Timothy J. Bartik

Business Location Decisions in the United States: Estimates of the Effects of Unionization, Taxes, and Other Characteristics of States

This article examines how corporate decisions about the location for a new manufacturing plant in the U.S. are influenced by unionization, taxes, and other characteristics of states. The conditional logit model is used with some modifications to make the model more applicable to the business location decision. The most important finding is that the union sympathies of states have a major effect on business location. The results also indicate that state taxes affect business location, contradicting the conventional wisdom in the economic literature, although the tax effect is of modest magnitude.

Small Business Start-Ups in the United States: Estimates of the Effects of Characteristics of States

Demonstrates how small business startups are affected by the characteristics of American states, and provides a methodological approach useful for advancing research on this topic. A simple model focusing on small business startups is created, in order to correspond better and more closely to the decision problems facing potential entrepreneurs. Panel data is used to create a model which examines the relationship between changes over time in small business starts and changes in the independent variables. Data were gathered from the U.S. Establishment and Longitudinal Microdata (USELM) file of the Small Business Administrations Small Business Data Base. Findings indicate that the most important influence on small business starts is the size of market demand. The proportion of foreign immigrants in states and education level of the labor force also have highly significant positive effects on small business starts. However, higher property taxes, entry barriers in the banking market, and unionization were each found to negatively affect small business starts. In addition, some public services were found to encourage small business starts and the estimated effects of labor costs to small business starts were surprisingly small. (SFL)

The Effects of State and Local Taxes on Economic Development: A Review of Recent Research

This review summarizes recent research on the effects of state and local taxes on state and local business activity. Contrary to previous research, this recent research indicates that state and local taxes have statistically significant negative effects on the economic growth of a state or metropolitan area. However, the range of plausible tax effects is large, implying that the annual costs of creating one job could vary from

Better Evaluation Is Needed for Economic Development Programs to Thrive

2, 000 to

Neighborhood revitalization's effects on tenants and the benefit-cost analysis of government neighborhood programs

11, 000. For small suburban jurisdictions, taxes have more powerful effects on business growth than is true for metropolitan areas or states. These effects are so powerful that a cut in business property tax rates could plausibly raise revenue for a suburb.

The Short-Term Effects of the Kalamazoo Promise Scholarship on Student Outcomes

This article makes the case for more rigorous evaluations of state and local economic development programs, and provides some suggestions on how more rigorous evaluations may be accomplished.

Evaluating the Impacts of Local Economic. Development Policies on Local Economic Outcomes

Abstract This paper analyzes the potential effects of neighborhood improvements on low-income tenants. The theoretical model shows that tenants with strong psychological ties to their current neighborhood may suffer significant losses due to rent increases caused by neighborhood improvement, even if no displacement occurs. These tenant effects bias property value measures of the benefits of government neighborhood programs. The model is tested using data from the Experimental Housing Allowance Program, and modest but important tenant effects are found.

Spillover Effects of Welfare Reforms in State Labor Markets

In order to study whether college scholarships can be an effective tool in raising students’ performance in secondary school, we use one aspect of the Kalamazoo Promise that resembles a quasi-experiment. The surprise announcement of the scholarship created a large change in expected college tuition costs that varied across different groups of students based on past enrollment decisions. This variation is arguably exogenous to unobserved student characteristics. We estimate the effects of this change by a set of “difference-in-differences�? regressions where we compare the change in student outcomes in secondary school across time for different student “length of enrollment�? groups. We find positive effects of the Kalamazoo Promise on Promise-eligible students large enough to be deemed important - about a 9 percent increase in the probability of earning any credits and one less suspension day per year. We also find large increases in GPA among African American students.

A Benefit-Cost Analysis of the Tulsa Universal Pre-K Program

This paper argues that more rigorous evaluations of local economic development policies are feasible. Programs that aid selected small firms can be rigorously evaluated using an experimental approach, without excluding firms from assistance, by randomly assigning some firms to receive more intense marketing efforts by the program. Programs that aid distressed local...

Simulating the Effects of the Tax Credit Program of the Michigan Economic Growth Authority on Job Creation and Fiscal Benefits

This paper estimates the effects of welfare reforms on a states employment and wage rates. Welfare reforms include: pushing welfare recipients into the labor force, financial incentives to recipients for working, wage subsidies to employers of recipients, and community service jobs for recipients. The effects of these policies are analyzed using a newly estimated model of state labor markets. Simulations show that jobs found by welfare reform participants cause sizable displacement effects for nonparticipants. Displacement effects of labor supply policies are highest when a states unemployment is high, whereas displacement effects of labor demand policies are highest when a states unemployment is low. Copyright 2002 Blackwell Publishers