Helping Communities Shine

Whether researching and implementing ways to shape a community's economic development plan or partnering to create ways to put people to work, CREC connects researchers and policymakers with:

     • Data training
     • Custom portfolios that aid regional competitiveness

Project Profile

C2ER State Incentives Database: Stateincentives.org

Council for Community and Economic Research
Start Date: Oct 2004 — End Date: Ongoing

On behalf of C2ER, CREC has developed a national database of state business incentives with profiles on more than 1900 programs. The database (http://stateincentives.org/) was designed to give economic developers a one-stop resource for comparing incentive programs. Data provided in the database includes a fully searchable text description of the program as well as other program information. For instance, an economic developer might search for tax credit programs or loans in a neighboring or competitive state for benchmarking purposes. In addition, the database has a number of analytic descriptors designed to classify incentive programs. Users can easily search for economic development incentives by looking at program category (i.e., tax, direct financing, indirect financing), program type (i.e., bonds, grants, insurance, loans, tax credits, tax exemption, etc.), geographic focus (i.e., enterprise, technology or trade zone, etc.), or business needs (i.e., capital access, facility/site location, infrastructure). C2ER’s state economic development research offices are working with C2ER staff to maintain the database to ensure that it is continuously updated. A major upgrade of the incentives database is underway, including collecting fiscal and statutory information for the programs and launching an upgraded website with more analytical and comparison tools. C2ER and the U.S. Department of Commerce’s SelectUSA initiative entered into a partnership to make some features of the State Business Incentives Database publicly available through SelectUSA.gov.

Research & Planning

About the Client

Council for Community and Economic Research

The Council for Community and Economic Research (C2ER) promotes excellence in community and economic research by improving data quality and availability by fostering learning about regional economic analytic methods.

Project Updates

CREC Internship Profile: Greg Hirschfeld
January 12, 2016

Each year, the Center for Regional Economic Competitiveness (CREC) hires a number of interns who help the organization during the busy summer period. Each is offered an opportunity to learn how the organization helps municipalities, states, and regions respond to changes in local job markets; and CREC specifically works with undergraduate and graduate students who need academic credit. […]

C2ER Report Shows How State Incentive Programs Continue to Evolve
November 13, 2015

The Council for Community and Economic Research (C2ER), one of three associations that the Center for Regional Economic Competitiveness (CREC) manages, today released the State of State Business Incentives 2015 report which reflects the present status of the more than 1,900 state business incentives in operation around the U.S. The report is based a recent review that C2ER performed for its State […]