One of the last things state and local officials want to hear around election time is “It’s the economy, stupid.” To avoid that dread fate, officeholders generally strive to do pretty much anything they can to keep jobs in their districts. At the top of the list: Encouraging big employers to stay in town while persuading new ones to move in — “chasing smokestacks,” as it has been called. Governments end up bidding against each other to attract large firms, and as a 2010 study from MIT, Harvard and U.C. Berkeley shows, the result can be a zero-sum game, with winners and losers.
