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Timothy J. Bartik

Timothy J. Bartik (born March 26, 1954) is an American economist who specializes in regional economics, public finance, urban economics, labor economics, and labor demand policies. He is a senior economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research in Kalamazoo, Michigan.He developed a method of isolating local labor demand changes that is referred to as the Bartik Instrument. This measure averages national employment growth across industries using local industry employment shares as weights to produce a measure of local labor demand that is unrelated to changes in local labor supply. See Bartik (1991).Bartik earned a B.A. degree from Yale University (magna cum laude) in 1975 and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1982.Prior to joining the Upjohn Institute in 1989, Bartik was assistant professor of economics at Vanderbilt University (1982–1989), and legislative assistant for housing and urban policy for U.S. Senator Donald W. Riegle Jr. (1975–1978).