Gross Domestic Product per capita for America.

To put it in layman terms, economic development is the act of government intervention in order to promote the economic activity (usually from the private sector) in a particular region. This type of intervention can take one or a variety of forms, from marketing campaigns, to investing in improvements to regional amenities, to the direct purchase of economic activity by subsidizing the construction and operating costs of new businesses.

The main goal for economic development is, in most cases, the expansion of the local or regional economy. The reasoning behind this relies on the assumption that economic expansion will create new jobs: jobs that residents need, that politicians never fail to promise, jobs which the local economic development officials (if everything works as planned) work hard to deliver. Economic development is vital and states, cities, and counties all have departments that specialize in or deal with economic development. These departments, along with other governmental or quasi-governmental development agencies, serve as marketing representatives for their jurisdictions, reaching out to woo businesses and sell the virtues of the region to all that would be persuaded.

To improve their region's sales pitch (quite literally), public officials need to spend a lot of time and attention to enhance their "business climate." We call "business climate" to the highly subjective and hotly-debated term for the way in which businesses notice the area as being "business friendly" or not and the ability of the area to meet their operating needs. You have probably heard terms like market risk that refers to the risk of the value of an investment to fluctuate based on the characteristics of the market. Companies will usually have "Enterprise Risk Management" divisions, which is just a fancy name for a group of people that get together and make sure that the company's money will be placed somewhere where it's relatively safe. In reality, this is a rather complicated process where companies weigh many factors when deciding where to locate. High on this list are such business basics like proximity to customers, proximity to suppliers, the availability of skilled labour, the quality of infrastructure, and the supply of the key inputs (things both material and situational) needed for their particular business (e.g. water, air transport, a university research and development centre, and so on.) Companies also evaluate a region's quality as a settlement (also called quality of life by some specialists), looking for good schools, safe neighbourhoods, and cultural amenities that add up to a desirable place for employees to live and raise families.