More State Business Rankings

Chief Executive magazine jumps into the ranking-the-states-by-business race. Their ranking is based on a survey of CEOs, so it's worth a gander. Here is the rundown, here are some stats for all of the states. Here's their explanation:

"Chief Executive's fifth annual survey asked 543 CEOs to evaluate their states on a broad range of issues, including proximity to resources, regulation, tax policies, education, quality of living and infrastructure. Providing additional insight to the evaluations, CEOs were also asked to grade each state based on the following criteria: 1) Taxation & Regulation, 2) Workforce Quality, and 3) Living Environment."

They've been doing this survey for five years now, and Texas has taken the top spot every year. I wonder if there's some sort of selection bias on surveying CEOs? Do they have a good grasp of all 50 states? Are they more likely to select the states that they do business in? Perhaps that's the point-- they're going to be doing business in the best states.

West Virginia comes in at #37.