults in these families work hard at multiple jobs, but their wages don’t keep pace with inflation. They face a variety of tough choices: Pay the rent or buy food.

The table’s column 1 describes the consequences to ALICE households if the parents do not have, for example, good housing or accessible child care. Due to a lack of affordable child care, one parent must stay home, leading to a loss of income.

Column 2 describes ALICE households’ impact on the broader community. It shows that we all bear a portion of the costs when households don’t live in a safe neighborhood or have reliable transportation to work and if their children do not have access to quality child care, a good K-12 education and the opportunity for postsecondary education. The absence of these could lower property values and create greater traffic congestion. The impacts on children could place a future burden on the education system, the criminal justice system and other social services. Simply put, the impact on ALICE families is, in turn, an impact on all.

Deferred Maintenance Case

The tag line from a popular oil filter commercial in the 1970s and 1980s was “you can pay me now, or pay me later.” It rings true still today on many fronts when the lack of investment can mean higher costs in the future.

One such area is human priority expenditures, or public investments in human and social capital that strengthen the networks of relationships within and across communities. Human priorities are defined as follows: government social benefits to persons (Social Security and Medicare benefits), housing and community services, health, recreation and culture, elementary and secondary schools, higher education, libraries, and income security (disability, retirement, welfare and social services, and unemployment). Retirement comprises social insurance funds, including old age, survivors, and disability insurance (Social Security Trusts), and railroad retirement; it excludes government employee retirement plans. These government expenditures are computed as a share of gross domestic product; data are derived from the national income and product accounts : Table 3.16 and Table 1.1.5. The third figure below shows that since 2000, these expenditures have generally been below trend growth predicted by 1959 to 2000 data. The exceptions were in 2010, when the U.S. increased spending to aid its recovery from the Great Recession, and 2020-21, when the U.S. boosted expenditures because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Figure 3: The Relative Size of Human Priority Expenditures since 1959

SOURCES: Bureau of Economic Analysis and author’s calculations.

Meanwhile, an increase in income inequity seems to have occurred during this same period. First, from 2001 to 2010, labor share—the percentage of economic output that accrues to workers in the form of compensation—steadily fell. Since then, it has stagnated. Second, inflation adjusted U.S. median household income fell from 1999 to 2012 before rebounding to surpass its 2000 value by 2016. Third, household income inequity increased after 2000, with the growth largest at the middle and upper percentiles. The data are derived from the following sources: Labor share comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Office of Productivity and Technology , and median household income and income equality measures come from the U.S. Census Bureau’s historical income tables .

In response to the pandemic, increased infrastructure investments were made to help improve mental health and access to quality child care  during the crisis. Past research (PDF)  suggests that these kinds of investments generally  raise worker productivity , a key ingredient to economic growth. A fuller accounting of the benefits of such investments, plus a closer look at the way costs and benefits are measured, needs to occur. 

Business Case

The last case provides a business rationale for economic equity. The analysis suggests that economic equity creates additional disposable income that circulates through the broader economy. Earlier in the post, I used narrowing racial inequity as the example, but the gaps below suggest that this also applies to women, Latinos, people with a disability, and workers who are suffering from anxiety and depression.

• Women who work full time earn 83% of what white men working full time do. Full-time Black and Latino women earn 72% and 77% relative to white men. Estimates come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and are the average of median earnings of full-time workers in the first three quarters of 2022.
• Although the employment-to-population ratio of people with a disability has recovered from its low of 16.7% in May 2020, today’s ratio is just 21.2%, a fraction of the 65.4% for those without a disability.
• During the pandemic, 37.3% of adults reported moderate-to-severe anxiety, a 6.1 percentage point jump from 2019. Over the same period, 30.2% of adults reported moderate-to-severe depression, four times higher than prior to the pandemic.

To demonstrate the broad-based benefits of racial income equity, we used Black buying-power data from the University of Georgia’s Selig Center for Economic Growth and population and household income data from the U.S. Census to estimate the actual and potential buying power that Black households could possess if there were greater income equity. (The full table can be viewed in the appendix below.)

Our most recent estimates, using 2020 and 2021 data, indicate that if communities pursued equity  in the form of narrowing Black-white differences in household income, Black purchasing power could jump from $976 billion to a potential $1.6 trillion in the U.S. This annual estimate is similar to the estimates of Shelby Buckman, Laura Choi, Mary Daly and Lily Seitelman . Their 2019 estimates, which focus on earnings and total labor compensation at the individual level by both race and ethnicity, range from about $730 billion to $1.28 trillion. The largest potential gains would occur in Texas, New York, California, Georgia and Florida.

For the states that make up the Federal Reserve’s Eighth District, Headquartered in St. Louis, the Eighth District includes Arkansas, southern Illinois, southern Indiana, western Kentucky, northern Mississippi, eastern Missouri and western Tennessee.  achieving Black-white household income equity would potentially generate $202 billion in additional Black disposable income. It is important to note these estimates are just for one year.

What sectors of the economy would benefit the greatest from this additional disposable income entering the economy? Because households typically spend the largest portion of their incomes on housing expenses, a big part of these gains would likely go to businesses that construct homes and provide housing goods and services. Businesses in the food, transportation and health care sectors could also see large increases in their revenue. The estimated shares come from the 2021 Consumer Expenditure Survey (PDF) .

More research is needed to better gauge the underlying conditions that limit greater economic equity. Yet these four cases provide a clearer understanding of the broader benefits from more equitable participation in the American economy.

• The Institute for Economic Equity defines “vulnerable” groups as those that include (but are not limited to): young adults (ages 16 to 24); adults with no more than a high school diploma; men and women who are Black, Latino, Asian, American Indian or Alaska Natives; people with a disability; and adults who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer and/or questioning (LGBTQ+).
• These were presented in an August 2022 Bridges article . This blog post provides greater detail on each one.
• The percentages for Black and white people are based on my calculations using data from Table 2 of the 2021 “Work Experience of the Population” release.
• In 2009, the United Way of Northern New Jersey published its first ALICE report . The acronym represents a community’s households that can’t afford a “survival” budget.
• Human priorities are defined as follows: government social benefits to persons (Social Security and Medicare benefits), housing and community services, health, recreation and culture, elementary and secondary schools, higher education, libraries, and income security (disability, retirement, welfare and social services, and unemployment). Retirement comprises social insurance funds, including old age, survivors, and disability insurance (Social Security Trusts), and railroad retirement; it excludes government employee retirement plans. These government expenditures are computed as a share of gross domestic product; data are derived from the national income and product accounts : Table 3.16 and Table 1.1.5.
• The data are derived from the following sources: Labor share comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Office of Productivity and Technology , and median household income and income equality measures come from the U.S. Census Bureau’s historical income tables .
• Estimates come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and are the average of median earnings of full-time workers in the first three quarters of 2022.
• This annual estimate is similar to the estimates of Shelby Buckman, Laura Choi, Mary Daly and Lily Seitelman . Their 2019 estimates, which focus on earnings and total labor compensation at the individual level by both race and ethnicity, range from about $730 billion to $1.28 trillion.
• Headquartered in St. Louis, the Eighth District includes Arkansas, southern Illinois, southern Indiana, western Kentucky, northern Mississippi, eastern Missouri and western Tennessee.
• The estimated shares come from the 2021 Consumer Expenditure Survey (PDF) .

