Who We Are

This website was the creation of Peter Fisher, author of a book on state business climate rankings, Grading Places: What do State Business Climate Rankings Really Tell Us? The book’s first edition was published by the Economic Policy Institute in 2005, and an updated second edition was published in 2013 by Good Jobs First and the Iowa Policy Project. The website replaced future print editions of the book and was updated periodically as new versions of the state rankings are released and additional critiques were published.

Peter Fisher is a national expert on public finance. He served as the Research Director for Common Good Iowa, a public policy think tank with offices in Des Moines and Iowa City, Iowa. Fisher holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and he served as professor emeritus of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Iowa. Fisher’s academic research focused on the role of taxes and tax incentives in business location decisions and state economic growth. He is the author of numerous journal articles and is co-author of Industrial Incentives, published in 1998 by the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, and State Enterprise Zone Programs: Have they Worked? published by the Upjohn Institute in 2002.

The website is now hosted by Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. To learn more, visit ITEP.org.