Latest Research Featured in Economic Development Quarterly
February 2026; volume 40 issue 4 https://journals.sagepub.com/home/edq
The February issue of Economic Development Quarterly (EDQ) is the first of the year’s four issues that celebrate the journal’s 40th anniversary. Appropriately, this issue addresses an ongoing discussion on the relationship between economic, workforce, and community development in a special issue edited by Edward (Ned) Hil and Andrew Van Leuven. While these activities should be integrated on the local level, there remain stubborn challenges in doing so. This issue highlights these challenges as well as the potential benefits to regions if they are successful in harnessing these initiatives into a comprehensive approach.
Kim, Wang, Taylor, and Seley, in their paper, “Building Inclusive Entrepreneurial Ecosystems: Institutional Motivations, Adaptive Design, and Partnership Impacts,” use a market failure approach to develop an ecosystem design and identifies the key “mechanisms that connect organizational intent to sustained engagement.” The authors offer a case study of the Ascend program, which started in Seattle by the University of Washington’s Consulting and Business Development Center (UWCBDC), and now operates in 13 cities nationwide.
Nguyen-Hoang, Hoang, and Shafer examine how tax increment financing (TIF) relates to the local funding of public schools in their paper, “The Cost of Development: How TIF Relates to Property Values Across Nebraska School Districts.” They find that, on average, TIF use is not statistically associated with changes in property values. In particular, they find that TIF usage is positively associated with property values in advantaged school districts, but not in disadvantaged districts. In fact, in some low-income districts it is associated with a modest negative effect, suggesting that TIFs may exacerbate rather than reduce existing inequalities.
In “The Growing Role of Community Development Finance in Economic Development,” Piazza and Schweitzer find that community development resources, such as the Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) and New Market Tax Credits are indeed focused on geographic areas of distressed and underserved census tracts. Moreover, these programs, especially CDFI, are associated with business growth in these areas.
Guinn and Cooper-McCann offer an in-depth comparison of the growth of two auto-dependent communities, one in Detroit and the other in Windsor Ontario, in their paper, “Can Industrial Reinvestment Reverse Neighborhood Decline? Evidence from Automotive Investment in Detroit, Michigan, and Windsor, Ontario, 1980s-2020s.” Both communities have retained thousands of advanced manufacturing jobs and are considered success stories. However, the Windsor community surrounding its auto plants has stabilized while Detroit neighborhoods suffered ongoing abandonment.
In addition to these three research papers, the issue offers the following four commentaries:
Accordino and Mailey, in their commentary, “Convergent Development: Integrating Economic Development and Downtown Revitalization in Small Cities and Towns,” examine three case studies in Virginia to explore the relationship between economic and community development. The authors’ recommendations include valuing historic environments as assets, encouraging existing private and civic organizations to engage in development, and seeking state, federal, and non-profit resources.
In their commentary, “Lessons from Atlanta and Baltimore About Linking Economic and Community Development,” Stoker and Stokan examine 30 years of data on these two very different metro areas and describe selected revitalization initiatives. The two authors offer eight steps local leaders should consider to promote coordinated economic and community development. These include conducting regular communication between economic and community organizations, identifying target neighborhoods, tracking ongoing public investments, building off education and medical investments, and developing consensus among local stakeholders.
Kwon, in her commentary, “Looking in, Leveraging, and Locking: An Asset-Based Framework for Economic Development Policy and Practice,” questions three common economic development assumptions: 1) Good economic practices will benefit most all residents, 2) Economic development solutions can be found outside the local area, and 3) All places are equally capable of running effective economic development programs. The author presents a 3L framework that can encourage more equitable economic development outcomes: looking in (stakeholders assess existing assets), leveraging (the use of existing assets to achieve shared priorities), and locking (ensuring that economic development initiatives benefit economically disadvantaged residents).
Hill and Van Leuven, in addition to editing this issue, offer their own commentaries. With Low, they examine the importance of anchor institutions in “The Value of Economic and Community Development Anchors.” They point out that not all economic/community anchors are the same. While some are durable, others are more ephemeral such as recognized third places. Using a survey of agricultural extension agents, the authors find that the strength of an anchor comes from its community and economic visibility, authenticity, loyalty, utility, and engagement (VALUE).
Finally, in their commentary, “Wrestling with Markets in Economic and Community Development,” Hill and Van Leuven make a strong point that communities are socially constructed and not economic agents. They do not direct economic development; instead, their economic developers are better defined as market-making intermediaries and their community developers support neighborhood development. They introduce a framework based on economic, site, workforce, community, and housing—that, together with productivity gains, drive gross regional product. They conclude that economic developers can positively impact low-income neighborhoods when they connect assets with regional employment and product demand.