The Economic Impact of Closing the Racial Gap in Income: Black Buying Power by State

William M. Rodgers III is vice president and director of the St. Louis Fed’s Institute for Economic Equity. Read more about the author and his work .

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This blog offers commentary, analysis and data from our economists and experts. Views expressed are not necessarily those of the St. Louis Fed or Federal Reserve System.

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Making local economies prosperous and resilient: The case for a modern Economic Development Administration

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Amy liu , amy liu vice president - metropolitan policy program, adeline m. and alfred i. johnson chair in urban and metropolitan policy @amy_liuw brad mcdearman , brad mcdearman nonresident senior fellow - brookings metro xavier de souza briggs , xavier de souza briggs senior fellow - brookings metro @xavbriggs mark muro , mark muro senior fellow - brookings metro @markmuro1 anthony f. pipa , anthony f. pipa senior fellow - global economy and development , center for sustainable development @anthonypipa adie tomer , and adie tomer senior fellow - brookings metro @adietomer jennifer s. vey jennifer s. vey nonresident senior fellow - brookings metro @jvey1.

June 27, 2022

• 31 min read

Congress has recently shown serious interest in reauthorizing the Economic Development Administration (EDA), a Department of Commerce agency last authorized in 2004. Congressional appropriators will also have their turn in adequately resourcing the agency, following the extraordinary demands of the pandemic and other impacts to local economies over the past two years.  

The urgency and importance of congressional attention cannot be overstated. America’s global economic standing is under threat as digital disruption, the race for talent, and widening inequality both within and across regions challenge the nation’s competitiveness. Meanwhile, the U.S. economy regularly confronts recessions, extreme weather events, supply chain breakdowns, and other shocks that disproportionately impact some local economies and further test the nation’s collective ability to adapt and maintain economic resilience over the long run.  

In response, the country needs to marshal the economic assets that cluster in specialized ways across the regions that make up the U.S. economy—be they leading industries, research universities, entrepreneurs, or workers. These assets are critical if the nation hopes to, for instance, reduce its reliance on imports and boost supply chain resilience with greater homegrown capabilities in computer chip, renewable energy, and medical equipment design and production. Furthermore, regions with strong innovation, economic diversification, and civic capacities are more able to adapt and bounce back from economic disruptions. For these reasons, the federal government has a vested interest in spurring place-based regional economic development. To do that, it has the EDA—the one federal agency whose sole charge is to promote economic revitalization in communities of any scale, rural or urban, across the country. In short, the EDA’s role is essential if the U.S. is to compete globally and prosper locally.  

The concern is that the EDA is not properly resourced or equipped to meet its vital mission and nationwide mandate. The agency is tasked to do too much with too little—its chronically small annual budget, combined with unpredictable special appropriations, positions the agency as marginal when, in fact, the opposite is true. The EDA is the nation’s indispensable agency for supporting economic growth and resilience for communities large and small, as their leaders respond regularly to new opportunities and threats. But the policy and budget process does not yet treat it accordingly.  

Congress can do its part. It can use reauthorization, now decades overdue, to elevate and modernize the EDA. It can give the agency the tools and resources to match its mandate, so it can successfully help communities and the nation adapt and rise to the immense challenges of the 21st century economy, including the range of economic disruptions today and those to come. EDA reauthorization deserves bipartisan attention and action.  

To inform this process, this brief provides a rationale and framework for EDA reauthorization. It is organized in three sections. First, it expands on the case for a federal role in regional economic development. It then shows why only the legislative process can better equip the EDA to improve America’s capacity to innovate, compete, and expand economic opportunity for more people in more places. The brief closes with how: We recommend that the EDA become a $4 billion agency with a sharper purpose and set of roles and capabilities that match that mission. We believe this framework for EDA reauthorization and future appropriations would set the agency and its community partners up for success in today’s—and tomorrow’s—economy.   

The authors of this brief have worked for decades with local, state, tribal, and national leaders on economic development planning, strategies, and execution. We are attuned to the demands placed on economic development actors across urban and rural communities, small and large regions, tribal nations, and downtowns and Main Streets. We are familiar with the complexity of implementation in areas such as innovation, talent development, finance, community economic development, placemaking, infrastructure, and regional and environmental planning. We came together to test a simple proposition: That despite our diverse backgrounds and experiences in economic development, we could agree on the importance of making the EDA a high-performing federal partner in spurring innovation and economic renewal for every region of the country and a policy framework for how to make that happen.  

The case for a federal role in regional economic development   

There are several reasons the federal government needs to proactively engage and support place-based economic development.  

First, the path to national economic success will not come from a top-down, one-size-fits-all solution. That’s because the U.S. is not one monolithic economy, but a network of regional economies. Each is anchored by metropolitan areas and surrounding micropolitan and rural areas with their own unique industry specializations, labor and housing markets, and institutional capacities and relationships. Public, private, educational, and civic partners in each region often come together to help their businesses, industries, and workers adapt to new economic challenges or opportunities. Some regions benefit from a robust civic infrastructure; others suffer from weakened civic capacity reflecting years of economic disinvestment, siloed mandates, and talent flight. In short, any federal approach to bottom-up economic growth and renewal must unleash regions’ varied assets and governing capabilities.   

Second, while the economic geography of the U.S. has always been highly varied, what’s alarming is the extent to which it has become a winner-take-most economy from region to region. Since 2005, a handful of metropolitan areas have captured a predominant market share of the nation’s high-value innovation jobs, while hundreds of other communities lag behind. Indeed, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) finds that the average income gap between the most and least productive regions within wealthy nations grew an astonishing 60% over the past two decades.  

This uneven economic landscape is a national problem, not simply a local one, as it concentrates the country’s competitive advantages in too few places while leaving large swaths of the U.S. underperforming their economic potential. There are twin costs to this extreme imbalance: Workers and industries in high-growth markets suffer from an unaffordable cost of living (especially high housing costs) and sharp inequality between communities within their regions, while other urban and rural regions struggle to generate income, wealth, and economic security. The result is that too few communities and regions are economically dynamic, prosperous, and inclusive.  

