Adding a Stick to the Carrot: Location Incentives with Clawbacks, Recisions, and Recalibrations

The escalation of incentive awards to attract and retain new business has emerged as a major concern in state and local development policy. This article addresses claw-back provisions, a largely neglected part of the bargaining process between governments and businesses in the location of new plants and offices. Just as private business transactions work within a framework of legally binding contracts, clawbacks provide some recourse to reclaim all or some of a financing package when a firm fails to meet performance requirements. Besides analyzing clawbacks, the authors identify three related areas for policy intervention: penalties, recisions, and recalibrations. The aim of this article is to show that U.S. policymakers can avoid expensive mistakes if they tie incentives to written guarantees of job creation and other benefits. European regional policymakers have used a carrot-and-stick approach to industrial recruitment. Increasingly, state and city governments in the United States also recognize that public-private bargaining requires some form of reasonable, guaranteed quid pro quo.