Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has yet to clutch an oversized pair of ceremonial scissors and cut a red ribbon in Racine County to celebrate his state's win of an economic development chased nationwide.

One could speculate he can't collect on the polished media event for the plant, which will cost $4 billion in state tax incentives, until taxpayer anger over Wisconsin's disintegrating roads subsides. How could he explain the gap in state road funding while touting the $30 million in Foxconn-related road work tied to the project?

Michigan missed out on Foxconn's $10 billion investment that plans to employ 13,000 people to build liquid-crystal display screens. Gov. Rick Snyder missed his opportunity to hold those scissors alongside Foxconn CEO Terry Gou. We should be thankful.

New research by Kalamazoo-based W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research calls into question whether the economic incentives offered by states and cities to big out-of-state companies — Michigan offered Foxconn $3.7 billion — is worth the economic squeeze to taxpayers.

The short answer is no. While these incentives offer political capital, more often than they not fall short in creating meaningful employment growth, compared with investing in business services for small- and medium-sized companies.

"Scott Walker will get a number of big ribbon-cutting ceremonies that'll be covered by the news media; then he can take credit for creating all those jobs," said Timothy Bartik, senior economist and lead author on the study. "We can present evidence all day about how services for small and medium companies are more fruitful, but the public doesn't reward it and politicians respond to public pressure."

Michigan's economic development leaders weren't swayed by the loss of Foxconn, offering up another massive incentive package to Amazon Inc. in failed bids by Grand Rapids and metro Detroit.

Grand Rapids' The Right Place Inc.'s unsuccessful bid for Amazon's so-called "HQ2" included a $2 billion tax incentive package offer for the online retail giant to build a headquarters on a 92-acre industrial park in the Grand Rapids suburb of Wyoming and a nearly $1.7 billion offer for vacant land at Gerald R. Ford International Airport in Cascade Township.

We still don't know the size of Detroit's offer. The Michigan Economic Development Corp. cites a nondisclosure agreement the agency entered into with Dan Gilbert's Rock Ventures LLC. Gilbert, founder of Quicken Loans Inc., and his companies led Detroit's bid for Amazon HQ2, offering several of his downtown buildings for office space in a bid to lure the online retailer.

But the state has succeeded in attracting Amazon to bring three shipping warehouses in Livonia, Romulus and Shelby Township. The tax incentive package for the Livonia site totaled $17 million.

These incentives certainly have some positives — average incentive packages result in a 0.2 percent rise in wages locally, according to the study. There are more 1,000 people working in Livonia, earning at least $12.50/hour at Amazon.

Nationally, states and local governments offered incentives totaling $45 billion in 2015, a figure that has more than tripled since 1990, according to previous Upjohn research. To be fair, Michigan's incentives have only increased 16 percent since 1990.

But this blanket approach to rolling out the red carpet to anyone and everyone looking to open a new business or factory is often myopic, Bartik said.

Specifically, incentives cause budget constraints down the road that most often affect education and services for the most vulnerable low-income residents. Economic development tax incentives account for a 11 percent cut in K-12 spending, according to the study, by placing more pressure on future government budgets.

This is important because research estimates show that a 10 percent cut in K-12 education spending will decrease future wages by 8 percent.

So while wages are raised by 0.2 percent by luring new companies with tax incentives, it's a net loss once you expand the time line out far enough.

Plus, incentives are often inefficient at creating jobs. Only 20 percent of new jobs created via a tax break package can be credited to the incentives themselves, according to the Upjohn study. That's because incentives play only a minor factor in a company's decision to locate in a certain geography — access to talent, climate, transit and shipping routes play a greater role. Sussing out the math used in the study means U.S. states and local governments spend more than $30 billion in incentives annually to create zero jobs.

Bartik isn't saying incentive packages are all bad, but they are mostly not careful.

"Michigan does a really good job in other areas, like business services," he said. "We have some customized jobs training programs, business incubators and services to local businesses that are all really effective. But I don't get calls to talk about those. I get calls to talk about Foxconn. I've never had a reporter call me to talk about extension services or customized jobs training."

To be clear, I'm as guilty as the next reporter of shrugging off small programs for big incentive plays. But Bartik's point stands. The public gets excited about big wins with big companies and big numbers. It's far less exciting and sexy to report, discuss and analyze the impact of an incubator in Ann Arbor or a skilled-labor program in Detroit.

It's time we open up that dialogue. Economic development is "Moneyball." It's progress built by getting lots of businesses to first base, and helping them move around the horn. It's about establishing and growing local companies that can compete alongside Amazon or Foxconn or whatever the next shiny prospective development may be.

It is time to end the economic home run derby, and it's high time for our government leaders to put down the damn oversized scissors.