A third reason for federal engagement is that in the wake of the pandemic, promising market forces are creating a valuable window to advance federal efforts to expand economic opportunity. While the aforementioned trends of regional divergence have largely continued since the onset of COVID-19, some cities and metro areas are beginning to grow tech jobs after years of job losses or stagnation. These places are buoyed by the movement of workers out of some of the largest metro areas and into smaller metro areas and rural towns, thanks to the flexibility of remote and hybrid work. Meanwhile, the future of work is reinventing downtowns, Main Streets, and other commercial corridors throughout regions. The geography of economic growth and opportunity is shifting, and rather than fuel more economic winners and losers from these dynamics, the federal government can use improved policies and investments to better enable leaders in every region, office, and commercial corridor to adapt and keep pace with the changing rules of the digital economy. In other words, the time is ripe to make wider and more resilient geographic prosperity a real possibility.   

Lastly, the federal government is uniquely capable of making the scale of investments required to help local actors adapt to external forces—from natural disasters to technological shifts—and unleash the economic potential of places. Despite their best intentions, local interventions alone are inadequate to address economic shocks and the yawning gaps of growth and opportunity across the U.S. map. However, for now, the U.S. invests significantly less than other OECD member nations in helping its lagging regions adapt and develop. Our federal government also coordinates less consistently with subnational units of government—states, territories, tribes, and localities—on critical policymaking such as industry regulation, which can have far-reaching and disparate effects on different regional economies.    

How changes in place-based economic development inform today’s federal support

To best understand the federal role, the federal government must first recognize how local economic development has changed and become even more resource- and capacity-intensive.  

For decades, the primary focus of local economic development efforts has been to market their regions for business attraction, which was viewed as the most effective way to create jobs and grow a regional economy. Regions would provide the marketing and coordination, and states would provide incentives to secure the deal. Sometimes, the federal government would make public works or other infrastructure investments in regions to support the location and expansion of businesses—reinforcing the transactional, project-based nature of traditional economic development practice.     

While incentives-driven business attraction remains one part of local economic development, numerous studies have found that it has not solved many of today’s local economic challenges. Rather, an increasing number of local leaders are going beyond measures of job growth to instead prioritize job quality, productivity, income growth, or other qualify-of-life measures, especially in smaller communities where job creation is not a realistic objective.  

To achieve these broader aims, leaders are moving away from singularly focused transactions and toward more holistic, integrated approaches. This includes investments in strategic initiatives such as helping existing firms and industries grow, innovate, and develop diverse talent; creating an inclusive, homegrown entrepreneurship ecosystem; rebuilding Main Streets, downtowns, or other neighborhood corridors as flywheels for broader market-based growth and wealth creation; and centering talent and housing affordability in economic competitiveness and inclusion. Finally, both regional and community actors are investing in good governance by bringing local leaders and institutions together to solve problems and create the conditions in which workers, families, businesses, and other key partners are willing and able to stay and invest in the community.   

As they do, local leaders are also increasingly mindful of ways to help vulnerable populations or protect the environment as sources of economic growth. For instance, local leaders are responding to the dislocating effects of disruptive technologies, especially to support Black, Latino or Hispanic, and other disadvantaged workers and entrepreneurs who are most vulnerable to automation and business closures in “high-risk” sectors such as food service, logistics, and retail. Regional leaders are aware of the costs of climate risk for businesses and communities and, conversely, the significant growth opportunities in building a low-carbon future.   

Both large urban centers and rural areas are pursuing these broader approaches to economic development, despite the false urban-rural binary that permeates the political and policy discourse. In fact, rural leaders share similar challenges to their urban counterparts. For instance, rural communities are becoming more racially and economically diverse , while they grapple with educational quality, inadequate incomes for workers and their families, and challenges in health care access, cost, and outcomes. The extractive nature of many rural economies leaves too little wealth and economic decisionmaking to the communities themselves. Just like urban areas, rural towns have hidden assets and innovation ready to be leveraged but too often overlooked. And rural and urban regions are interdependent in ways that dated economic development paradigms and practices barely acknowledge, let alone build on.    

That’s why economic development leaders from across the urban and rural continuum, such as in Indianapolis , Birmingham, Ala. , and Wytheville, Va. , have stepped up to create high-quality, entrepreneurial, and inclusive growth in their communities.   

But this kind of inclusive economic development is hard work—and even pioneers in the field face many barriers to implementation . Local leaders typically lack the resources and organizational capacity to plan well, coordinate across actors, and respond to a patchwork of rural , tribal, and place-based programs alongside other state or philanthropic resources.   

This reality prompted one of the authors of this brief to make the case for vigorous federal engagement to promote more centers of innovation and opportunity across the American landscape. Specifically, the report on growth centers from Brookings and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation argues that absent robust federal action, few if any places (outside of the top U.S. metro areas) will be able to transform themselves into vibrant economies with self-sustaining innovation growth paths. The federal government is uniquely capable of investing at scale in targeted places to counter regional divergence and promote spillover benefits.  

Another Brookings report makes the case that the most successful and promising cluster initiatives in the U.S. are industry-driven, university-fueled, and government-funded . In each of the cases in the report, significant government funding—from local, state, and federal sources—gave the initiatives early credibility and provided the scale required to have real impact. Without government investment, it is likely that none of the profiled initiatives, from Milwaukee’s water tech cluster to central New York’s unmanned aerial systems, would have even made it out of the starting gate.   

Both reports reveal that public and private sector leaders in many U.S. regions have identified unique, high-potential opportunities, but also gaps in their local economies that are holding them back. They need adequate resources to grow and connect their economic and other assets in ways that can place them on a new economic trajectory.   

The federal government has a critical and unique role in such place-based economic development. It can assess federal budgets, trade and regulatory proposals, and other policies for differential impacts on regions of the country based on their distinct economic realities, as the United Kingdom and other advanced economies do. In addition to the OECD analysis mentioned above, there is a compelling research base here in the U.S. to support such regional equity analyses in national policymaking. To cite one costly example, the U.S. could have approached airline industry deregulation differently if regional economic disparities and likely impacts had been considered rigorously and creatively. The federal government needs to build out and fully exercise this ability if it wants the U.S. to remain a world leader in innovation and become one in inclusive economic growth.  

The EDA’s broad and under-resourced mandate  

If place-based economic development is critical to our nation’s economic future, then the EDA is well positioned as the lead federal agency to fulfill that mandate. Though larger federal agencies provide grants, loans, and other supports for local development, the EDA is the agency tasked to: 1) work most directly with all types of regions across the country specifically on economic revitalization; and 2) bring rigorous economic analysis to help local regions make the most promising choices.    

For these reasons, it is crucial that Congress reauthorize the EDA. More than that, Congress must use the process to elevate and modernize the agency. The dramatic shifts in the economy and economic development over the past several decades require the lead federal agency on economic development to be a meaningful partner to the regional entities that steward American competitiveness. And it should do so by reflecting the leading edge of practice in communities.    

