the housing market impacts of shale gas development using data from pennsylvania and an array of empirical techniques to control for confounding factors we recover hedonic estimates of property value impacts from nearby shale gas development that vary with water source well productivity and visibility results indicate large negative impacts on nearby groundwater dependent homes while piped water dependent homes exhibit smaller positive impacts suggesting benefits from lease payments results have implications for the debate over regulation of shale gas development jel l71 q35 q53 r31 technological improvements in the extraction of oil and natural gas from unconventional sources have transformed communities and landscapes and brought debate and controversy in the policy arena shale gas plays underlying the populated northeastern united states were thought to be uneconomical less than ten years ago but now contribute a major share of us gas supply 1 natural gas has been hailed as a bridge to energy independence and a clean future because of its domestic sourcing and compared with coal and petroleum derivatives its smaller carbon footprint and reduced emissions of other pollutants e g particulates sulfur dioxide car

towards an attention based view of the firm the central argument is that firm behavior is the result of how firms channel and distribute the attention of their decision makers what decision makers do depends on what issues and answers they focus their attention on what issues and answers they focus on depends on the specific situation and on how the firm s rules resources and relationships distribute various issues answers and decision makers into specific communications and procedures the paper develops these theoretical principles into a model of firm behavior and presents its implications for explaining firm behavior and adaptation 1997 by john wiley sons ltd

drivers and inhibitors of renewable energy a qualitative and quantitative study of the caribbean abstract we explore the factors that affect the development of renewable energy in the caribbean the caribbean region can serve as a laboratory in studying the institutional issues relating to energy development due to the differences in political jurisdictions over a short distance based on 12 case studies and 75 in depth interviews with a variety of stakeholders we identified five factors that appear to be critical for the development of renewable energy in the caribbean entrepreneurship attitudes the role of local champions the electric utility influence informal institutions and the influence of international agencies we built a multiple regression model to test these relationships through a survey of 34 political jurisdictions in the caribbean the statistical analysis we conducted suggests that informal institutions have a significant impact on the extent of renewable energy development while the incumbent electricity utilities influence may impede the development of renewable energy based on these findings we provide recommendations on how best to make use of these factors identified in order to develop effective energy policies throughout the caribbean

do better schools matter parental valuation of elementary education the evaluation of numerous school reforms requires an understanding of the value of better schools given the difficulty of calculating the relationship between school quality and student outcomes i turn to another method and use house prices to infer the value parents place on school quality i look within school districts at houses located on attendance district boundaries houses then differ only by the elementary school the child attends i thereby effectively remove the variation in neighborhoods taxes and school spending i find that parents are willing to pay 2 5 percent more for a 5 percent increase in test scores this finding is robust to a number of sensitivity checks

private values of risk tradeoffs at superfund sites housing market evidence on learning about risk this paper incorporates a bayesian learning model into a hedonic framework to estimate the value that residents place on avoiding cancer risks from hazardous waste sites we show that residents are

using maimonides rule to estimate the effect of class size on scholastic achievement the twelfth century rabbinic scholar maimonides proposed a maximum class size of 40 this same maximum induces a nonlinear and nonmonotonic relationship between grade enrollment and class size in israeli public schools today maimonides rule of 40 is used here to construct instrumental variables estimates of effects of class size on test scores the resulting identiecation strategy can be viewed as an application of donald campbell s regression discontinuity design to the class size question the estimates show that reducing class size induces a signiecant and substantial increase in test scores for fourth and efth graders although not for third graders when asked about their views on class size in surveys parents and teachers generally report that they prefer smaller classes this may be because those involved with teaching believe that smaller classes promote student learning or simply because smaller classes offer a more pleasant environment for the pupils and teachers who are in them mueller chase and walden 1988 social scientists and school administrators also have a longstanding interest in the class size question class size is often thought to be easier to manipulate than other school inputs and it is a variable at the heart of policy debates on school quality and the allocation of school resources in many countries see e g robinson 1990 for the united states ofsted 1995 for the united kingdom and moshel ravid 1995 for israel this broad interest in the consequences of changing class size

the role of market forces in assuring contractual performance the conditions under which transactors can use the market repeat purchase mechanism of contract enforcement are examined increased price is shown to be a means of assuring contractual performance a necessary and sufficient condition for performance is the existence of price sufficiently above salvageable production costs so that the nonperforming firm loses a discounted steam of rents on future sales which is greater than the wealth increase from nonperformance this will generally imply a market price greater than the perfectly competitive price and rationalize investments in firm specific assets advertising investments thereby become a positive indicator of likely performance

burr under the saddle how media coverage influences strategic change in this paper we introduce a new antecedent to the strategic change literature by examining the effect of media coverage on the extent of strategic change specifically we examine how negative media coverage may prompt firms to make changes to their resource allocations and then explore how the makeup of the board and firm performance can moderate this relationship we develop a theoretical framework to explain why media coverage may affect strategic change and then test our theory with a longitudinal analysis of 250 firms over a four year period the empirical results lend support to our theory of media influence on strategic change and suggest that the evaluations of firms by outside constituents may influence the decision making of executives

