Labor Economics Commons^™

Making Sense Of Incentives: Taming Business Incentives To Promote Prosperity, Timothy J. Bartik

Timothy J. Bartik

In evaluating incentives, everything depends on the details: how much in incentives it takes to truly cause a firm to locate or expand, the multiplier effects, the effects of jobs on employment rates, how jobs affect tax revenue versus public spending needs. Do benefits of incentives exceed costs? This depends on the details. This book is about those details. What magnitudes of incentive effects are plausible? How do benefits and costs vary with incentive designs? What advice can be given to evaluators? What is an ideal incentive policy? Answering these questions about incentives depends on a model of incentive effects, …

Should We Target Jobs At Distressed Places, And If So, How?, Timothy J. Bartik

Timothy J. Bartik

No abstract provided.

Should Place-Based Jobs Policies Be Used To Help Distressed Communities?, Timothy J. Bartik

Timothy J. Bartik

Should policymakers seek to increase jobs in particular local labor markets? Yes, but only if these policies are well targeted and designed. Encouraging job growth in distressed places can cause persistent gains in employment-to-population ratios. But our current place-based jobs policies, under which state and local governments provide long-term tax incentives to megacorporations, are poorly targeted and designed. Such incentives are as large in nondistressed areas as in distressed areas, and they are excessively costly. What reforms are needed? First, job growth policies should target distressed areas. Second, tax incentives should be focused on high-multiplier businesses, such as high-tech firms. …

Realistic Local Job Multipliers, Timothy J. Bartik, Nathan Sotherland

Timothy J. Bartik

No abstract provided.

Local Job Multipliers In The United States: Variation With Local Characteristics And With High-Tech Shocks, Timothy J. Bartik, Nathan Sotherland

Timothy J. Bartik

This paper provides new estimates of local job multipliers, the ratio of total jobs generated to some initial number of jobs created from a demand shock. Multipliers greatly affect benefits versus costs of local job-creation policies. These new estimates rely on improved methodology and data. The methodology better captures dynamic effects of demand shocks, specifies the model so that demand shocks are more comparable, and is more general in the types of demand shocks that are considered. The data has more industry detail than that used in previous studies. The local job multipliers estimated tend to be about one-quarter lower …

Realistic Local Job Multipliers, Timothy J. Bartik, Nathan Sotherland

Timothy J. Bartik

No abstract provided.

Incentives And Local Job Creation, Timothy J. Bartik

Timothy J. Bartik

No abstract provided.

What Works To Help Manufacturing-Intensive Local Economies?, Timothy J. Bartik

Timothy J. Bartik

No abstract provided.

Improving Economic Development Incentives, Timothy J. Bartik

Timothy J. Bartik

No abstract provided.

Who Benefits From Economic Development Incentives? How Incentive Effects On Local Incomes And The Income Distribution Vary With Different Assumptions About Incentive Policy And The Local Economy, Timothy J. Bartik

Timothy J. Bartik

This report presents results from a simulation model that examines the effects of economic development incentives (e.g., tax incentives such as property tax abatements or job creation tax credits) provided to businesses by state and local governments in the United States. The model simulates effects of incentive policies on the incomes of local residents, both for different income types (e.g., labor income versus property income) and for different income quintiles, under different assumptions about the economy’s workings and public policy. Net benefits of incentives for local incomes are greater if the incentives have greater job-creation effects conditional on their effects …

Degrees Of Poverty: The Relationship Between Family Income Background And The Returns To Education, Timothy J. Bartik, Brad J. Hershbein

Timothy J. Bartik

Drawing on the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we document a startling empirical pattern: the career earnings premium from a four-year college degree (relative to a high school diploma) for persons from low-income backgrounds is considerably less than it is for those from higher-income backgrounds. For individuals whose family income in high school was above 1.85 times the poverty level, we estimate that career earnings for bachelor’s graduates are 136 percent higher than earnings for those whose education stopped at high school. However, for individuals whose family income during high school was below 1.85 times the poverty level, the career …

New Evidence On State Fiscal Multipliers: Implications For State Policies, Timothy J. Bartik

Timothy J. Bartik

When state and local governments engage in balanced budget changes in taxes and spending, what fiscal multiplier effects do such policies have on creating local jobs? Traditionally, the view has been that possible job-creation effects of such state and local “demand-side” policies are smaller, second-order effects. Such effects might be worthwhile to take into consideration when a state or local government balances its budget during a recession, but the effects were believed to be of modest magnitude, and not of major importance for more general state and local public policies. However, recent estimates of fiscal multiplier effects of state and …

Better Incentives Data Can Inform Both Research And Policy, Timothy J. Bartik

Timothy J. Bartik

No abstract provided.

A New Panel Database On Business Incentives For Economic Development Offered By State And Local Governments In The United States, Timothy J. Bartik

Timothy J. Bartik

No abstract provided.