The EDA was established by the Public Works and Economic Development Act of 1965 to help industrial areas (urban), agricultural communities (rural), and mining towns deal with economic distress. For these reasons, the EDA’s most consistent and best-resourced mandate has been in public works projects and infrastructure development, as documented in a recently published overview of the EDA by the Urban Institute. That mandate reflects a classic—but now dated—understanding of the federal role in local economic development to promote large-scale, place-targeted capital investments in major public works, such as the Erie Canal and the many projects made possible through the Tennessee Valley Authority.  

The EDA’s last reauthorization—in 2004—highlighted Congress’ understanding of the critical and evolving role of the federal government in place-based economic revitalization. The 2004 reforms recognized the need to expand the EDA’s mandate and mission to include promoting growth and competitiveness through better local economic planning; investments in economic innovation through university centers, new technologies, and broadband; brownfields remediation to prepare land for forward-looking, cluster-based development; assistance to respond to economic dislocation and adjustment triggered by growing global trade; and post-disaster assistance for economic recovery.  

Unfortunately, that extensive mandate—meant to serve thousands of communities nationwide, on a fair and inclusive basis—has been supported with very modest congressional appropriations, averaging approximately $283 million annually since fiscal year 2011. To put that in perspective, the city of Alexandria, Va., home to 159,000 residents in 2020, approved an annual budget of $761.5 million that year. The EDA is forced to spread itself thin across its wide-ranging mandates and geographic remit, and it often lacks the funds to waive or reduce matching-fund requirements for smaller, poorer jurisdictions that most need help strengthening their economic and fiscal base.  

The EDA’s budget is not only routinely inadequate—it is also unpredictable. For instance, in FY 2008, its budget more than doubled in absolute terms to reflect supplemental funding for Gulf Coast disaster recovery. In FY 2018, the agency was proposed for elimination due to arguments over government waste and redundancy. In stark contrast, in FY 2021, the agency received $1.5 billion through the CARES Act, followed by an additional $3 billion through the American Rescue Plan Act—10 times its typical annual appropriation over the past decade.  

On the plus side, these one-time appropriations and supplemental programs have allowed the EDA to experiment with new economic development initiatives, such as the recent Build Back Better Regional Challenge grant program. But this seesaw has also left the agency with an impossible task of delivering an expansive mix of new and existing programs—from targeted public works projects in rural areas to broad regional innovation grants to economic adjustment assistance for coal communities—all on a miniscule and unpredictable annual budget.  

In sum, the EDA enters reauthorization as an under-resourced agency. It is tasked to do too much with too little, employing a mix of new and outdated programs. It is time for Congress to reach the same awareness of needed change as it did in 2004 and reauthorize and modernize the EDA once again.    

The proposal: A framework for modernizing the EDA  

Reforming a federal agency through the legislative process is often hard, if not impossible, as competition between interest groups and agendas can produce a something-for-everyone patchwork and only incremental change. Fortunately, a group of national economic development groups and associations has unified to support EDA reauthorization. This EDA Stakeholder Coalition, which features diverse local membership representing all parts of the country, issued a statement for congressional leaders that includes nine shared priorities for the agency. There are many strong, tested programmatic ideas among the list that we reinforce below.   

However, our proposal addresses two first-order questions: What specific roles and functions are most important for the EDA now, given the changing context for its work and the range of places its tools must target? And in what ways should the EDA organize itself to deliver on those functions effectively? To answer these, we offer an organizing framework for legislators to consider so the EDA is equipped with the proper purpose, roles, and capabilities.   

The roles of a modern EDA

The EDA has a laudable, aspirational mission. From its website :   

Mission: To lead the federal economic development agenda by promoting innovation and competitiveness, preparing American regions for growth and success in the worldwide economy.

The U.S. Economic Development Administration’s investment policy is designed to establish a foundation for sustainable job growth and the building of durable regional economies throughout the United States. This foundation builds upon two key economic drivers — innovation and regional collaboration. Innovation is key to global competitiveness, new and better jobs, a resilient economy, and the attainment of national economic goals. Regional collaboration is essential for economic recovery because regions are the centers of competition in the new global economy and those that work together to leverage resources and use their strengths to overcome weaknesses will fare better than those that do not. EDA encourages its partners around the country to develop initiatives that advance new ideas and creative approaches to address rapidly evolving economic conditions.

Unfortunately, the EDA is not currently structured or resourced to effectively carry out a mission of innovation and competitiveness across the nation’s wide range of regional economies. So let’s clarify the roles and core competencies the EDA must have to meet its mission.   

To start, targeting and tailoring are crucial. The EDA’s overarching objective—given its place-based mission—is to unleash the latent economic potential in U.S. regions. To sharpen this purpose, the EDA must recognize that it demands expertise in both innovation and renewal. The former helps larger regions stay on the leading edge of discovery, development, and dynamism. The latter helps economically distressed places of all sizes stabilize or revitalize, putting them on the path to inclusive growth, a better business environment, and a better quality of life for residents. The paths to innovation and renewal have different starting points and, ultimately, different outcomes. They require different strategies, tools, and resources, and their programs are deployed at different scales, such as a region versus a Main Street.   

So then, what functions does the EDA require? To successfully unleash regions’ latent economic potential, the EDA must play four essential roles: thought leader, resource provider, capacity builder, and coordinator of federal support for local economic development. These roles complement the key roles of state, local, and public and private sector actors. 

• Thought leader: The EDA should be the intellectual home for regional economic analysis and state-of-the-art economic development policy and practice in the U.S. This will inform and guide its own work and expand the sharing of best practices and new ideas across local markets; both are critical to driving better outcomes.  
• Resource provider: The EDA should provide large, flexible funding in the form of regular challenge grants to urban and rural regions, so leaders can pursue comprehensive approaches to economic transformation. This is true not just for high-growth regional markets but smaller rural communities as well.  
• Capacity builder: The EDA can use its expertise and targeted assistance to build the capacity of local and regional intermediaries to plan and implement effective economic development strategies and use federal and state resources more effectively. Such intermediaries play a vital role in strengthening critical assets and aligning actors, and this EDA role helps them access the training and resources they need.  
• Federal coordinator: The EDA can serve as the convener agency working with multiple federal agencies to coordinate, align, or help administer cross-agency federal responses to regional innovation and renewal. Doing so would optimize the use of limited government funding. This function is well precedented in existing law and agency practice, but it needs to be affirmed by Congress and consistently supported by the executive branch.  

Funding and the signature activities to fulfill the EDA’s roles

  Today, the EDA’s programs are primarily organized around the following specialized investment areas: public works, infrastructure, and facilities; research and technical assistance; economic adjustment grants and disaster recovery; innovation and entrepreneurship; economic development planning; and trade adjustment assistance and consultant services for firms. Together, these wide-ranging programs have been funded at just $283 million per year on average. Through reauthorization, the EDA should emerge as a financially robust agency, with its suite of existing programs anchored by signature initiatives supporting the four key roles described above.  