foundation ownership reputation and labour a number of firms in northern europe and especially in denmark are owned by private foundations similarly to what would have been the case if the ford foundation had owned a majority of the shares in ford motor company foundation owned companies appear to perform surprisingly well in terms of profitability and growth despite lacking governance mechanisms such as profit incentives or takeover threats given their non profit ownership they might be expected to behave more responsibly towards stakeholders such as employees or customers hansmann 1980 but so far there has been little empirical evidence to support this hypothesis this paper presents new research on the reputation and responsibility of foundation owned companies in a panel of large danish companies 2001 11 we find that foundation owned firms have better reputations and are regarded as more socially responsible in corporate image ratings secondary evidence on labour market behaviour is consistent with these findings using matched employer employee data we show that foundation owned companies are more stable employers pay their employees better and keep them for longer altogether the evidence indicates that foundation ownership is associated with more responsible business behaviour towards employees

valuing school quality using boundary discontinuities abstract existing research shows that house prices respond to local school quality as measured by average test scores however higher test scores could signal higher academic value added or higher ability more sought after intakes in our research we show that both school value added and student prior achievement linked to the background of children in schools affect households demand for education in order to identify these effects we improve the boundary discontinuity regression methodology by matching identical properties across admissions authority boundaries by allowing for boundary effects and spatial trends by re weighting our data towards transactions that are closest to district boundaries by eliminating boundaries that coincide with major geographical features and by submitting our estimates to a number of novel falsification tests our results survive this battery of tests and show that a one standard deviation change in either school average value added or prior achievement raises prices by around 3

a macroeconomic evaluation of a carbon tax in overseas territories a cge model for reunion island reunion island similar to most insular regions is ruled by a carbon based economy that is heavily dependent on fossil fuels in recent years the energy transition towards a low carbon economy has become the watchword of this french overseas region with the objective of a 100 renewable energy mix by 2030 reducing fossil fuel use while maintaining economic growth is an important issue for all countries but is even more important for island territories with structural and geographical handicaps energy transition and drastic greenhouse gas emission reductions represent costs and opportunities that need to be quantified this research paper assesses the environmental and macroeconomic effects of the carbon price policy introduced in france to meet the target of the paris agreement the acceptability of the tax significantly depends on the possibility of recycling tax revenues different schemes for recycling tax revenues are considered in simulations the methodology used is a computable general equilibrium cge model for reunion island getrun nrj that takes into account all island specificities the results show that the carbon tax enables substitutions between fossil and renewable energy production and reduces co 2 emissions however the tax has negative effects on the aggregate economy the implemented tax revenue recycling compensation mechanisms mitigate the negative impacts but the results differ significantly as the recycling schemes do not support the same economic actors

market watch information and availability cascades among the media and investors in the u s ipo market in this study we advance current research on social influence in markets by examining how the recency and availability of information about others actions within and between different communities influence their allocation of attention and their evaluations specifically we examine how the media and investors allocate attention to and evaluate newly public firms in the days following their initial public offerings ipos our findings have implications for understanding the fieldwide processes through which the value of new firms is established in markets

how financial incentives induce disability insurance recipients to return to work using a local randomized experiment that arises from a sharp discontinuity in disability insurance di policy in norway we provide transparent and credible identification of how financial incentives induce di recipients to return to work we find that many di recipients have considerable capacity to work that can be effectively induced by providing financial work incentives we further show that providing work incentives to di recipients may both increase their disposable income and reduce program costs our findings also suggest that targeted policies may be the most effective in encouraging di recipients to return to work

is what you see what you get the value of natural landscape views views of natural areas and green space may have value quite apart from access to those lands using 25 years of home sales data from st louis county missouri and modern geographic information system tools to measure views we estimate a hedonic property fixed effects model that captures the effects of changing land cover on house sale prices unlike previous studies our approach minimizes bias from omitted variables and uniquely captures changes over time we find that forest views negatively affect home prices whereas farmland views have positive effects changes in relative scarcity of these land types over time may explain the findings

measuring investment in education historic debates about the measurement of capital are even more complicated in the case of education and human capital as extensive research demonstrates education resources are not consistently related to student performance in existing elementary and secondary schools this inefficiency in public schools implies that spending and resource measures do not accurately capture variations in school quality this finding then has clear implications for both education policy and economic research because school inputs are poor policy instruments an alternative policy focus that appears much more productive is performance incentives related to student achievement