How Effects Of Local Labor Demand Shocks Vary With The Initial Local Unemployment Rate, Timothy J. Bartik

Timothy J. Bartik

Poverty, Jobs, And Subsidized Employment, Timothy Bartik

Timothy J. Bartik

No abstract provided.

Estimating A Performance Standards Adjustment Model For Workforce Programs That Provides Timely Feedback And Uses Data From Only One State, Timothy J. Bartik, Randall W. Eberts, Kenneth J. Kline

Timothy J. Bartik

The purpose of this paper is to describe a methodology for adjusting performance standards for workforce programs offered by local workforce areas (LWAs). By performance standards adjustment, we mean a model that uses a statistical approach to attempt to better measure the relative performance of different local workforce areas in providing workforce system customers with "value added" in terms of the system's desired outcomes. Our paper's approach has four distinguishing features. First, the performance standards are based on the common measures proposed by the U.S. Department of Labor, which include short- and longer-term employment outcomes. Second, the model is estimated …

The Job Creation Tax Credit: Dismal Projections For Employment Call For A Quick, Efficient, And Effective Response, Timothy Bartik, John Bishop

Timothy J. Bartik

No abstract provided.

The U.S. Economic Crisis And A Revised New Jobs Tax Credit, Timothy J. Bartik

Timothy J. Bartik

An efficacious economic stimulus to help the U.S. economy recover from its current recession is the revival of the New Jobs Tax Credit. Unlike the original credit utilized by the federal government in 1977– 1978, the new version should be a refundable credit but at a lower current dollar value. My 2001 book, Jobs for the Poor: Can Labor Demand Policies Help? proposed a permanent version f the New Jobs Tax Credit that would be automatically triggered when the unemployment rate is high. My estimates, updated to 2008, suggest that such a revised credit might increase aggregate U.S. employment by …

The Effects Of Metropolitan Job Growth On The Size Distribution Of Family Income, Timothy J. Bartik

Timothy J. Bartik

This paper examines how a metropolitan area's job growth affects its income distribution. The research uses annual Current Population Survey data on the income distribution in different metropolitan areas from 1979 through 1988. Faster metropolitan job growth increases real family income in the lowest income quintile by a significantly greater percentage than for the average family. Metropolitan job growth also increases the value of property owned by upper income quintiles, but property value effects are not large enough to offset the progressive effects of growth on labor income. Simulations indicate that economic development programs to increase metropolitan job growth will …

A Proposal For Early Impact, Persistent, And Cost-Effective Job Creation Policies, Timothy J. Bartik

Timothy J. Bartik

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Public Policy In Skills Development Of Black Workers In The 21st Century, Timothy J. Bartik, Kevin Hollenbeck

Timothy J. Bartik

This paper discusses the role of public policy in the skills development system of the U.S. It further examines the implications of that policy for the skill development and career progression of black workers. The paper describes the current "system" for skills development in the United States as a two- tiered system: The "first-chance" or conventional system allows individuals to proceed through an extensive public elementary, secondary, and postsecondary educational sector that is supplemented by private educational institutions and is followed by employer-provided job training and work experience. The "second-chance" system is designed for individuals who do not successfully traverse …

Entrepreneurship, Geography, And American Economic Growth By Zoltán Ács, And Catherine Armington, Timothy Bartik

Timothy J. Bartik

No abstract provided.

Targeting Job Retention Services For Welfare Recipients, Anu Rangarajan, Peter Schochet, Dexter Chu, Timothy Bartik, Donald Oellerich

Timothy J. Bartik

No abstract provided.

The Future Of State And Local Economic Development Policy: What Research Is Needed, Timothy Bartik

Timothy J. Bartik

No abstract provided.

Discussion [Of The Effects Of State And Local Public Services On Economic Development By Ronald C. Fisher], Timothy Bartik

Timothy J. Bartik

No abstract provided.

Taxes And Local Economic Development: What Do We Know And What Can We Know?, Timothy Bartik

Timothy J. Bartik

No abstract provided.

Federal Policy Towards State And Local Economic Development In The 1990s, Timothy J. Bartik

Timothy J. Bartik

This paper suggests new federal policies towards state and local economic development assistance to business. I argue that there is some evidence that these programs can be effective in encouraging business growth and helping the unemployed. But state and local governments do not have the right incentives to adequately pursue national goals through economic development programs. State and local governments are not inclined to do quality evaluations of their programs and tend to favor business attraction programs over programs that might increase U.S. business productivity. In addition, it is unclear whether economic development efforts are most vigorously pursued by economically …

Not All Job Creation Tax Credits Are Created Equal, Timothy Bartik

Timothy J. Bartik

No abstract provided.

Michigan's Fiscal Future, Timothy Bartik, George Erickcek

Timothy J. Bartik

No abstract provided.