corporate conservatism and relative compensation this paper demonstrates that in a simple setting with managerial concern for reputation and asymmetric information on ability most managers may refrain from undertaking innovations that stochastically dominate an industry standard common components of uncertainty lead to market inferences of managerial ability based on relative performance managers who undertake the industry standard are consequently evaluated with a more accurate benchmark than those innovating discontinuities in compensation when performance is low because of firings lead managers to have differing valuations of an accurate benchmark depending on type in particular very high and very low ability managers are more likely to undertake superior innovations than those of average ability

gentrification and failing schools the unintended consequences of school choice under nclb we examine the housing market and residential mobility changes that occur soon after a title 1 school fails to achieve adequate yearly progress ayp in charlotte north carolina students within attendance zones of failing schools are given priority in lotteries for oversubscribed schools potentially increasing the attractiveness of living in a failing school attendance zone we find that housing prices home buyer income and the probability of attending a nonassigned school increase in the highest quality neighborhoods within failing school attendance zones our results are driven largely by the behavior of new residents

information school choice and academic achievement evidence from two experiments we examine a natural experiment and a field experiment that provided direct information on school test scores to lower income families in a public school choice plan receiving information significantly increases the fraction of parents choosing higher performing schools parents with high scoring alternatives nearby were more likely to choose nonguaranteed schools with higher test scores using random variation from each experiment we find that attending a higher scoring school increases student test scores the results imply that school choice will most effectively increase academic achievement for disadvantaged students when parents have easy access to test score information and good options from which to choose

buying their votes a study of local tax price discrimination i introduction financial support for public schools in developed countries has recently been declining as governments face increasing pressure to balance their budgets by reducing expenditures on public services public school revenues may be particularly vulnerable in countries where elderly residents will compose a rising share of the population while the percent of united states residents over the age of 65 was 12 4 in 2000 the u s census bureau 2008 predicts this will rise to 16 3 by 2020 and 20 7 by 2050 recent growth in the upper middle aged population ages 55 64 has occurred throughout the united states and if current trends continue communities with the largest growth in the elderly share ages 65 and over over the next 30 years will experience this growth primarily due to aging in place rather than residential migration frey 2007 the typical school district will thus have an increasing share of adults who do not consume public schooling services this trend could have two important implications for school districts 1 decreased political support for school expenditures and 2 a greater tax base per student due to a reduction in the relative size of the school aged population if the former effect dominates the latter then local district revenues per student will decline this dynamic would be consistent with prior u s trends figlio and fletcher 2012 find that most of the within metropolitan area variation in suburbs age distributions in 1980 and 1990 can be traced back to these suburbs age distributions when adults settled there in earlier decades those authors simulate the shares of elderly adults residing in various suburbs based on the aging in place of early residents and their simulated elderly shares are negatively correlated with suburban school expenditures state or federal governments could potentially alter this dynamic by subsidizing local property tax reductions that are targeted toward elderly homeowners elderly homeowners receiving these reductions might support higher levels of local public school spending because they can maintain high property values at a relatively low cost in other words elderly homeowners preferred level of local tax revenues may be sensitive to their marginal local tax price the change in their tax payments required to increase local school district revenues by one dollar by influencing elderly homeowners preferred local tax rates targeted tax price reductions may shift the identity of the local median voter and thus moderate how changes in demographics affect local public revenue this article is the first to empirically examine whether targeted tax price reductions moderate the impact of age demographics on local government revenues prior studies examined how the aging in place of local populations affects public school revenues figlio and fletcher 2012 harris evans and schwab 2001 ladd and murray 2001 and this article tests whether there is important within sample heterogeneity in these effects using similar methods as these prior studies the empirical models below isolate the exogenous component of changes in local age demographics by using lagged population shares as instrumental variables predicting future age demographics to test for heterogeneous effects i assembled a longitudinal data set concerning states property tax reduction policies for elderly homeowners the results confirm earlier studies findings that exogenous increases in the fraction of elderly residents ages 65 and over on average decrease tax revenues in u s school districts however state financed reductions in elderly homeowners marginal local tax prices significantly reduce the negative effect of the local elderly population share this negative effect is only large in communities not offering any targeted local tax price reductions to elderly homeowners significant differences in the effects of the elderly share across state policy regimes are robust to several alternative empirical specifications including comparisons of school districts that are located near each other on opposite sides of state borders