promise scholarship programs as place making policy evidence from school enrollment and housing prices abstract place based promise scholarship programs which guarantee financial aid for qualifying graduates of a school district have proliferated in recent years using data from multiple sites we compare the evolution of school enrollment and residential real estate prices around program announcement dates within promise eligible and surrounding areas while our estimates indicate that enrollment increased following promise announcements merit based programs generated relative increases in white enrollment housing prices respond strongly in neighborhoods with better primary schools and in the upper half of the housing price distribution we conclude that these programs have important and under studied distributional considerations

centralization fiscal federalism and private school attendance a cge model is used to analyze the impact of public school financing on private school attendance the common perception that public school finance centralization will necessarily lead to greater private school attendance is not correct in such a model even when that centralization involves an extreme equalization as in california furthermore if centralization is less dramatic as in most states declines in private school attendance are even more pronounced this weakens the speculation that low exit rates to private schools in centralizing states imply that general public school quality does not drop as a result of such centralization

media legitimation effects in the market for initial public offerings in this study we argue that media provided information affects investors impressions of newly public firms in 225 initial public offerings ipos the volume of mediaprovided information had a negative diminishing relationship with underpricing and a positive diminishing relationship with stock turnover on the first day of trading the relationship between the tenor of media provided information and underpricing increases at a nonlinear rate and decreases similarly for turnover findings provide important evidence that publicly available information not only reflects ipos legitimacy but also adds to their legitimacy and influences investor behavior in the last 20 years an increasing amount of research on markets has been conducted from a social constructionist perspective emphasizing how social structures enhance the flow of useful and credible information that market participants use to reduce the uncertainty of market exchanges e g aldrich fiol 1994 zuckerman 1999 further recent organizational research has begun to stress the influence of information intermediaries such as financial analysts and the media on mar

accounting for endogeneity when assessing strategy performance does entry mode choice affect fdi survival firms choose strategies based on their attributes and industry conditions therefore strategy choice is endogenous and self selected empirical models that do not account for this and regress performance measures on strategy choice variables are potentially misspecified and their conclusions incorrect i highlight how self selection on hard to measure or unobservable characteristics can bias strategy performance estimates and recommend an econometric technique that has been developed to account for this effect although this concern applies to a wide range of strategy questions to demonstrate its effect i empirically examine if entry mode choice acquisition versus greenfield influences foreign direct investment survival in specifications that do not account for self selection i find that greenfield entries have survival advantages compared to acquisitions this confirms previous findings however the significance of this effect disappears once i account for self selection of entry mode in the empirical estimates the results confirm that estimates from models that do not account for self selection of strategy choice can lead to incorrect or misleading conclusions

income taxes and the destination of movers to multistate msas abstract we examine how differences in state income tax rates as well as other state and local taxes and public service expenditures influence the choice of state of residence for households federal tax filers moving into multistate metropolitan areas msas using data from the irs on the migration of taxpayers msas that are on borders provide a spatial discontinuity discrete differences in state tax rates within a single labor market these msas allow residents to live in one state and work in another state we find that differences in state income tax rates have a significant impact on the relative rate of migration to the states within an msa however contrary to what would be expected this impact is only significant in msas in which the filing state is based on employment states without reciprocity and not for those states in which the filing state is the state of residence states with reciprocity in msas where states do not have reciprocity agreements a difference of ten percent in tax rates leads to a 4 1 percent difference in the relative rate of incoming taxpayers analogously we find that a ten percent difference in state tax rates in these msas results in a 3 3 percent difference in the rate of tax base inflow agi our results suggest that one reason that differences in state income taxes appear to have more impact in multistate msas without reciprocity is that only relatively large differences in state income tax rates have any impact on migration and these differences are much more pronounced in msas without reciprocity

schools and housing markets an examination of school segregation and performance in connecticut this paper estimates a dynamic model of price level school performance and school racial and ethnic composition in the state of connecticut the paper finds that increasing minority representation in a labor market area reinforces the existing pattern of school segregation changes in segregation appear to be influenced by demographic trends in urban areas and by the labour market factors that determine those trends there is no evidence however to suggest that this process affects housing prices rather the housing market appears to adjust relatively quickly

renewable energy sector development in the caribbean current trends and lessons from history island regions and isolated communities represent an understudied area of not only clean energy development but also of innovation caribbean states have for some time shown interest in developing a regional sustainable energy policy and in implementing measures which could help to protect its member states from volatile oil markets while promoting reliance on local resources here we examine four case studies of renewable energy advancements being made by public utility companies and independent energy companies in the caribbean we attempt to locate renewable energy advances in a broader historical framework of energy sector development indicating a few policy lessons we find that different degrees of regulatory and legislative sophistication have evolved in different islands islands should have specialized policy focus contrasting the ad hoc nature of current regional energy policy discussion we also conduct a cost benefit analysis which shows that these early innovative alternative energy projects show themselves to be both profitable and significant sources of emissions reduction and job creation this lends support to the potential benefits of regional energy policy

