Missouri has a new economic development strategy. I am particularly interested when states such as Missouri go through this type of exercise because they have a tough time differentiating themselves in the pack of U.S. states (sound familiar?).
While the strategy is fairly typical, two things stand out as interesting. One, they have targeted broad sectors of the economy and then identified specific niches within them where Missouri has specific potential.
Secondly, “Missouri will optimize its tax, incentive and regulatory policies to best support the growth of high-value target sectors.” As I have detailed before, this is a fairly common approach across North America – just not in New Brunswick. We have very little ‘optimization’ of tax incentive and regulatory policies to support the growth of high-value target sectors. I suspect there are many reasons for this such as a historical unwillingness from the Dept. of Finance, an aversion to ‘picking winners and losers’, etc.