school finance reform assessing general equilibrium effects abstract in 1994 the state of michigan implemented one of the most comprehensive school finance reforms undertaken to date in any of the states understanding the effects of the reform is thus of value in informing other potential reform initiatives in addition the reform and associated changes in the economic environment provide an opportunity to assess whether a simple general equilibrium model can be of value in framing the study of such reform initiatives in this paper we present and use such a model to derive predictions about the effects of the reform on housing prices and neighborhood demographic compositions broadly our analysis implies that the effects of the reform and changes in the economic environment are likely to have been reflected primarily in housing prices and only modestly on neighborhood demographics we find that evidence for the detroit metropolitan area from the decade encompassing the reform is largely consistent with the predictions of the model

house prices and the provision of local public services capitalization under school choice programs abstract while the theoretical public finance literature argues that house prices should be influenced by the demand for local public services there is little direct evidence concerning changes in house prices when these services are altered previous empirical studies have relied on cross sectional identification of the relationship between house prices and variables that may proxy for the perceived quality of local public services this paper instead examines a policy change the adoption of a public school choice program to identify the capitalization effects associated with the diminished importance of school district boundaries using data from inter district choice in minnesota i find that residential properties appreciate significantly in school districts where students are able to transfer to preferred school districts whereas residential property values decline in districts that accept transfer students these general equilibrium effects also influence school districts local property tax revenues mitigating the incentive for schools to improve in order to attract or retain students

the use and abuse of meta analysis in environmental and natural resource economics an assessment motivated by the 2006 report of a work group appointed by the environmental protection agency epa this paper examines the present state of meta analysis in environmental economics and offers recommendations for its future use to this end we summarize and assess 140 meta analyses from 125 published and unpublished studies covering 17 topical categories in environmental and resource economics first we provide several generic meta analysis models as reference points and discuss major estimation issues five econometric issues are identified as part of a complete analysis 1 sample selection criteria 2 basic data summary 3 primary data heterogeneity 4 heteroskedasticity and 5 non independence of multiple observations from primary studies second a tabular summary is presented for the 140 meta analyses with respect to estimation methods third a narrative summary is presented for 19 meta analyses including the three value of statistical life studies examined by the epa work group and one analysis from each of 16 other categories fourth we offer a set of best practice guidelines for future meta analyses in this and other areas of economics last the paper comments on the use of meta analytic methods for benefit transfers of environmental values

competition between private and public schools vouchers and peer group effects a theoretical and computational model with tax financed tuition free public schools and competitive tuition financed private schools is developed students differ by ability and income achievement depends on own ability and on peers abilities equilibrium has a strict hierarchy of school qualities and two dimensional student sorting with stratification by ability and income in private schools high ability low income students receive tuition discounts while low ability high income students pay tuition premia tuition vouchers increase the relative size of the private sector and the extent of student sorting and benefit high ability students relative to low ability students

vertically summing public good demand curves an empirical comparison of economic versus political jurisdictions fiscal equivalence for efficient provision of a public good requires perfect correspondence between political and economic jurisdictions however the spatial extent of the economic jurisdiction is an empirical question drawing on four survey based valuation studies we measure the relative public good benefit gradient as a function of residential location from six natural resource public goods the results indicate commonly used state political jurisdictions reflect an average of 13 of total benefits in the economic jurisdiction although with a logarithmic form for distance the upper confidence interval of state benefits can include 100 for some species

cross context benefit transfer a bayesian search for information pools commodity equivalence and population similarity are two widely accepted paradigms for the valid transfer of welfare estimates across resource valuation contexts we argue that strict adherence to these rules may leave relevant information untapped and propose a bayesian model search algorithm that examines the probabilities with which two or more sub sets of meta data each corresponding to a different combination of commodity and population share common value distributions using a large meta data set of willingness to pay for diverse outdoor activities across various regions of the united states as an example we find strong potential for contexts that would not traditionally be considered as transfer candidates to form information pools exploiting these commonalities leads to substantial efficiency gains for benefit estimates