valuing rail access using transport innovations this paper uses a powerful empirical method to evaluate the benefits of rail access to consumers we study the effects on house prices of a transport innovation that altered the distance to the nearest station for some households but left others unaffected the transport innovation we study is the construction of new stations in london in the late 1990s using this innovation we implement a quasi experimental approach that allows us to avoid the biases inherent in cross sectional valuation work our evidence on distance station effects on local prices identified through distance changes induced by the transport innovation suggests that households value rail access and that these valuations are large compared to the valuations of other local amenities

power sector reform in small island developing states what role for renewable energy technologies abstract due to various pressures and desires more and more developing countries embark on power sector reform programmes yet there are a wide range of reform options and at present insufficient evidence is available as to which path will deliver best the desired objectives presently most small island developing states sids are dependent on high cost fossil fuel imports for power generation in spite of evidence that harnessing abundant domestic renewable sources of energy can deliver environmental social and economic benefits however depending on the type of power sector reform the transition towards renewable energy technologies rets can be either undermined or facilitated the specific focus on sids is justified because they have inherent characteristics that limit the degree to which the power sector can be transformed in comparison to larger continental developing countries with specific reference to sids this manuscript reviews the drivers and desires for power sector reform as well as presenting the available reform options and their implications on the up take of rets in addition to elaborating aspects of market governance other barriers to the consideration of rets such as financial bias in investment human capacity and environmental policy are discussed in view of this discussion which is based on evidence from recent reform programmes and theoretical academic literature recommendations are formulated that discourage full privatisation of the power sector as well as proposing less dogmatic lending conditions by international assistance bodies

sorting over flood risk and implications for policy reform abstract do individuals sort across flood risk this paper applies a boundary discontinuity design to a residential sorting model to provide novel estimates of sorting across flood risk by race ethnicity and income we find clear evidence that low income and minority residents are more likely to move into high risk flood zones we then highlight the overall and distributional implications of proposed price and information reforms to the u s national flood insurance program while such reforms are likely welfare increasing overall heterogeneous behavioral responses yield significant distributive effects that also alter the composition of residents in harm s way

institutional and legal context in natural experiments the case of state antitakeover laws we argue and demonstrate empirically that a firm s institutional and legal context has first order effects in tests that use state antitakeover laws for identification a priori the size and direction of a law s effect on a firm s takeover protection depends on i other state antitakeover laws ii preexisting firm level takeover defenses and iii the legal regime as reflected by important court decisions in addition iv state antitakeover laws are not exogenous for many easily identifiable firms we show that the inferences from nine prior studies related to nine different outcome variables change substantially when we include controls for these considerations

ceo duality as a double edged sword how boards of directors balance entrenchment avoidance and unity of command when a firm s chief executive officer is also the chairperson of its board directors have opposing objectives according to organization theory such ceo duality establishes strong unambiguous le

the welfare economics of land use planning abstract this paper presents an empirical methodology for the evaluation of the benefits and costs of land use planning the technique is applied in the context of the town and country planning system of the uk and examines the gross and net benefits of land use regulation and their distribution across income groups the results show that the welfare and distributional impacts can be large

assessing the determinants of sids pattern toward sustainability a statistical analysis abstract the aim of this paper is twofold first we assess the sids pattern towards energy sustainability second we try to understand the macro factors that drive policy makers in setting the optimal framework for investments in renewable energy sources the empirical analysis is performed on a large dataset of 136 countries and 41 variables observed in the time span 2000 2011 countries analyzed include a sample of 12 sids bahrain cuba dominican republic fiji islands guyana haiti jamaica maldives mauritius papua new guinea singapore trinidad and tobago distributed worldwide due to the large number of variables collected and their high degree of collinearity the first step of the analysis concerns the implementation of a principal component analysis in order to extract factors explaining the majority of variation of the original variables in the second step three different scenarios of modeling are designed to examine the key factors promoting res investments in a first scenario we employ a pooled regression model in the second a fixed effect model and in the third a random effect model is estimated the main results of empirical analysis could be unexpected at first sight they show in fact that sids are not on a energy sustainability path as in the case of other developing countries policy makers prefer to use resources to improve economic aspects of development leaving behind issues related to the environmental protection the use of res and sustainability in order to improve economic and environmental resilience of sids a synergy between local governments and international organizations to promote the investments in res is needed moreover an energy plan that clearly supports the generation of energy from res is recommended finally policy makers should strength their commitment in raising population s awareness toward a green energy generation such synergic interventions will allow sids to achieve a more sustainable development

