Areas of Expertise:
Cluster analysis Community planning and development • Corporate social responsibility • Economic development • Economic impact analysis • Financial incentives for economic development • Public finance and governance • Technology park development
G. Jason Jolley is senior research director for the Carolina Center for Competitive Economies at the Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise and adjunct assistant professor of finance at Kenan-Flagler Business School.
Jolley brings a decade of professional experience in economic development and planning in North Carolina and Illinois, including working for nonprofit and county economic development agencies and for a chamber of commerce. He has staffed an agricultural technology park development initiative, facilitated strategic plan development, and administered an enterprise zone.
At the Center for Competitive Economies, he focuses on state and local economic development incentive policy evaluation and development, strategic planning, impact analysis and industry cluster characterization. Jolley completed one of the largest state-sponsored studies of the effectiveness of state-level incentives for the state of North Carolina.
Jolley routinely works with local and regional governments to identify sustainable economic development opportunities and create local incentive metrics that encourage location and expansion of businesses that use sustainable practices.
He is particularly interested in the application of community engagement techniques to facilitate local economic development planning. In addition to economic development, Jolley's research interests include policy innovation and diffusion, corporate environmentalism, and collaborative planning and public involvement.
Jolley teaches the MBA course "Financing Mega-Projects," at UNC Kenan-Flagler, The course examines large-scale infrastructure investments or "mega-projects," such as airports, highways, high-speed rail and port developments. His academic research focuses on the effectiveness and diffusion of economic development policy interventions. Business Strategy and the Environment, Economic Development Quarterly and Review of Policy Research have published his research.
He holds a Ph.D. in public administration from the School of Public and International Affairs at North Carolina State University, a master's degree in political science from the University of Tennessee and a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.