institutional sources of boundary spanning structures the establishment of investor relations departments in the fortune 500 industrials the authors analyze the coercive and mimetic conditions leading to the establishment of investor relations departments among fortune 500 industrial firms during the 1984 1994 period the results show that antimanagement resolutions brought to a vote by social movement activists significantly contributed to the establishment of investor relations departments intense scrutiny by financial analysts also impelled firms to create such departments whereas social movement activists framed shareholder rights as a problem and compelled organizations to uphold them professional analysts subtly coerced organizations to signal their commitment to investor rights by creating boundary spanning structures that solution was transmitted through board interlocks to other organizations

why do households without children support local public schools linking house price capitalization to school spending while residents receive similar benefits from many local government programs only about one third of all households have children in public schools we argue that capitalization of school spending into house prices can encourage even childless residents to support spending on schools we identify a proxy for the extent of capitalization the supply of land available for new development and show that towns in massachusetts with little undeveloped land have larger changes in house prices in response to a plausibly exogenous spending shock towns with little available land also spend more on schools we extend these results using data from school districts in 46 states showing that per pupil spending is positively related to the percentage of developed land this positive correlation persists only in districts where the median resident is a homeowner and is stronger in districts with more elderly residents who do not use school services and have a shorter expected duration in their home our findings support models in which capitalization encourages the provision of durable local public goods and provides an additional reason why some elderly support local school spending

analyzing the analysts career concerns and biased earnings forecasts this paper examines the career concerns of security analysts we relate long histories of their earnings forecasts to job separations we find that relatively accurate past forecasts lead to favorable career outcomes such as remaining at or moving up to a high status large prestigious brokerage house controlling for accuracy optimistic forecasts relative to the consensus increase the chances of favorable job separations job separations depend much less on accuracy for analysts who cover stocks that are underwritten by their brokerage houses such analysts are also much more likely to be rewarded for optimistic forecasts than other analysts furthermore job separations were much less sensitive to accuracy and somewhat more sensitive to optimism during the stock market mania of the late 1990s these findings suggest that the well documented analyst forecast optimism bias is likely due to incentives to promote stocks

is meta analysis a noah s ark for non market valuation this paper describes meta analytical methods as they have been applied to non market valuation research these studies have been used to review and synthesize literature and more recently in benefit transfer this second use imposes a higher standard on the consistency in economic concepts being summarized and in the resources included in a meta analysis to meet this need the paper proposes and illustrates a structural framework using a generalized method of moments estimator to estimate the parameters of a preference function with the benefits estimates usually encountered in meta analytic summaries

valuing non market valuation studies using meta analysis a demonstration using estimates of willingness to pay for water quality improvements abstract a common refrain in the environmental economics literature is the need for additional estimates of environmental and natural resource values yet economists have paid little formal attention to the value of information voi provided by non market valuation studies and whether this value justifies the cost we develop a novel voi model to quantify the benefit of non market valuation studies conducted to expand the body of value estimates in the literature and hence available for use in policy analyses the approach is designed to capitalize on information available through preexisting valuation meta data and can be applied to any valuation meta regression that is suitable to inform policy decisions we illustrate the approach for a prototype nationwide water quality improvement policy in the united states assuming that policy benefits are evaluated using benefit transfer based on a meta regression model of willingness to pay our results suggest that when evaluating nationwide water quality regulations with uncertain net benefits the voi from a typical water quality valuation study will almost certainly exceed the cost we also examine how voi varies with study design features and information gaps in the literature thereby illustrating how the approach can inform research priorities

modeling spatial patchiness and hot spots in stated preference willingness to pay stated preference analyses often impose strong assumptions regarding spatial welfare distributions that can influence the validity of welfare analysis and aggregation these include spatial homogeneity and continuous distance decay global assumptions such as these are increasingly questioned by non economics disciplines in favor of approaches that allow for local patchiness drawing from this literature this article proposes methods to identify and evaluate hot spots in stated preference welfare estimates using local indicators of spatial association methods are illustrated using geocoded choice experiment data addressing river restoration results suggest the presence of statistically significant non continuous patterns overlooked by current approaches

