The News & Observer explored this weekend a topic of great interest to John Hood: the question of whether North Carolina can continue to consider itself a “Dixie Dynamo.”

John Hood, president of the John Locke Foundation, a Raleigh-based conservative think tank, charts North Carolina’s economic decline as beginning in the late 1990s. In a recently published book “Our Best Foot Forward,” Hood argues that North Carolina has moved from “Dixie Dynamo” to “Dixie Dawdler.”

Having gone back and looked at the state’s economic growth beginning in the 1930s, Hood found the first decade of this century was the first time North Carolina’s real per capita income grew at a rate less than both the Southeast and the U.S.

“What really happened over the past decade and a half is that North Carolina’s economy failed to keep pace in innovation, investment, entrepreneurial activity and job creation,” Hood writes.

Learn more about Hood’s book here. Order your copy here. Hood explained to a John Locke Foundation audience recently how the “Dixie Dynamo” view hinders North Carolina today.