Local Preferences for Economic Development Outcomes : Analytical Hierarchy Procedure

Governments frequently formulate policies designed to stimulate regional economic development. Rarely, however, are efforts made to measure local preferences for economic development outcomes. While the political process should eventually sort out how well local governments are meeting the needs of their constituents, the irreversible nature of many development outcomes makes it preferable to incorporate local preferences directly into the decision making process. This paper presents a straight forward means of measuring preference trade-offs. The analytical hierarchy procedure is applied to local economic development outcomes in three Virginia counties and is shown to improve the targeting of industries by incorporating local preferences in the targeting process. The method has wide applicability for different development decisions