Walker had also pushed for creation of the WEDC to replace the Commerce Department, saying the quasi-public agency could do a better job at distributing incentives and pitching the state as a great place to do business.

But WEDC has been dogged by internal management problems and employee turnover. The most recent audit found that the number of bad loans made to companies had been reduced by simply writing them off.

The UW report didn’t focus on WEDC per se but criticized more generally the idea of offering tax breaks or other incentives to spur economic growth. The report offered a history of the term “business climate’’ which was often code for cheap land and labor, low taxes and limited regulation.

But beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, the authors say, the source of most job growth shifted from large mobile companies to smaller firms that tended to stay where they started. Entrepreneurship and small business development became the greatest source of new jobs rather than trying to get existing companies to move across state lines.