valuing the urban hukou in china evidence from a regression discontinuity design for housing prices abstract this paper explores the demand side of hukou household registration acquisition in china by estimating the market valuation of urban hukou based on jinan city s acquiring the hukous by purchasing houses policy this paper uses houses with a floor area slightly larger and slightly smaller than the minimum required as the treatment and control groups respectively to implement a regression discontinuity design the results show that residents willingness to pay for urban hukou in jinan city was approximately 90 000 126 000 yuan in 2017 we also find great heterogeneity in different housing submarkets the value of hukou is much higher in immigrant dominated housing markets and top primary school districts our findings are robust to parametric and nonparametric estimates and different model specifications we perform falsification tests by assuming a false policy introduction date and placebo tests based on rental data our analysis offers insights for hukou system reform and public services provision

the effect of poison pill securities on shareholder wealth abstract this paper examines empirical evidence about the effect of poison pill takeover defenses on shareholder wealth i find evidence that announcements of the most restrictive forms of the pill defense are associated with stock price declines also the most restrictive forms of the pill defense are associated with abnormally high rates of defeat of unsolicited tender offers although this evidence is consistent with managerial entrenchment the evidence implies that on average poison pill defenses have seemingly had only a modest effect on firm valuation

paying the price the impact of controversial governance practices on managerial reputation this study directly examines the reputational penalties that managers pay when they engage in controversial governance practices that raise questions about managerial self interest these penalties

the social construction of market value institutionalization and learning perspectives on stock market reactions this study advances a social constructionist view of financial market behavior the paper suggests that the market s reaction to particular corporate practices such as stock repurchase plans are not as financial economists contend simply a function of the inherent efficiency of such practices rather stock market reactions are also influenced by the prevailing institutional logic and the degree of institutionalization of the practice the theory first predicts that the emergence of the agency perspective on corporate governance in the mid 1980s represented a powerful new institutional logic that would lead the market to reverse its prior aggregate reaction to stock repurchase plans in the united states the paper then considers the potential for institutional decoupling of repurchase plans and develops competing hypotheses about how the market value of these policies might have changed as more firms formally adopted but did not implement the plans over time in contrast to a financial economic pers

valuing school quality better transport and lower crime evidence from house prices housing prices within urban areas exhibit highly localized variation that cannot be explained solely by differences in the physical attributes of dwellings we consider the role of local amenities and disamenities in generating price variation within urban areas focusing on three highly policy relevant urban issues transport accessibility school quality and crime our survey of the recent empirical literature highlights what is known and what is not known on these issues and considers the relevance and reliability of this evidence for policy design and evaluation although there are serious empirical challenges we argue that research on housing values based on careful research designs can offer credible estimates of the social value of place specific attributes and amenities

a framework for evaluating wtp for bipv in residential housing design in developing countries a case study of north cyprus this paper explores people s preferences for a built in photovoltaic bipv renewable energy system to be integrated into housing construction a novel methodology was developed to study the case of northern cyprus for better understanding of possibilities that abound in bipv integration the methodology incorporates building information modeling bim as a real time design and economic assessment tool for bipv choices this serves to benefit both the construction companies and potential house owners in their decision making in addition it uses a contingent valuation cv method to assess the willingness to pay wtp and the willingness to accept wta compensation the results indicate that the capital cost of pv is not instrumental in choice and a lower feed in tariff could be acceptable

the impact of research grant funding on scientific productivity in this paper we estimate the impact of receiving an nih grant on subsequent publications and citations our sample consists of all applications unsuccessful as well as successful to the nih from 1980 to 2000 for standard research grants r01s both ols and iv estimates show that receipt of an nih research grant worth roughly 1 7 million leads to only one additional publication over the next five years which corresponds to a 7 percent increase the limited impact of nih grants is consistent with a model in which the market for research funding is competitive so that the loss of an nih grant simply causes researchers to shift to another source of funding

stratification and public utility services in colombia subsidies to households or distortion of housing prices domiciliary public utility services in colombia have a cross subsidy system which charges subsidized rates to the households who live in houses located in strata associated to low wealth levels and taxed rates to the better off we assesses the hypothesis that the flow of subsidies that potentially come from a particular house are discounted by housing market agents so that most of them are transferred to the prices of the houses that generate the subsidies by estimating a hedonic prices model applying a regression discontinuity approach we find that the increment in house value estimated because of subsidies is similar in magnitude to the present value of the flow of subsidies likely effects are found on the rent amount we conclude that subsidies to the poor population through public spending in domiciliary public utility services in colombia is being achieved if anything in a very limited way most of the financial effort on this subject ends up distorting housing relative prices according to socioeconomic strata with an annual cost of up to 0 7 of gdp in supposed gross subsidies to domiciliary public utility services

house price responses to a national property tax reform abstract we show that house prices in general did not respond to a substantial cut in the national property tax in sweden the estimates are based on rich register data covering more than 100 000 sales over a time period of two and a half years because the swedish property tax is national and thus unrelated to local public goods our setting is ideal for causal identification of the property tax on house prices we observe price increases only in a small segment of the market containing properties with very high tax values we discuss but can admittedly not empirically discriminate between several potential explanations for why we find no evidence of capitalization except for the top segment of the market

