The Main Street Program is a popular smaller-scale economic development strategy used to revitalize historic town centers across the rural United States. In this article, a difference-in-differences design using longitudinal business establishment data is implemented to estimate the program’s causal impact on job and establishment growth in downtown retail districts. Using a pooled sample of four Midwest states, the author found no significant effect of Main Street Program adoption on downtown jobs or establishments. However, for each individual state, a substantial degree of structural heterogeneity across states exists. Iowa emerges as a state where the Main Street Program appears to yield its hypothesized economic benefits to the downtown business districts of participating communities. These findings suggest that Main Street Program participation effects are not generalizable across states and that implementation and local context matter.

Main Street Program 是一种流行的小规模经济发展战略，用于振兴美国农村地区的历史城镇中心。在本文中，实施了使用纵向商业机构数据的差异中差异设计，以估计该计划对市中心零售区的就业和机构增长的因果影响。作者使用四个中西部州的汇总样本，发现采用 Main Street Program 对市中心的工作或机构没有显着影响。然而，对于每个单独的状态，各状态之间存在相当程度的结构异质性。爱荷华州成为主街计划似乎为参与社区的市中心商业区带来其假设经济利益的州。