Economic impact and feasibility analysis is easy to hide behind jargon. These are the guides we wish existed: what a study measures, what it costs, how to tell if one is honest, and how to put it to work. Open, and no email wall.
What a study measures for a specific kind of project, and where each type tends to overstate.
What a RIMS II multiplier measures, what it can benchmark, and the limits of geography, year, and aggregation.
Why visitor spending and leakage decide the real number, and what inflates a tourism study.
It generates activity but often costs a government more to serve than it returns.
A region's largest anchor, and why contribution and new activity must be kept separate.
Why manufacturing produces a durable impact, and what determines whether the effect is real.
Huge investment, few permanent jobs, and a tax deal that decides it. What an honest study weighs.
How gaming anchors a rural or tribal economy, and the substitution question that decides the real number.
Where displacement matters most, and why net impact is far smaller than sales.
Real jobs, but most spending is moved from other local businesses. What an honest study measures.
Production, agriculture, and tourism at once, which makes the studies easy to inflate.
Steady jobs and a longer local supply chain in farm country. What an honest study measures.
Jobs and investment against truck traffic and a tax deal. What an honest study weighs on both sides.
Agriculture anchors rural counties. Where the local dollars go, and the water question a study must face.
Wood products anchor many rural economies. Where the local dollars really are, and what a study should show.
High wages and a big headline against a finite life and reclamation. What an honest study weighs.
Construction, land payments, and tax revenue, with few permanent jobs. What an honest study weighs.
Big investment and jobs against a big incentive and resource ask. What an honest study weighs.
Its real value is the activity it enables, not the construction. How to measure a fiber project honestly.
Tourism and second-home money against housing and service strain. What an honest study weighs.
Visitor spending with a light footprint. What an honest tourism study measures, and where it inflates.
Its value is the activity it enables, not the jobs on the field. What an honest aviation study measures.
A steady anchor of jobs and student spending. What an honest study measures, and where it inflates.
Steady public jobs against real trade-offs. What an honest correctional-facility study weighs.
Feasibility, viability, and market questions to settle before you build, open, or buy.
When a project could go in more than one place, the comparison quietly decides the winner. How to score every site on the same terms.
What it examines, what it answers, and the moments to commission one before you commit.
Whether the demand is really there before you build. What it measures, and what it cannot promise.
The phrase everyone uses and few define. What it actually tests, and how to know before you build.
What lenders require, and what makes a study hold up under a credit committee's review.
Debt service coverage, the ratio a lender checks first, and how to know yours before you apply.
Before the lease and the loan, what a feasibility study answers about whether the idea can carry itself.
Growth feels like progress until the numbers do not carry the debt. What a feasibility read tests first.
A property is a bet on the income it can produce. How to test the purchase before you close.
What a property should actually be used for, before you build or buy. What the analysis tests.
A good study is financial self-defense: it stops budget creep and keeps you from a loan you cannot carry.
How to read a study you were handed, and how we red-team our own before anyone else does.
The name is not a metaphor. What red teaming means, and why every project should face it internally before a lender or funder does.
You do not have to be an economist to catch a study that will not survive review. Where to look first.
Seven questions that separate a study you can act on from a number built to justify a decision already made.
A few recurring mistakes are what we see inflate a study. What they are and how to spot them before you quote the number. What they are and how to spot them before you quote the number.
Impact tells you what a project does to the economy. Viability tells you whether to do it. You need both.
Two terms that sound alike, are constantly confused, and answer different questions.
Ranking two studies is easy. Knowing the ranking will hold up is not. What comparison readiness tests.
What the numbers mean, what a study costs, and how to commission one.
Direct, indirect, and induced effects in plain language, and where the numbers quietly inflate.
The most cited and most misunderstood number in the field, and why a large one is not always good news.
What a project means for a government's budget: the revenue it brings and the costs it creates.
What funders look for, and how to use the number honestly without overstating what it proves.
What to ask for, what it should cost, and how to get a result a board or a funder can use.
The honest range, why it is so wide, and how to tell if a quote reflects the work or the overhead.