the importance of local corporate taxes in business location decisions evidence from french micro data determinants of businesses locations are known to be multiple locations of partners and competitors are crucial as well as the territory s local characteristics to consider the importance of local taxes we build a poisson model to explain the number of business creations observed in a given municipality first results suggest that there are unobserved factors driving firm creation that are positively correlated with the level of local taxes to deal with this potential source of endogeneity we present an approach close to regression discontinuity design we find that everything else being equal higher local taxes actually tend to deter firms from setting up in a given zone but the effect is weak

does the market value value added evidence from housing prices after a public release of school and teacher value added value added data are an increasingly common evaluation tool for schools and teachers many school districts have adopted these methods and released the results publicly in this paper we study the release of value added data in los angeles by the los angeles times newspaper to identify how measured value added is capitalized into housing prices this analysis is the first in the us school valuation literature to examine property value responses to a value added information shock which is of interest as this measure is less correlated with demographics than typical school quality measures unique to this setting as well is the release of both school and teacher level value added data which allows us to examine how property values respond to both types of information using a difference indifferences methodology surrounding the release we find that neither school nor teacher value added scores are capitalized into home prices our results suggest that despite the contentiousness following these data releases homeowners do not consider value added models as currently constructed to be a relevant school quality measure on the margin

swinging for the fences the effects of ceo stock options on company risk taking and performance we unpack the concept of managerial risk taking distinguishing among three of its major elements the size of an outlay the variance of potential outcomes and the likelihood of extreme loss we

embeddedness in the making of financial capital how social relations and networks benefit firms seeking financing i investigate how social embeddedness affects an organization s acquisition and cost of financial capital in middle market banking a lucrative but understudied financial sector using existing theory and original fieldwork i develop a framework to explain how embeddedness can influence which firms get capital and at what cost i then statistically examine my claims using national data on small business lending at the level of dyadic ties i find that firms that embed their commercial transactions with their lender in social attachments receive lower interest rates on loans at the network level firms are more likely to get loans and to receive lower interest rates on loans if their network of bank ties has a mix of embedded ties and arm s length ties these network effects arise because embedded ties motivate network partners to share private resources while arm s length ties facilitate access to public information on market prices and loan opportunities so that the benefits of different types of ties are optimized within one network i conclude with a discussion of how the value produced by a network is at a premium when it creates a bridge that links the public information of markets with the private resources of relationships

estimates of the impact of crime risk on property values from megan s laws abstract we estimate the willingness to pay for reductions in crime risk using the location and move in dates of sex offenders we find significant effects of sex offenders locations that are geographically localized house prices within 0 1 miles of a sex offender fall by 4 percent on average we then use this finding to estimate the costs to victims of sexual offenses and find costs of over 1 million per victim far greater than previous estimates however we cannot reject the alternative hypotheses that individuals overestimate risks posed by offenders or that living near an offender poses significant costs exclusive of crime risk jel k42 r23 r31

the value of heterogeneous property rights and the costs of water volatility the system of prior appropriation in the western unites states prioritizes property rights for water based on the establishment of beneficial use creating a hierarchy where rights initiated first are more secure i estimate the demand for security in water rights through their capitalization in agricultural property markets in the yakima river basin a major watershed in washington state all water rights are satisfied in an average year so the relative value of secure property rights is a function of water supply volatility and the costs of droughts are predominantly born by those with weak rights in aggregate security in water rights does not capitalize into property values at the irrigation district level however there is heterogeneity in the premium for secure water rights the lack of a premium for district level water security is robust to a variety of econometric methods to account for correlated district unobservables and the null result produces an economically significant upper bound on the value to water security for the district the ability for farmers to adapt to water supply volatility as well as expectations about water markets and government infrastructure investment are leading explanations for the lack of an aggregate premium these explanations are supported by the pattern of heterogeneity in the water security premium

regulation and capitalization of environmental amenities evidence from the toxic release inventory in massachusetts environmental regulation in the united states has undergone a slow evolution from command and control strategies towards market based regulations one such innovation is the toxics release inventory tri a regulation that requires polluting e rms to publicly disclose information about their toxic emissions the basic tenet of this regulation is that it corrects for informational asymmetries between polluters and households allowing communities to pressure polluters to decrease their emissions policy makers have judged the tri a tremendous success as national releases declined by 43 between 1988 and 1999 yet many of the fundamental problems which are known to lead to the classic failure of the coase theorem such as high transaction costs and dife culties in organizing cast doubt on the effectiveness of disclosure rules alone to lead to an efe cient outcome in the caseof pollution we use an event study methodology with high quality data on house prices and other local attributes to assess the extent to which the public values changes in toxic releases and thus the success of tri our major e ndings include 1 declines in toxic releases appear unrelated to any political economy variables that might lead to public activism 2 initial information released under tri had no signie cant effect on the distribution of house prices and 3 house prices show no signie cant impact of declines in reportedtoxic releases over time standard errors aresmall enoughthat we can reject the hypothesis that large declines in toxic releases lead to more than a 0 5 increase in house prices these results also hold when we control for differences in the availability of information on tri and the possible effect of expectations our e ndings cast doubt on the ability of the public to process complex information on hazardous emissions and support the coase theorem in that right to know lawssuch as tri may not be the most effective form of environmental regulation

