Abstract
This article employs the public choice perspective to explain and evaluate the outcomes of publicly subsidized economic development projects. Despite the questionable impacts of economic development projects that have been assisted with the use of public subsidies (including tax remission, tax credits, and nontax incentives), such subsidies have increasingly become the tools with which states compete for various industries and, more recently, for stadiums. Invoking the public choice framework provides some insights into the interrelationship of the various actors involved in these projects - the investors, the public officials, and the taxpayers. A behavioral model is developed based on assumptions derived from basic economic principles and applied to the political marketplace. The model is then tested using case studies of public subsidization that involved three football stadiums.