The Employment and Fiscal Effects of Michigan's MEGA Tax Credit Program

Timothy Bartik () and George Erickcek

No 10-164, Upjohn Working Papers from W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research

Abstract: This paper estimates that Michigan's MEGA tax credit program to attract and retain businesses has large employment and fiscal benefits. MEGA provides discretionary tax credits to businesses, with the tax credit tied to the personal income taxes paid by employees on the new or retained jobs. We estimate the economic effects of MEGA using the Upjohn Institute's REMI model, and the research literature on how business location decisions respond to taxes. We estimate the fiscal effects of MEGA based on the research literature on how government spending and revenue respond to state personal income and population. The estimates suggest a lower bound to MEGA's effectiveness of being decisive in a little over 8 percent of the MEGA projects. Even with this modest success rate, MEGA is estimated to have fiscal benefits that offset about two-thirds of its gross fiscal costs. The net fiscal costs per job created of MEGA average less than $4,000 per job-year, which is less than the labor market benefits of job creation.

Keywords: State and local economic development policy; tax incentives; fiscal impact analysis; labor market benefits; regional multipliers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H70 R11 R23 R28 R30 R58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Downloads: (external link)
http://research.upjohn.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?art ... ext=up_workingpapers (application/pdf)
This material is copyrighted. Permission is required to reproduce any or all parts.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:upj:weupjo:10-164

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Upjohn Working Papers from W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research 300 S. Westnedge Ave. Kalamazoo, MI 49007 USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().