Enterprises promoted by the public sector, or by public–private partnerships, to attract new enterprises and investment. Local economic development is conditional in its geography on land use plans and on the permissions made within the context of those plans (Cox (2004) TIBG 29, 2. See also Muir et al. (2000) Area 32, 4). Polèse and Shearmur (2006) Papers Reg. Sci. 85, 1 argue against using local economic development strategies as a means of arresting population and employment decline. Nonetheless, diversification into new markets is a key objective of local economic development policy in north-east Scotland (Chapman et al. (2004) TIBG 29, 3). See Bartik (2005) Growth & Change 36, 2 on local economic development incentives. Schragger (2010) Chicago Law Rev. 77, 1 disagrees with all the above by concluding that we ‘do not know enough to be able to predict how one [local economic development] policy or another will affect city growth and decline’.