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The article reports that new Federal programs for regional economic development stress productivity as a criterion for the regional allocation of Federal funds. What have been surveyed turns out to be a sizeable number of partial indicants of growth potential in employment, differing in numerous ways. All the data might be described as indicants of disequilibrium, with equilibrium attainable by growth in employment. But in some cases, such as local market deficiencies, the likely amount of employment growth can be roughly estimated. In others, such as a positive competitive shift or high rates of return on investment, only investigation of area and industry in some depth could hope to provide an estimate of the employment increment resulting in equilibrium. The various indicants in combination complement and reinforce one another. All they can do, however, is serve as criteria for partitioning all defined areas into several groups, offering respectively much better and much poorer growth prospects. For such subgroups of widely differing prospects it is possible to say that federal development expenditures of an incremental nature would have greater payoffs in one than in another.

The article focuses on benefit taxation in Colombia. The valorization tax as it exists in Colombia, particularly in Medellin, seems to have a useful but limited role to play in economic development, it is effective in financing certain specialized types of public investment at a certain stage in the economic development of a country. For the tax to be useful the country must have reached a stage where urbanization is proceeding at a rapid rate and large modern cities are being formed. The country must also have developed capable administrators, real estate men, and engineers who can handle the complicated machinery of the valorization tax. City planning must also have become feasible. Yet the country must not have yet reached the stage of maturity where capital markets have developed which can take over the job from the valorization tax and where the city has become so large and intricate that the relation between public investment and increases in site value is too complex for valorization financing to work. Colombians feel that the experience in Medellin and elsewhere in the last twenty years has established both the general principles and the specialized methods needed for successful valorization programs.

This article focuses on the regional economic development objectives and subsidization of local industry around the world. While the concern of national policymakers with the problem of lagging regions is of recent origin in most countries, the problem itself is an old one. It is therefore not surprising that many state and local governments as well as private-interest groups in the afflicted regions have traditionally attempted to attract industry by offering financial assistance of one form or another. Exemption from local property taxes, provision of site and building at nominal long-term rentals, and low-interest loans are just a few examples of the forms which local subsidization of industry may take. Not only has local subsidization been widely practiced for a long time, it has also been widely condemned. Economists have generally rejected it as an unwarranted interference with the efficiency of resource allocation. Not only has local subsidization been widely practiced for a long time, it has also been widely condemned. Eonomists have generally rejected it as an unwarranted interference with the efficiency of resource allocation.