To start, the EDA ought to operate with a dependable annual budget of at least $4 billion, which is commensurate with its vital mission and nationwide mandate. The agency received a $3 billion appropriation in the American Rescue Plan Act—a level we believe should be maintained given widespread demand for the new programs these resources were able to deliver. This would provide the EDA with the consistent scale of resources required to have real impact on local economies, and enable the agency to recruit, train, and retain the staff needed at both headquarters and regional offices to carry out its essential roles. This would also give the EDA the budget space to waive or reduce matching-fund requirements for the jurisdictions that most need help strengthening their economic and fiscal base. An investment of $4 billion in the EDA would match that of its popular complement, the Community Development Block Grant; the Biden administration’s FY 2023 budget request for that program is $3.8 billion.   

With those resources, the EDA could implement a set of signature activities that advance the four roles of a modern, place-focused economic development agency. An inventory of existing EDA programs demonstrates critical gaps and the opportunity to prioritize broader, more flexible offerings over narrow, categorical ones that tackle the spectrum of local interests in innovation and renewal. This structure would also allow the EDA to move beyond organizing tactically with a large number of independent programs to organizing strategically around clear national priorities that empower local communities to achieve measurable outcomes (for example, a more competitive and resilient domestic manufacturing base). Most existing programs, and the recommendations of the EDA Stakeholder Coalition, align with those functions. Below are the signature initiatives that could deliver coherently on those functions to ensure a measurable return on the taxpayer’s larger investment in the agency:   

• Thought leader: Issue a regular report on the economic health and challenges of U.S. regions and serve as a clearinghouse of state-of-the art strategies.

Given its mandate and resources, the EDA can and should be the go-to resource on the nation’s economic geography, thanks to its on-the-ground knowledge from regional field offices, its expertise in industry clusters, and its access to critical statistical agencies such as the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Census Bureau, also housed in the Department of Commerce.  

To anchor this work, every four years, the EDA should produce a signature “State of U.S. Regions” report connecting national competitiveness, economic security, and broad-based geographic opportunity. This report would support improved federal decisionmaking and strategy, build awareness of new ideas across U.S. regions (and the globe), and monitor progress with innovative new initiatives. Additional reporting could address, for example, the health of the labor market, industry clusters, entrepreneurship, and wealth creation by race, gender, and region. This would give local and national leaders a picture of changing market conditions and how national place-based policies can solve problems or facilitate emerging competitive advantages in key sectors in different parts of the country. T hrough this process , the EDA could develop a unified definition of “economic distress” to guide programs that are aimed at supporting distressed places across all federal agencies. Further, the EDA could provide case studies of emerging practices, such as how economic developers are addressing talent needs, how-to guides informed by the work of pioneering intermediaries in the field, and workshops and conferences in which leaders can learn from one another. In this regard, the EDA would be mimicking and aligning itself with leading economic development entities that have strong market research teams—not solely for branding and marketing campaigns, but for helping leaders and partners make well-informed decisions and strategies.  

In short, to be an expert on how economic development can best address innovation and renewal, the EDA must have robust in-house staff capacity and expertise of its own, at headquarters and in the field offices, so it can bring that collective knowledge to the field.

• Resource provider: Make permanent the provision of large-scale, flexible challenge grants to boost innovation and competitiveness.

A core function of the EDA should be to manage a rotating set of large-scale competitive challenge grant programs to make flexible, transformative funding available to U.S. regions for pursuing promising innovations and strategies.  

The key is to enable the EDA to routinely administer high-demand “big bet” competitions, which have thus far been operated only from one-time supplemental appropriations, as outlined above. This proposal highlights the importance of scale (high-dollar, flexible challenge grants) in driving real, tangible change across regions.  As the aforementioned research on growth centers shows, it is critical to help midsized metro areas with high potential for success plug into the innovation economy’s tendency to concentrate in particular places with a critical density of assets. These competitive grants should also reward key outcomes that go beyond traditional job creation metrics. With its thought leadership function, the EDA can then capture lessons and evaluations from innovative practices and share them with other regions to inspire more evidence-driven strategies . Meanwhile, the EDA could support components of non-winning grant applications with existing, targeted EDA programs—for example, in public works or university innovation.    

To that end, the $3 billion for the EDA in the American Rescue Plan Act is a model approach. The funding enabled the agency to design and announce a set of grant competitions to meet nationally significant economic recovery priorities, including tech-enabled industry growth, a skilled workforce, travel and tourism, and prosperous Indigenous and coal communities. What’s notable here is that competitive grants can be deployed to support innovation and renewal across large regions as well as smaller urban and rural communities. That approach to allocating resources is inclusive, targeted, tailored, and intensive enough in each economic region to make a meaningful difference.   

Within that $3 billion package, the $1 billion Build Back Better Regional Challenge grant program demonstrates the promise of scale and flexibility in promoting global competitiveness. The funding—focused on a planning grant round and then implementation grants of $50 million to $100 million in selected regions—sufficiently empowers local leaders to implement smart, holistic regional cluster initiatives that create lasting economic competitiveness. It is flexible in that it rewards a suite of initiatives identified by multisector leaders (e.g., applied research, workforce training, entrepreneurship, community development) that create the conditions for industry clusters to succeed. What’s more, the program articulates clear and meaningful outcomes such as long-run industry competitiveness, quality jobs, racial and economic equity, and bridging urban and rural divides. As one of our local partners shared, “These targeted investments to fill [key intervention] gaps is one capability that EDA has that maybe no one else does. If this is the direction the EDA is going, then bravo.”  

Future EDA challenge grant programs could reward transformative initiatives that connect urban and rural economies through supply chains and other linkages (a core insight from development economists worldwide ); or address specific areas of innovation needs as surfaced by EDA regional clusters research ; or that leverage anchor institutions such as regional public universities to spearhead economic development in distressed places. . The main point is that categorical, capital-intensive project funding will not yield projects that accelerate or reinvent a region’s economic trajectory. Regions need well-resourced challenge grants like Build Back Better to become the norm, because that is what it takes to generate impact.  

State and regional stakeholders agree. The EDA received over 500 applications for the Build Back Better Regional Challenge from all 50 states and five territories, for just 60 planning grants and even fewer implementation grants. That’s an indication of the hunger for large-scale economic growth programs and of what’s right about this program’s design.  

• Capacity builder: Strengthen the capacity of local and regional intermediaries so they can effectively take on efforts related to both innovation and renewal .

The EDA should have a set of capacity-building programs that meet the needs of large regions and lagging communities. On the former, large metro areas ought not be dismissed as “high-capacity” places that can take care of themselves, when the reality is that organizing cross-sector, multijurisdictional regional competitiveness strategies toward greater equity and inclusion is complex, labor-intensive work. Meanwhile, many rural Main Streets, small towns, and urban corridors do not have the institutions or capacity to plan, design, or kick-start new initiatives to reverse or stem economic distress. In short, the EDA should adopt a flexible, locally responsive approach to capacity building that reflects the continuum of challenges across communities.    

