City Talks

City Talks: Tim Bartik on making sense of incentives

Do financial incentives make any difference? Economic development expert Tim Bartik joins Andrew Carter to debunk the biggest assumptions made by policymakers in this field.

Podcast published on 25 November 2019

Financial incentives are often used by policymakers to attract big businesses to locate in a place and deliver jobs and growth.

But do they actually make any difference?

Economic development and incentives expert Tim Bartik joins Andrew Carter to debunk the biggest assumptions made by policymakers in this field, revealing that 75% of the time, the same number of jobs would have been created without any incentives at all.

Tim and Andrew cover recent high-profile cases such as Amazon’s much-criticized plans for the location of its second headquarters in Virginia and New York City and Wisconsin’s $4 billion state and local tax incentives to Foxxconn in the promise of 13,000 new jobs that never materialised.

Tim reveals the opportunity costs, spillovers and leakages that offering a high cash-per-job price tag create, and instead sets out a better way to achieve inclusive local economic growth and good jobs for all.


Timothy J. Bartik is a Senior Economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. His research focuses on state and local economic development and local labour markets.

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