A new study from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) comes to the conclusion that state and local subsidies for one particular industry:
- Are costly to taxpayers and generous to the industry;
- Reward companies for economic activity that would have occurred anyway;
- Provide the highest paying jobs for non-residents;
- Fail to generate economic returns sufficient to pay for the subsidies;
- Pit states and cities against one another in a no-win race to the bottom;
- And, are justified by using flawed economic impact studies.
Sound familiar? Actually, the CBPP is talking about subsidies for film production, which have proliferated over the past decade. Substitute “sports infrastructure” for “film production” in the document, and the CBPP report reads just like many of the posts here at TSE.
Looks like we have lots of potential ideas for posts when Skip starts “the-entertainment-economist.com”.
My daughter was cast in a small role for a TV pilot to be shot in Georgia. The role was re-cast when the production company found out she’s not a Georgia resident. Their tax break from the state included a clause that a prescribed percentage of the talent and crew had to be Georgia residents. So instead of hiring the actress they preferred, they hired an actress they had earlier passed on. Not becuase of talent, but because of goverment intervention through the tax incentives. This presents a sort of limiting device on the Coase theorem.