Ten Rules for Economic Development Practice: Learning from Forty Years of Research and Observation

In Economic Development Quarterly's second year, Herbert Rubin questioned whether economic development practitioners were strategic actors or reactive opportunists. [Rubin used the terms professionalism and credit claiming.] This article answers Rubin's question by grounding economic development in microeconomic foundations and a conceptual model of market interactions, forging 10 rules that define economic development professionals as market-making intermediaries who reduce information asymmetries, lower transaction costs, and mitigate investment risks by connecting the supply sides of regional factor markets to businesses demanding those assets. The Five Developments framework is a complementary and mutually reinforcing set of development practices, these are: Community, Site, Workforce, Housing, and Economic Development. Four operate on the supply sides of regional asset markets, while Economic Development is the intermediary that connects those assets to business demand. The Ten Rules were refined over 24 years with cycles of presentation, listening, feedback, and revision.