I thank Claire Black and Wei-Jang Huang for assistance in preparing this paper. I appreciate the comments of George Erickcek on a preliminary version of this paper. This paper was previously presented on November 20, 2009 at the 57th Annual Economic Outlook Conference of the Research Seminar in...

Bartik measures ratios of local economic development benefits to costs for both early childhood education and business incentives. He shows that early childhood programs and the best-designed business incentives can provide local benefits that significantly exceed costs. - From publisher description