G. Jason Jolley is an Assistant Professor of Rural Economic Development at the George V. Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs at Ohio University in Athens, OH. Jolley has over a decade of academic and professional experience in economic development and regional planning. From 2006-2012, Dr. Jolley worked at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he served as Senior Research Director for the Center for Competitive Economies, an applied economic development research center in the Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute for Private Enterprise. He led the Center's research activities in local/state economic development incentive policy evaluation and development, strategic planning, impact analysis, and industry cluster characterization to address issues of economic competitiveness. He was co-principal investigator for one of the largest state sponsored evaluations of economic development incentives ever conducted when he co-led an 18-month evaluation of North Carolina's tax credit and incentive programs for the North Carolina General Assembly in 2008-2009. Jolley also served as an Adjunct Assistant Professor in UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School where he taught an MBA course on financing mega-projects and as a Teaching Assistant Professor at North Carolina State University where he taught MPA courses in economic development and public policy. Dr. Jolley's research has been published in Business Strategy and the Environment, Economic Development Quarterly, Review of Policy Research, Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting, & Financial Management, and Economic Development Journal. He received a Ph.D. in public administration from North Carolina State University, where he specialized in economic development and research methods, an M.A. in political science from the University of Tennessee and an A.B. in economics from UNC-Chapel Hill.
