UPDATED AND CORRECTED: Further proof that the U.S. uses incentives more than the EU

As if any more proof were needed, I recently came across yet more evidence that U.S. state and local governments give far more in location incentives than EU Member States do. A paper given this spring at the annual meeting of the Association des Économistes Québécois (Association of Quebecois Economists) includes a summary of project-by-project subsidy reporting by the consulting firm ICA Incentives.

ICA Incentives, which has on several occasions provided me data on $100+ million incentives in Europe and the United States, reports on the announcements of large investment projects. Thus, the data summarized in the paper will omit the thousands of smaller projects in the United States that are subsidized by state and local governments. My guess (I have not seen the underlying data) is that the coverage of EU projects is more complete, since EU rules require pre-notification of subsidies to the European Commission and the Commission posts all state aid decisions on its website.

From page 10 of the paper, the total of incentive packages in 2011 through 2013 inclusive, is as follows [UPDATE: I discovered in a database previously supplied by ICA Incentives a number of federal loan guarantees and loans in 2011 and 2012, which I eliminate below]:

United State: $37.2 23.5 billion [subtracting $13.7 billion in federal loans & loan guarantees]
European Union: $6.6 billion
Canada: $2.2 billion
South America: $8.4 billion (more than the EU, which has a GDP over 3 times as large)
Asia: $1 billion (I would guess this is an underestimate)

We can see that the United States gave more than 5 3 1/2 times as much as the European Union did over the three years analyzed. Given that these economies are approximately the same size, that is a gigantic disparity, and it shows, as I have argued on numerous occasions, that the EU state aid controls work to reduce location incentives. The result for South America also suggests this.

Moreover, the consequences of giving such large state and local incentives are enormous. As I have reported before, the value of state and local subsidies ($70 billion per year) substantially exceeds the cost of the state and local government jobs that were cut in the wake of the Great Recession. This is a huge opportunity cost for these governments as well as representing efficiency and equity losses as a result of the subsidies. With this additional evidence, the need for incentive reform is stronger than ever.

Cross-posted at Angry Bear.