Ending Job Piracy, Building Regional Prosperity

July 2014

By Leigh McIlvaine with Greg LeRoy

Local job piracy – the use of subsidies to attract businesses from nearby communities in the same metro area – generates heavy costs for regions in terms of both lost tax revenues and externalities associated with sprawl while failing to create new jobs.  But anti-piracy agreements used by the Denver, Colorado and Dayton, Ohio regions have cultivated an economic development ethos that is focused on shared regional prosperity.