EDWARD W. (Ned) HILL

Edward W. (Ned) Hill is Vice President for Economic Development at Cleveland State University and Professor and Distinguished Scholar of Economic Development in the Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs.  He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow of the Metropolitan Policy Program at The Brookings Institution, an independent public policy research organization in Washington, D.C. and a Nonresident Visiting Fellow of the Institute of Urban and Regional Development at the University of California at Berkeley.  He is affiliated with the Faculty of Economics at the University of Rijeka in Croatia.  Hill edited Economic Development Quarterly from 1994 to 2005.  Economic Development Quarterly is dedicated to publishing research on the development of the American economy.  Hill was promoted to Vice President at Cleveland State University in May of 2005. 

Ned is a member of the Board of Directors of the Ohio MEMS Society (2003) and the Board of the Cleveland Zoological Society (2000).  He assisted the United Way of Cleveland’s strategic planning committee (2005-2006).  He was a member of the Board of Directors of the Urban Affairs Association from 2002 to 2005 where he was the secretary-treasurer in 2003 and 2004 and a board member of Cleveland’s Westside Industrial Retention Network (WIRE-Net) from 2002 to 2006.  Hill is a member of the board of advisors of the Generation Foundation since 2001 and he has advised the Knight Foundation on economic development investments.  Ohio’s Governor appointed Hill to Ohio’s Urban Revitalization Task Force in the fall of 1999.  He was a member of Leadership Cleveland’s Class of 1997. 

Hill and Harold Wolman were awarded the Robertson Prize from the editors of Urban Studies in 1994.  Ned was awarded Cleveland State University’s Distinguished Faculty Award for Research in 1998 and merit award for research in 2002.

Hill is author of two books, co-editor of five books, and author of over 90 articles, book chapters, and columns.  He was a lead in a joint Deloitte Consulting-Cleveland State University team that wrote Industry-based Competitive Strategies for Ohio: Managing three portfolios in 2005 and Manufacturing Pennsylvania’s Future in 2004.  Ohio’s Competitive Advantage: Manufacturing Productivity was released in 2001.  Ohio’s Competitive Advantage has been credited with starting a five-year statewide conversation that resulted in fundamental business tax reform in the state of Ohio.  The Cincinnati Enquirer referred to Hill as the “godfather of tax reform” in the summer of 2005.  In 2005 the Ohio Manufacturers Association honored Hill with its Legacy Award for his work on business tax reform.

In 2005 the Russell Sage Foundation published Hill’s analysis of the impact of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 on Manhattan and the New York region as a business location; The Brookings Institution released his study of Ohio’s gasoline tax in a book on transportation policy; and the Journal of the American Planning Association published his study of the competive position of America’s major central cities in the competition for jobs in its Autumn issue.  

He earned his Ph.D. in both economics and urban and regional planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1981 and began his career at Cleveland State University in 1985 after spending five years in his family’s wholesale and retail shoe company.  He is a resident of Lakewood, Ohio.