Outsourcing Economic Development: Exploring the Efficacy of Economic Development Corporations in Rural North Carolina
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Authors
Peters, Thomas
Issue Date
2024-12-12
Type
Dissertation
Language
en_US
Keywords
Public administration , Dissertations, Academic--United States , Economic Development , North Carolina , Rural development--North Carolina , Contracting out , Local government , Public-private sector cooperation , Rural municipalities--North Carolina--Economic conditions , Housing--Economic aspects--North Carolina , Labor market--North Carolina , Wages--North Carolina , Quantitative research , Policy studies
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Abstract
Shrinking local government budgets created an economic development environment in which local governments find it more cost effective to outsource development activities than assume the burden of development activities in-house. This research was conducted to quantitatively assess the performance of economic development corporations with the aim to provide an understanding about the efficacy of economic development corporations by analyzing quantitative data to find if rural counties in North Carolina with economic development corporations experience greater economic growth than rural counties without economic development corporations. There is little academic or practitioner research that addresses the performance of economic development corporations. Consequently, little is known about how effective these private non-profit organizations are at increasing economic development at the local level. The results of this study are mixed. Rural municipalities without an economic development corporation have a higher, positive correlation with population and gross domestic product (GDP) variables. Conversely, the correlation for labor, wage and the housing variable shows higher correlation (negative and positive depending on the variable) in rural municipalities that have an economic development corporation. The statistical findings of this research show only a positive effect in labor/wages and housing. The existence of an economic development corporation did not have a positive effect on the
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This dissertation is protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States (Public Law 94-553, revised in 1976). Consistent with fair use as defined in the Copyright Laws, brief quotations from this material are allowed with proper acknowledgement. Use of the materials for financial gain with the author's expressed written permissions is not allowed.