To do this, Congress could equip the EDA to administer two broad sets of capacity-building programs.  

First, the EDA could offer grants to local, regional, and national intermediaries with the goal of increasing the capacity of local and regional entities to plan, develop, implement, and manage multisector economic revitalization strategies. This includes direct investment in organizations to hire and train staff and use market research. It also includes enabling smaller communities to participate and link up to regional strategies; this could prioritize giving lagging local economies the capacity to compete for large-scale funding, such as the challenge grants described above. Furthermore, via its thought leadership role, the EDA could provide or co-sponsor seminars and training programs for economic development professionals on the latest trends and practices. In short, to move regions out of distress, the EDA should invest in the capability of “backbone” organizations and other implementers to collectively execute high-quality visions and strategies that endure and adapt over time.  

Second, the EDA should administer an efficient national corps of deployable talent—for example, a “fellows” program that places qualified economic development professionals in local and regional organizations. These fellows could help local organizations develop regional planning strategies, organize civic planning processes in preparation for competitive grants, put together competitive grant applications, and design and execute key initiatives.

• Federal coordinator: Formalize the EDA’s capacity to coordinate with other federal agencies to ensure federal investment in local economies is cohesive and maximizes benefits.

Federal programs are too often siloed, burdensome to access and use, and not responsive enough to the varied economic conditions and institutional capacities at the local level. There are two ways in which Congress should empower the EDA to be a more effective coordinator of federal support for local economic development.  

The first way involves formally elevating the EDA’s role to bring greater coherence to interagency federal place-based economic development when appropriate. This is not a new role for the EDA, given its interagency collaboration on disaster recovery and manufacturing communities . This might include elevating the EDA head from an assistant secretary to an under secretary within Commerce, so its leadership is on par with that of the International Trade Administration or National Institute of Standards and Technology, and more able to convene other cabinet-level agencies. Congress could formally establish and resource the EDA’s small Economic Development Integration office to further the agency’s capacity to coordinate federal programs in its headquarters and field offices. Congress could also expand the EDA’s role as coordinator to include serving as a delivery partner with other agencies eager to benefit from its place-based economic expertise.

Second, Congress could support an EDA planning coordination program to maximize the alignment of federally mandated regional plans, so that required objectives actually map toward achieving coordinated, desired outcomes in communities. Currently, at least three other federal agencies—Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Labor, and Transportation—plus the EDA require regions to produce detailed long-range or consolidated plans. It is commendable that the EDA has worked with other agencies on cross-agency recognition of these plans (e.g., a consolidated plan submitted to HUD can count for the EDA’s program requirements, and vice-versa). However, there is little coordination between the processes driven by multiple agency requirements, resulting in regional plans that often operate on parallel but disconnected tracks, sometimes with contradictory or competing priorities. Yet leaders on the ground know that effective, inclusive regional economic development requires that workforce, housing, land use, and transportation goals and investments work in concert. Grants for this EDA coordination program would increase the capacity of EDA staff and regional entities to regularly convene regional actors, coordinate with the public, align goals and investments, and revise formal plans accordingly. The EDA, HUD, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Transportation, and the Government Accountability Office have all affirmed the need to better coordinate federally funded regional and local planning efforts to ensure federal investments are more strategic, aligned, and effective. Not surprisingly, some of the most promising cross-agency work currently underway is both targeted and outcome driven—for example, seeking to accelerate economic innovation, diversification, and the creation of good jobs in coal and power plant communities.  

Beyond these four key roles, the EDA could employ some core principles to inform the design and implementation of its programs, policies, and partnerships. This is what the agency, at its best, already strives to be: flexible , to best meet the unique needs of different communities and regions; locally led , to increase the probability of success and better ensure it avoids favoring some communities over others; equitable and sustainable , to demonstrate that embracing diversity, equity, inclusion, and climate resilience is key to unleashing economic opportunity and boosting U.S. competitiveness; and outcome-driven , to reward local and regional initiatives that identify clear outcomes and measures to gauge progress on those outcomes.  

Conclusion  

As the U.S. confronts a range of economic shocks and intense global competition for leadership in innovation and economic growth, it is vital that policymakers remember that the nation’s competitiveness depends on the capacities of regions, both urban and rural, to innovate, prosper, and become more economically resilient.  

Today, America’s competitive advantages are concentrated in too few places. But there is a way to unleash the economic promise of more places, expand opportunity at home and competitiveness broadly, and make the economy work for all regions and all groups of people. With the EDA, the federal government has an indispensable agency whose sole mission is to revitalize local economies. But for now, the agency is tasked to do too much with too little, with a remit to renew distressed regions and accelerate innovation in others. Doing both effectively is crucial, and it is possible with the right support.  

For these reasons, the EDA’s reauthorization and future budget appropriations must go beyond the status quo in order to modernize and equip the agency to do transformative work.  

Brookings Metro Global Economy and Development

Center for Sustainable Development

Simon Hodson

May 8, 2024

Jenny Schuetz, Eve Devens

April 29, 2024

Vanessa Williamson

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• Regional activity
• Funding for staff
• Case studies

Helping to solve economic disparity in China through online entrepreneurship

Dr Wei Miao (UCL Faculty of Engineering Sciences) used UCL-Zhejiang University Strategic Partner Funds to understand the impact of regional promotional strategies on large e-commerce platforms.

10 May 2024

The Covid-19 pandemic revealed a range of socio-economic inequalities across the world, when government-imposed restrictions impacted the ability of some individuals to earn money. This was heightened in less economically developed countries. However, there are opportunities for entrepreneurs and small and medium-sized businesses to use e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and eBay to sell goods and earn a living. This is a particularly beneficial option during a mass crisis such as a pandemic because business can continue more or less as usual. However, the visibility of sellers on these platforms can vary, and in some instances, sellers and their products don’t get enough attention to make a living.

In response to this, Dr Wei Miao wanted to explore whether promoting whole regions – and not just individual sellers – on e-commerce platforms could improve the economic prospects for entrepreneurs. Following a successful application to the UCL-Zhejiang University Strategic Partner Funds, he partnered with Professor Liqiang Huang from Zhejiang University in China, to explore the topic in depth.

Wei and Liqiang in front of Qiushi Lecture Hall (the iconic building of ZJU)

Wei and Liqiang in front of Zhejiang University's main gate

Wei and Liqiang in Zhejiang University School of Management

The power of collective promotions online

“Taobao is the largest e-commerce platform in China,” Wei explained. “Our partners at Zhejiang University have contacts there, so through this project, we were able to collect very detailed sales data on a large scale. This covered many provinces and regions in China. Although this project is China-specific, we believe our findings could also be generalised to other developing economies.”