how do school report cards affect school choice decisions we estimate the effect of information about school achievement that is disseminated to the public through websites and school report cards on school choice decisions we find that students are more likely to leave their school when public information reveals poor school level performance some parents school choice decisions respond to information soon after it becomes available others including non english speaking parents alter their school choice decisions only in response to information that has been disseminated widely and discussed in the media parents in low income neighbourhoods are most likely to alter their school choice decisions in response to new information jel classification i21 d83 les auteurs evaluent les effets de l information sur la performance des ecoles diffusee au public via les sites web ou les bulletins sur les decisions de choix d ecole il appert que les etudiants sont davantage susceptibles de quitter leur ecole quand l information publique revele sa pauvre performance les decisions de choix d ecole par certains parents repondent a l information tot apres que l information devient disponible d autres incluant les parents dont l anglais n est pas la premiere langue ne modifient leurs decision de choix d ecole qu en reponse a une information qui a ete vastement disseminee et discutee dans les medias les parents des milieux defavorises sont moins susceptibles de modifier leur decision de choix d ecole en reponse a l information nouvelle

estimating the effect of financial aid offers on college enrollment a regression discontinuity approach an important problem faced by colleges and universities that of evaluating the effect of their financial aid offers on student enrollment decisions is complicated by the likely endogeneity of the aid offer variable in a student enrollment equation this article shows how discontinuities in an east coast college s aid assignment rule can be exploited to obtain credible estimates of the aid effect without having to rely on arbitrary exclusion restrictions and functional form assumptions semiparametric estimates based on a regression discontinuity rd approach affirm the importance of financial aid as an effective instrument in competing with other colleges for students

applying regression discontinuity designs to american political development students of american political development apd have long been interested in questions related to the development of state capacity in the united states the apparent macro level nature of those questions may appear to discourage the pursuit of micro level causal inferences yet attention to causal inference is not necessarily incompatible with inquiry into macro level phenomena this article explores the application of a specific causal inference strategy namely regression discontinuity design rdd to three questions of interest to apd scholars of state capacity first the article illustrates the use of a geographic rdd to estimate the causal impacts of a reconstruction era federal civil rights statute during the period prior to the development of significant federal state capacity second it explores the possible causes of the late 19th century decline in the use of monetary rewards to motivate civil servants by using a population based rdd to estimate the causal impacts of financial incentives on law enforcement effort and civilian compliance third it illustrates an opportunity to test claims about the impacts of the growth of the carceral state by applying a resource constraint rdd to estimate the causal impacts of law enforcement effort on a variety of outcomes

exploring mortgage interest deduction reforms an equilibrium sorting model with endogenous tenure choice in most equilibrium sorting models esms of residential choice across neighborhoods the question of whether households rent or buy their home is either ignored or else tenure status is treated as exogenous of course tenure status is not exogenous and households tenure choices may have important public policy implications particularly since higher levels of homeownership have been shown to correlate strongly with various indicators of improved neighborhood quality indeed numerous policies including that of mortgage interest deduction mid have been implemented with the express purpose of promoting homeownership this paper presents an esm with simultaneous rental and purchase markets in which tenure choice is endogenized and neighborhood quality is partly determined by neighborhood composition the public policy relevance of the model is shown through a calibration exercise for boston massachusetts which explores the impacts of various reforms to the mid policy the simulations confirm some of the arguments made about reforming mid but also demonstrate how the complex patterns of behavioral change induced by policy reform can lead to unanticipated effects the results suggest that it may be possible to reform mid while maintaining the prevailing rates of homeownership and reducing the federal budget deficit

teaching new markets old tricks the effects of subsidized investment on low income neighborhoods abstract this paper examines the effects of investment subsidized by the federal government s new markets tax credit nmtc program which provides tax incentives to encourage private investment in low income neighborhoods i identify the impacts of the program by taking advantage of a discontinuity in the rule determining the eligibility of census tracts for nmtc subsidized investment using this discontinuity as a source of quasi experimental variation in commercial development across tracts i find that subsidized investment has modest positive effects on neighborhood conditions in low income communities though spillovers appear to be small and crowd out incomplete the results suggest that some of the observed impacts on neighborhoods are attributable to changes in the composition of residents as opposed to improvements in the welfare of existing residents

