The Impact of Economic Development Administration Programs: Some Empirical Evidence
利用美国县级数据，比较了接受与未接受经济发展管理局援助地区的个人收入增长率变化，并构建模型量化援助金额、类型和时间对经济增长的影响。
SINCE 1962, the Federal government has been implementing a policy designed to assist economically depressed or lagging areas through loans or grants for various kinds of developmental projects. The Area Redevelopment Act (1962) and the Public Works and Economic Development Act (1965) provide the legislative framework for this effort and as of June 30, 1975, over $2.2 billion had been obligated by the Economic Development Administration (EDA).1 The majority of these funds have been for two main purposes: (1) financial aid (loans and grants) to help communities develop the public facilities needed to attract business and (2) longterm loans at low rates of interest to provide the capital to attract new business to depressed areas and to help established firms expand.2 The purpose of this paper is to provide some empirical evidence relating to the impact of these programs on the aggregate economic growth of recipient areas. Changes in total personal income constitute the measure of economic growth used, and counties form the geographic areas studied. The first part of the paper (section II) compares changes in personal income growth rates of aided counties to those of non-aided counties. Comparisons are also made for a subgroup of counties that received aid during the 1960s but that have not received any assistance in recent years. These comparisons provide some initial observations on the relative growth performance of EDA-assisted areas with no attempt to establish a cause and effect relationship between changes in growth rates and EDA assistance. Section III presents a model designed to measure quantitatively the impact of EDA assistance on county income growth. Economic base theory serves as the analytical base for this model and specific attention is focused on the role of EDA assistance in the growth process. Section IV presents an empirically testable specification of the model from section III. It generates the estimated effects of the amount, type and timing of EDA assistance on changes in county income growth rates. Finally, section V summarizes the results and outlines the implications of these findings.