When buyers browse e-commerce platforms such as Taobao, Amazon or eBay, they commonly see endorsements. However, these endorsements are pitched at the level of products from individual sellers – using terminology such as ‘Amazon’s choice’ or ‘eBay bestseller’. Wei and his collaborators wanted to explore the benefits of endorsing whole geographical regions instead – known as a collective promotional strategy. Fortuitously, Taobao implemented a strategy like this in 2014 and is the only known large e-commerce platform that has done so. The platform would calculate the total sales of all sellers in a particular rural town. If the total sales exceeded certain thresholds, an endorsement called ‘Taobao Town’ would be given. As a result, this collective would be promoted to buyers across the whole Taobao platform.

“It means that we, as consumers, will know that a rural town might be under-developed in terms of its economy. But it produces some unique items that customers like,” Wei said. “We thought this type of promotion could be quite effective. We conducted causal inference econometric analyses to compare uncertified towns with certified ‘Taobao Towns’. The certified towns experienced an almost 32% increase in their sales because of this endorsement. That was our first major finding – collective promotion strategies can indeed help rural towns boost their sales.”

The team also found that the collective promotion strategy can help mitigate regional disparities between richer areas and underdeveloped areas. It is the least developed areas that have the most to gain from the ‘Taobao Town’ endorsement. And when a town gets the endorsement, people are more motivated to pursue an e-commerce career. This was particularly the case for female entrepreneurs and younger entrepreneurs, who tend to be underrepresented in entrepreneurship.

In addition, the research dispelled concerns that a ‘Taobao Town’ certification in one town might negatively impact the economy in neighbouring towns, or exacerbate inequalities in a region as a whole. “Our analysis shows that towns neighbouring certified towns also benefit from the endorsement of the focal town,” Wei said. “We believe this is due to the ‘encouraging effect’. People in neighbouring towns see the successes, learn how to do e-commerce well, and then thrive in their own businesses. It's a win-win situation for both the certified towns and the neighbouring towns.”

Improving regional economies in a changing world

Wei and his collaborators want to share the findings from this study to policymakers across the world, particularly in developing economies. “Regional economic disparity issues are common in other countries,” Wei explained. “Rolling out similar collective promotion strategies on other platforms can boost the visibility of remote locations and rural towns. This can help local entrepreneurs to develop their businesses and succeed in this post-Covid world.”

Together with his collaborators at Zhejiang University and Professor Christopher Tang from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), Wei has also recently completed a paper about these findings, which will be submitted to leading academic management journals for publication. The team is attending a range of academic conferences to share their findings with other academics. Crucially, Taobao has reacted very positively to the results, and the company is in the process of allocating more resources to work on its collective promotion strategy. Taobao also plans to run more training programmes to the sellers in certified ‘Taobao Towns’ so they can maximise the benefits of this endorsement.

Next, the team plans to analyse the data further to understand pre-Covid and post-Covid experiences. As there have been concerns that some demographic and ethnic groups were impacted differently by Covid-19, this information could help governments plan better for future crisis situations. Protecting the income and earning potential of everyone could be crucial in the future.

“Our successes so far mean we are trying to deepen this collaboration between UCL and Zhejiang University,” Wei said. “We want to involve more academics from each side, plus launch some joint teaching programmes and PhD programmes. I would really encourage other academics at UCL to apply for funding through UCL Global Engagement. Getting this funding is not the end of the story for us, it’s really the starting point.”

• The UCL-Zhejiang University Strategic Partner Funds is one of UCL's Partner Funds . It opens for applications on September 6, 2024.
• A Rising Tide that Lifts All Boats: The Effects of Collective Recognition Programs on E-Commerce Sellers and Regional Economic Development  (working paper)
• Dr Wei Miao's academic profile  
• UCL Faculty of Engineering Sciences
• UCL in East Asia
• UCL and China
• Aerial View of Rural Chinese Town and Farmland
• Credit: iStock

May. 14, 2024

Coffee & quality case study #1: angel reach, brief : may. 14, 2024.

This first Coffee & Quality Case Study focuses on Angel Reach, a nonprofit working with young people aging out of the foster care system and/or at risk of homelessness. The study seeks to understand the predictors and prerequisites of clients successfully completing Angel Reach's programming.

The Kinder Institute for Urban Research and United Way of Greater Houston created a program called Coffee & Quality Case Study that works with designated United Way organizations to 1) identify ways to build and bolster the organization's current data-collecting practices and 2) use data to understand and improve program outcomes. The first Coffee & Quality Case Study focused on Angel Reach , a nonprofit working with young people aging out of the foster care system and/or at risk of homelessness.

The United Way, the Kinder Institute and Angel Reach codesigned and codeveloped a series of research questions to help explore and better understand:

• Who are the clients entering Angel Reach's program?
• How are clients progressing over time and who is likely to be retained?
• How should Angel Reach apply the study's findings to practice?

The data used in this study were collected by Angel Reach from 2020 to 2023. They included information on clients' demographics, personal goals, and scores on a 12-item matrix identifying their needs in child care, education, employment, finances, food, health care, legal, mental health, shelter, substance abuse, support network and transportation/mobility.

Findings and lessons learned were also shared during a webinar hosted by the three organizations.

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A Clear-Sighted Case for Economic History

It is painfully obvious that meaningful appreciation of the economic past is lacking. And that ignorance has consequences outside the academy.

Economic history—the study of economic phenomena, processes, and patterns in past time, employing tools from economics, history, and other disciplines—is a small field. For a brief time, roughly half a century ago, it was a hot area of scholarly interest, but from the 1970s until the early twenty-first century its fortunes ebbed, as historians gravitated to trendier fields such as cultural history and economists moved increasingly toward modeling. The recession of 2007–09 and its aftershocks helped to spark a modest uptick in interest in economic history in both history and economics departments, but mostly in the former, as scholars looked to the past (particularly the Great Depression) for lessons about how and why significant economic downturns arise, how to respond to them, and how to prevent them going forward. A second reason for the renewed interest in history was a seeming rise in economic inequality in the US and elsewhere in recent decades, which prompted some scholars to study income and wealth distributions in the past and others to “interrogate” the capitalist economic system, which they already believed at least implicitly, to have been responsible for economic inequality both historically and in the present day.

In principle, the growing interest in economic history, however modest, should have been a salutary development. In some cases, it in fact was. Generally speaking, though, the results thus far have proven disappointing. Most of the growth has occurred in history departments rather than in economics departments, with many of the practitioners eager critics of capitalism bereft of basic familiarity with—much less command of—analytical tools essential to economic history as it has developed over time, particularly knowledge of economic theory and formal methods. The fact that many of these practitioners—sometimes known as new historians of capitalism—are also unfamiliar with much of the relevant work in economic history produced since the late 1950s (when the field took a turn toward more analytical rigor) has limited the usefulness of their findings as well. Thus, while it’s nice that economic history has been getting more attention of late, further developments will still be needed—a broader understanding of economics by historians and more fruitful interactions between economists and historians, for starters—before the field realizes its considerable potential both within history and economics departments and without.

