Incentives are used to reward, induce, or motivate action from the corporate sector. Actions that are typically rewarded include: job creation, job quality, job diversification, job retention, industry clustering, in-creased trade and increased investment. Additional actions that the economic development communities are interested in rewarding include: redevelopment in distressed or blighted areas; improved image with high-profile companies; targeted residential growth; and productivity gains.

    Recent information has shown that the corporate sector is far from fully utilizing incentives. The reasons have been attributed to time and resources. According to this survey, the corporate sector find complicated programs and fragmentation of incentive responsibility to be the leading reasons, followed by lack of information and the effects of the recession on statutory incentives.
      Overall, the public sector agrees. Economic development professionals express increased concern due to confidentiality and public disclosure issues, public scrutiny, and automatic audits as negative inducements to using available benefits.
      Is an economic impact study necessary? While 87 percent of economic development agencies use economic impact studies to support their incentive offerings, only 33 percent of the corporate sector does the same. This shows that the public sector is more prepared than the corporate sector as to the amount of incentives that are appropriate for a deal.