Art Rolnick

Arthur J. Rolnick worked for 40 years at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, 25 of them as senior vice president and director of research, and later served as a senior fellow at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Minnesota.

He has argued for decades that state and local bidding wars for businesses and sports franchises are a zero-sum game nationally: cities move jobs and value around rather than creating it, while billions in public dollars flow to private businesses. In 2007 he carried that case to the U.S. House, testifying that stadium subsidies deliver “a zero public return.” In the recorded SuperDebate round he made that case against public stadium subsidies.

After the Fed he turned to early childhood, co-directing the Human Capital Research Collaborative and building Minnesota’s early-learning scholarships. He cites an inflation-adjusted 18% return on quality early education — the public investment he argues should come before any stadium.