Making Sense of Incentives : Taming Business Incentives to Promote Prosperity

Bartik provides a clear and concise overview of how state and local governments employ economic development incentives in order to lure companies to set up shop - and provide new jobs - in needy local labor markets. He shows that many such incentives offers are wasteful and he provides guidance, based on decades of research, on how to improve these programs. "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, which this book provides"-- Provided by publisher