For over 30 years, EIG has helped governments, investors, and communities measure the net benefit of development — the new revenues, the true costs, and the real return on every project and every incentive.
We don't sell the project — we measure it. Our conclusions follow the data, whether or not they're the answer anyone hoped for.
Commuting patterns, tax digests, adopted budgets, depreciation schedules. Every model is grounded in the community's own numbers.
Analysis that survives a council meeting, a legislative hearing, and a due-diligence review — and that a non-economist can actually explain.
Five ways we help the public and private sectors understand how development shapes a local economy — and what it costs to attract it.
Nationally recognized experts in local fiscal impact analysis, and the creators of LOCI® — the gold standard in the field. What new tax revenues, school enrollment, and public-safety costs follow a new employer? We help governments and site-selection consultants understand the true cost and net benefit of development, and of the incentives used to attract it.
Within Georgia we use our own proprietary Georgia-specific I-O model; outside Georgia, IMPLAN. With decades of experience — including multi-regional input-output (MRIO) analysis — we isolate the indirect and induced impacts on a community even when the direct impact lands somewhere else.
A leading firm in the analysis of state tax credits, including New Markets Tax Credit and historic rehabilitation programs. We've delivered economic and fiscal impact studies to the legislatures of Texas, Nevada, Utah, Louisiana, Kentucky, Florida and Tennessee, plus investment-specific analysis under the Arkansas, Utah and Connecticut programs.
Economic cycles make revenue hard to predict — yet accurate forecasts are what budgets are built on. We've spent years building local-government forecast models for sales tax, property tax and other revenue streams, so leaders can plan with confidence instead of hope.
An economic index measures the waves of expansion and contraction in your own economy. We're recognized experts in building local indexes — and we teach economic development professionals nationwide to build and maintain their own. We can build one for you, then show you how to keep it current.
Every project is really four numbers stacked on top of each other. Scroll to watch them assemble — this is the calculation behind every study we deliver.
A community offers an abatement, a grant, or forgone revenue to win the project. It's a real cost, and it lands first — before a single job exists.
Property tax on the new capital investment, sales tax on new payroll spent locally, and other own-source revenue from new households. It ramps over the first three years.
New households mean roads, public safety, and schools. This is the part most impact studies leave out — and the reason a project can generate revenue and still lose money.
Subtract the costs from the revenue and you get the net — and the year the community finally gets its money back. That number is the whole point.
There is no other software that does what LOCI does. Model the fiscal impact of a development project against any U.S. community — using that community's own demographics, tax structure and local government budget.
Interface shown is illustrative
LOCI® remains our flagship, but it's no longer the only model we build. We're developing a growing suite of specialized, web-based tools that put the same rigor directly in the hands of analysts and community developers.
Put a number on the full economic ripple of any project, industry or household across Georgia — direct, indirect and induced effects on jobs, income, value added and output. Built on the BEA benchmark accounts, regionalized to the county level.
County- and city-level housing data for economic development analysts — turning ACS, BLS and HUD data into profiles, comparisons, rankings and maps, each with a parametric affordability calculator and client-ready Excel, Word and PDF exports.
An expansion of LOCI® for mixed-use development. Before a single approval, it projects the net fiscal impact of a proposed project on a Georgia community — weighing new property, sales and other revenues against the true, community-specific cost of serving it, year by year.
Does new development pay for its own services? The COCS Model turns a community's whole budget — revenues and expenses — into one defensible cost-per-dollar ratio for each land use, built from the jurisdiction's own tax digest and adopted budget.
Project the economic, fiscal, school, retail and housing impacts of new jobs and investment on a community — even when the project lands one county over. Uses real commuting patterns to trace how jobs and households ripple into your finances, schools and housing.
A single subscription for Georgia LOCI® clients that brings LOCI®, LOCI® — Mixed Use and the Georgia Input-Output Model together in one place, under one login.
Alfie Meek is the President of the Economic Impact Group, LLC, and serves as Director of the Center for Economic Development Research at the Georgia Tech Enterprise Innovation Institute. He has over 30 years of experience in economic and fiscal analysis and community-based research.
Before joining EI², he served nine years as Chief Economist and Director of Economic Development for the Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners, and earlier as Research Economist for SunTrust Banks, Inc. He recently served on Governor Kemp's Coronavirus Task Force Economic Impact Committee.
His focus areas include economic and fiscal impact analysis, tax credit analysis, forecasting, econometric modeling and the financial impacts of land use. His research on the size and economic impact of the U.S. sports industry was published in Sports Marketing Quarterly and has hundreds of academic citations.
Dr. Meek speaks regularly on the national macro economy — at local chambers, private business retreats and national conferences — translating where the economy has been and where it's headed into terms decision-makers can act on.
A weekly read on the U.S. economy — clear, current and grounded in the data. Published every week and written for people who have to make decisions, not forecasts.
Reach out and your message goes straight to someone who can give you the answer you need. We typically respond within 24 hours.
impact@economicimpact.com