Regarding broader constituencies: It is painfully obvious today that meaningful appreciation of the economic past is still lacking in many circles. This deficiency at once invites and helps to explain interpretive problems not only for social scientists but also for people in other, “harder” fields as well. A recent, highly publicized study of the economic effects of untreated presbyopia—the age-related inability to focus on nearby objects—in developing countries illustrates this point.

This study, published in PLOS ONE and immediately picked up by the New York Times (“Glasses Improve Income, Not Just Eyesight” ) among other major media venues involved a randomized controlled trial or RCT—the gold standard of scientific field research—relating to presbyopia in rural Bangladesh. The researchers involved correctly viewed presbyopia as both a medical condition and a potential drag on the Bangladeshi economy and wanted to see how much effect, if any, a simple, inexpensive intervention would have on that drag. Clearly, such a study could have major implications for both public health and economic development in less developed countries (LDCs) today.

Regarding research design: Setting technical details aside, the key subjects of the investigation comprised over 800 older Bangladeshi workers (aged 40-65), people in “near vision intensive jobs” of various kinds—people working as “tailors, artisans, mechanics, carpenters, farmers, and shopkeepers.” Participants accepted into the trials had to meet a number of criteria, including normal or near normal uncorrected distance visual acuity and evidence of uncorrected presbyopia. Accepted participants were randomly divided into two groups, one of which received inexpensive reading glasses to improve near vision, while the other did not. At the time of division, there was no appreciable difference in the median monthly incomes of the participants. The principal finding from the careful study was that eight months later, the self-reported median average monthly income of the participants in “near vision intensive jobs” who had been given free reading glasses and used them was about 33 percent higher than the participants in “near vision intensive jobs” who had not been subject to the “intervention,” i.e., had not been given free reading gasses to use in the workplace. In other words, near-vision glasses improved both the vision and the income of Bangladeshi workers in near-vision-intensive jobs. Good to know. Hear, hear!

Economic history would have both helped the researchers in framing the problems to be studied and allowed the public better to contextualize the findings achieved.

That said, had the researchers—and the news media—been a bit more conversant with, ahem, economic history, the results of the study might not have been viewed as “stop the presses” material, but rather more as useful contemporary corroboration and calibration of effects long known about, at least in a general way. For example, in his monumental 1998 study, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor , the great Harvard-based economic historian David S. Landes included a section on “eyeglasses” in his chapter on the genius of Western innovation in a period in which the West in certain ways resembled LDCs today. In the section, he writes that the invention of [magnifying] spectacles in the medieval period “more than doubled the working life of skilled craftsmen, especially those who did fine jobs: scribes (crucial before the invention of printing) and readers, instrument and toolmakers, close weavers, metal workers.”

As Landes correctly framed things : “The problem [was] biological: because the crystalline lens of the human eye hardens around the age of forty, it produces a condition similar to farsightedness (presbyopia). The eye can no longer focus on close objects. But around the age of forty, a medieval craftsman could reasonably expect to live and work another twenty years, the best years of his working life—if he could see well enough. Eyeglasses solved the problem.”

Landes then goes on to lay out the history of eyeglasses. In so doing, he points out that although rudimentary magnifying glasses and crystals had been developed earlier in a variety of places (and used for reading), the first functional magnifiers—with reduced distortion and connected to a wearable device (“thus leaving the hands free”)—seem to have been developed in Pisa in what is now Italy toward the end of the thirteenth century.

And this was only the beginning, according to Landes. Over the next century and a half, the Italians refined the optical arts considerably, making a variety of convex and concave lenses for diverse eye conditions. He maintains that Europe “enjoyed a monopoly of corrective lenses for three to four hundred years.” He goes on to argue that eyeglasses not only made “fine work” possible, including the manufacturing of fine instruments over a lengthier period of time, but also encouraged the development of other “fine” technologies—”gauges, micrometers, and fine wheel cutters”—that over the centuries helped Europe and the West to move ahead of other areas in the development of a “battery of tools linked to precision measurement and control,” areas increasingly vital to economic productivity. To be sure, Landes may have been a bit too focused on technology in the West—devoting less attention to relevant developments in China, South Asia, and the Arab world—but for our purposes here the main takeaway is not necessarily the uniqueness of the West, but the fact that “near vision” spectacles go way back, with their economic importance long a well-established historical fact.

So while the results of the RCT recently conducted in Bangladesh—and a few other similar studies conducted elsewhere—are important and merit praise, greater knowledge of and appreciation for economic history would have both helped the researchers in framing the problems to be studied and allowed the public better to contextualize the findings achieved. No need, then, for any of us to be gobsmacked.

Book Review The Rule of Historicist Judges? David Lewis Schaefer

Forum Constitutional Government After Chevron ? Adam White

Book Review Orwell’s Arresting Ambiguities Theodore Dalrymple

Essay Hayek Among the Post-Liberals Rachel Lu

Book Review Owning the Oceans Jakub Grygiel

A GIS-based catastrophe approach for optimal site selection for installation of solar power plants, East Azerbaijan province case study, Iran

• Research Article
• Published: 14 May 2024

Cite this article

• Marziyeh Esmaeilpour 1 &
• Mansour Kheirizadeh Arouq 2  

Due to depletion of fossil fuels and environmental issues, renewable energy consumption is increasingly growing. Solar energy as the most abundant renewable energy source available is becoming more popular around the world. In the current study, the optimal sites for solar photovoltaic power plants in East Azerbaijan province, Northwest Iran, were investigated. A total of 17 variables were categorized into four groups: climatic, geomorphological, environmental, and access-economic. In order to integrate the variables, a model based on catastrophe theory in the context of GIS was applied. The relative importance and weight of the criteria are computed based on the internal mechanism of the catastrophic system, thus greatly reducing subjectivism and uncertainties of the decision-making process. Five optimal sites located in the western part of the province within the counties of Malekan, Bonab, Ajabshir, Shabestar, and Tabriz were identified as suitable sites for the construction of solar photovoltaic power plants, where there are ideal conditions in terms of many environmental-human variables such as high potential of solar energy, high sunshine hours, low relative humidity, suitable slope, poor vegetation, distance to protected areas, proximity to the population centers, excellent access to the roads and to the main power lines.

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This paper is published as part of a research project supported by University of Maragheh Research Affairs Office, grant number 98/d/3390.

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Esmaeilpour, M., Kheirizadeh Arouq, M. A GIS-based catastrophe approach for optimal site selection for installation of solar power plants, East Azerbaijan province case study, Iran. Environ Sci Pollut Res (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-024-33639-6

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