The diffusion of cultural district laws across US States

With the increasing number of cultural districts as place-based policies, one of the first questions that arise is: why do some states adopt cultural district laws but not others? Exploring the difference in timing of adoption by each state, I examine the determinants of cultural district laws. Following the policy diffusion literature, I test whether there is government, imitation, and learning mechanisms driving the adoption of cultural district laws in the USA. The results suggest the presence of government competition and imitation mechanisms. States compete with those geographically close to them, and once tax incentives is taken into account their production structure is also relevant. For cultural district laws, states imitate those with similar size.