Harvard Business School's Michael Porter wrote famously on the competitive advantage of nations, but states also offer unique advantages and disadvantages. To help cost-conscious executives analyze interstate moves of their resources, the Milken Institute has released its 2005 version of the Cost of Doing Business Index, ranking the fifty states on a number of considerations.
The states are graded on wages, tax burdens, electricity costs, and industrial and office rents. The total adds up to a “cost of doing business” for each state.
This year saw little change among the rankings. Once again, Hawaii remained the most expensive place to do business, according to the report, followed by New York, Massachusetts, California, and Connecticut. South Dakota repeated as cheap champ, followed by North Dakota, Iowa, Montana, and Idaho. Arizona was right in the middle.
The entire list is offered in .pdf format.
For more on this topic, the aforementioned professor Porter also looks at the competitiveness of regions through his Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness. His analysis takes into account such factors as availability of specialized skills, infrastructure, technology, and the presence of clusters.