GLOBALIZATION'S IMPACT ON STATE-LOCAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT POLICY

The growing exposure of the U.S. economy to international competition, popularly termed globalization, over the past two decades has brought some momentous changes affecting the American economy, society, and life styles. Not surprisingly, these changes have been reflected in growing political turbulence and shifts in policy paradigms as well. This symposium explores the effects that globalization has had on economic development policy and practice by state and local governments in the United States. Part I charts and seeks to explain“The Expanding Global Linkages” of state and local governments over the last several decades. Part II on the” Potential for Transformation “then argues that the economic transformations set off by globalization are pushing state and local development policy toward strategies that should overcome some of the problems associated with the previous strategy dubbed “smokestack chasing.” Yet, caution is certainly necessary before accepting such optimistic interpretations. Part III, therefore, presents several analyses suggesting that smokestack chasing “struck back” and that blind reliance on free markets and entrepreneurs hip can be dangerous to a community's social and economic health, indicting the existence of “Pitfalls in a Changing Universe.”     

Local media tone,economic conditions,and the evaluation of US governors

Connections between media coverage, economic conditions, and performance evaluations of political leaders have seldom been explored in specific local media markets, due to the challenges of measuring media tone and content for a large number of media outlets or markets. In this paper, we develop a measure of media tone by comparing the economic evaluations of local media consumers and national media consumers within the same media market. We then use this measure to evaluate the relationship between media tone and objective economic conditions. We find that positive media tone increases the probability that individuals will approve of the governor’s performance in office, and that tone also attenuates the negative relationship between unemployment and gubernatorial approval.