ABSTRACT

Local green businesses offer products or services that reduce energy use and/or improve environmental quality. Supporting the green economy offers the potential to grow an export sector by first developing new local markets. It may also intensify impacts on the local economy and even help market the region. A regional economy that depends on people in faraway lands to consume goods and services, the production of which endangers local environmental and fiscal viability, is not a sustainable growth model. The conventional wisdom is that the cycle of job growth begins with export or tradable sector jobs because of their multiplier effects on residentiary or non-tradable sector jobs. Moreover, non-tradable sector jobs have little chance for productivity growth, and hence income growth, because they do not really change: the technology behind a haircut has not transformed enough to accelerate the number of haircuts per hour.