Useful Stats: The CFED Report Card

While the Development Report Card of the States, issued annually by the Corporation for Enterprise Development (CfED) usually generates a news story in most local papers, a quick scan of several articles reveals the science and technology-related components of the report card get mixed play. This year’s report, funded by the Economic Development Administration, is available on-line in its entirety and has a customizing feature for ease of comparison.

CfED uses more than 70 measures and data sets as indicators of the effectiveness of each state’s economic development policies in three broad categories: performance, business vitality and development capacity. Each category has a number of sub units, which in turn consist of several individual measures. S&T indicators and those more generally related to tech-based economic development are somewhat scattered throughout the report card.

(Note that most of the individual sets of statistics have been discussed in earlier editions of the Digest. The uniqueness of the CfED report card is the selection and aggregation of the particular indicators, the assignation of letter grades to indicate a state’s performance for each of the three broad categories, the ease of on-line access to the information, and the amount of public attention the report card receives.)

Indicators of possible utility for S&T programs include:



Development Capacity

• Innovation Assets — including Ph.D. scientists and engineers (S&E) in the workforce, S&E graduate students, computers in households, university R&D expenditures, federal R&D spending, private research R&D, SBIR awards, royalties and licenses grants, patents issued, and university spin offs. Innovation Assets is part of the Development Capacity category. A table of how each state’s grades for these ten measures can be found at: http://drc.cfed.org/?section=grades&page=innovation 
• Measures of venture capital investments and Small Business Investment Company financing are included in the Financial Resources subcategory.
• Digital infrastructure, a composite score of 41 indicators developed by the Progress and Freedom Foundation “that determine progress by state governments in creating policies for world-class digital infrastructure,” can be found under Infrastructure Resources. This appears to be the only indicator in the Report Card that is policy driven rather than normative statistics. The measure doesn't include the degree of Internet connectivity, broadband access, or other telecommunications infrastructure issues.

Business Vitality

• Entrepreneurial Energy — including new companies created in 1998, the percentage change in the number of new company formations over 1997, employment growth of start-up firms (less than five years old), initial public offerings, and the percentage of businesses that are technology companies according to the Census Bureau’s definition. A table of how each state ranks for these ten measures can be found at: http://drc.cfed.org/?section=grades&page=business 
• Two components of the Competitiveness of Existing Businesses subcategory, capital investment in manufacturing and number of business closings.

The complete Development Report Card of the States 2000 can be found at: http://drc.cfed.org/