impact of public policy uncertainty on renewable energy investment wind power and the production tax credit abstract it is generally understood that the pattern of repeated expiration and short term renewal of the federal production tax credit ptc causes a boom bust cycle in wind power plant investment in the us this on off pattern is detrimental to the wind industry since ramp up and ramp down costs are high and players are deterred from making long term investments it is often assumed that the severe downturn in investment during off years implies that wind power is unviable without the ptc this assumption turns out to be unsubstantiated this paper demonstrates that it is not the absence of the ptc that causes the investment downturn during off years but rather the uncertainty over its return specifically it is the dynamic of power purchase agreement ppa negotiations in the face of ptc renewal uncertainty that drives investment volatility with contract negotiations prevalent in the renewable energy industry this finding suggests that reducing uncertainty is a crucial component of effective renewable energy policy the ptc as currently structured is not the only means existing or potential for encouraging wind power investment using data from a survey of energy professionals various policy instruments are compared in terms of their perceived stability for supporting long term investment

residential property price differentials of waste plants evidence from beijing china as a primary source of urban pollution waste plants release toxic gases and polluted waste water that can cause great harm to human health and contaminate water resources the adverse impact of wa

the effect of school capital investments on local housing markets and household sorting in california abstractin this paper i investigate what effect school capital investments have on housing values and household location choice in the context of the tiebout model this research identifies an exogenous variation in school capital investments by exploiting the lottery allocation of entitlement to an interest free construction bond among districts in california although the lottery is exogenous additional non lottery allocation complicates identification this paper develops an empirical model based on sample selection methods in order to create a counterfactual state in which additional non lottery allocation would not have existed i find that receiving the interest free construction bond increases school capital expenditure and housing values at the district level i view the increase in housing values as the capitalization of school capital investments i find little evidence for the effect of the interest free construction bond on household sorting and student s academic outcomes

the effect of legalizing retail marijuana on housing values evidence from colorado does legalizing retail marijuana generate more benefits than costs this paper provides a first step toward addressing that question by measuring the benefits and costs that are capitalized into housing values we exploit the time series and cross sectional variations in the adoption of colorado s municipality retail marijuana laws rmls and examine the effect on housing values with a difference in differences strategy our estimates show that the legalization leads to an average 6 increase in housing values indicating that the capitalized benefits outweigh the costs in addition we find suggestive evidence that this relatively large housing value appreciation is likely due to rmls inducing strong housing demand while having no discernible effect on housing supply finally we show that the effect of rmls is heterogeneous across locations and property types jel k20 r28

capitalising the value of free schools the impact of supply characteristics and uncertainty there has been a growing literature in both the us for example haurin and brasington 1996 and black 1999 and the uk for example gibbons machin 2003 that estimates the way in which school quality is capitalised into house prices cheshire and sheppard 1995 and 1999 estimated hedonic models in which the quality of the secondary school to which a household was assigned was a significant variable which provided evidence that secondary school quality was being capitalised into the price of houses in contrast gibbons and machin concluded that primary schools were more significant each of these analyses is predicated on the assumption that the value of local schools should be reflected in the value of houses we argue here that this is rather too simple we should expect variation in the capitalised price of a given school quality at either primary or secondary level according to the elasticity of supply of school quality in the local market the certainty with which that quality can be expected to be maintained over time and the suitability of the dwelling to accommodate children these factors will vary systematically between and perhaps within cities this paper explores the sources and the impact of such variations as well as the impact of model specification the results provide new evidence on the complex and subtle ways in which housing markets capitalise the value of local public goods such as school quality and perhaps most importantly suggest that this is highly non linear houses in the catchment areas of only the best state schools command substantial premiums but such capitalised values can be very substantial indeed

suburbanization demographic change and the consequences for school finance abstract the existing literature on the relationship between the share of elderly in a community and the support for local public education has led to mixed results to date one potential reason behind this is that the share of elderly in a community is endogenous and it is very difficult to disentangle the effects of individuals aging in place from that of dynamic tiebout sorting the point of this paper is to carefully document the degree to which aging in place has occurred in the american suburbs and to estimate the degree to which it has influenced school finance once the initial settlers of these suburbs were no longer the parents of school aged children we hand match data from the 1950 and 1960 censuses of population and housing to more recent data to link postwar suburban development to later school finance using a novel method for identifying the causal effects of aging in place we find that the percentage of elderly adults in a school district is negatively related to the level of support for public schooling and that this is particularly true for school districts in metropolitan areas where the school aged population is more heavily nonwhite relative to the elderly population

higher taxes more evasion evidence from border differentials in tv license fees this paper studies the evasion of tv license fees in austria we exploit border differentials to identify the effect of fees on evasion comparing municipalities at the low and high fee side of state borders reveals that higher fees trigger significantly more evasion our preferred estimator indicates that a one percent increase in fees raises the evasion rate by 0 3 percentage points the positive effect of fees on evasion is confirmed in different parametric and non parametric approaches and survives several robustness checks