shrewd crude or simply deluded comovement and the internet stock phenomenon we show that i return comovement among internet stocks during the late 1990s and early 2000 was not exceedingly high ii there was substantial consistency in the manner by which investors distinguished among internet stocks and iii high comovement is most common during periods of price erosion these results cast doubt on the view that the extraordinary appreciation of internet stocks was due to the crude classification of all such stocks as members of a hot category

the aggregation of environmental benefit values welfare measures distance decay and total wtp abstract we review the literature regarding the aggregation of benefit value estimates for non market goods two case studies are presented through which we develop an approach to aggregation which applies the spatial analytic capabilities of a geographical information system to combine geo referenced physical census and survey data to estimate a spatially sensitive valuation function these case studies show that the common reliance upon political rather than economic jurisdictions and the use of sample mean values within the aggregation process are liable to lead to significant errors in resultant values we also highlight the fact that for resources with use values then we should expect overall values to reduce with increasing distance from such sites but that changes in the choice of welfare measure will determine whether such distance decay is to be expected within values stated by those who are presently non users the paper concludes by providing recommendations for future improvements to the methodology

effect of distance on the preservation value of water quality in the past dozen years an extensive body of literature has developed on the willingness to pay for water quality in particular its recreation use and nonuse preservation values this paper illustrates a procedure for estimating the effect of distance on the preservation value of environmental quality using the contingent valuation approach the case considered is the potential degradation of water quality due to coal mining activity in the flathead river drainage system montana the analysis supports a negative association for this particular study area the effect of distance on preservation value was considered both directly and indirectly through its effect on visits 36 references 2 tables

technological change and the stock market tobin s average q has usually been well above 1 but fell below 1 during 1974 1984 our model explains this pattern and reconciles it with unchanging aggregate investment the stock market value in the numerator of q reflects ownership of physical capital and knowledge but the denominator measures just physical capital therefore q is usually above 1 periodic arrivals of important new technologies such as the microprocessor in the 1970 s suddenly render old knowledge and capital obsolete causing the stock market to drop national accounts measures of physical capital miss this rapid obsolescence then q appears to drop below 1 jel e44 o3 o41

competition between private and public schools testing stratification and pricing predictions abstract when there are peer effects in education private schools have an incentive to vary tuition to attract relatively able students epple and romano american economic review 88 1 1998 33 develop a general equilibrium model characterizing equilibrium pricing and student selection into schools when peer effects are present the model predicts that competition will lead private schools to give tuition discounts to more able students and that this will give rise to an equilibrium exhibiting stratification by income and ability between the public and private sectors and to a hierarchy of schools within the private sector the model also yields a variety of comparative static predictions the predictions of the model are tested in this paper using a unique data set assembled by figlio and stone research in labor economics 1999 115 tests of equilibrium predictions of the model reveal that the propensity to attend private school increases with both income and ability and among private schools the propensity to attend the highest tuition schools rises with both income and ability within private schools tuition declines with student ability with a substantial number of even high income households paying little or no tuition the correlation between income and ability is greater in public than private schools tests of comparative static predictions of the model reveal that both income and ability become stronger predictors of private school attendance as public school expenditure falls income becomes increasingly important in determining placement in the private school hierarchy as public school expenditure falls discounts to ability in the lowest quality private school decline as public school expenditure rises while discounts to ability in the highest quality private school are little affected by changes in public school expenditure expenditure in private schools rises as expenditure in public schools increases these empirical results are consistent with the predictions of the theoretical model

reducing barriers in future benefit transfers needed improvements in primary study design and reporting abstract original research provides many social benefits including additions to our stock of knowledge benefit transfer is a formal process whereby our stock of knowledge rather than original research is used to inform decisions any shortcoming in this stock directly affects our ability to conduct valid and reliable benefit transfers this paper discusses three general criteria that are necessary for valid benefit transfers and how original research designs and reporting of results unnecessarily constrain the potential of benefit transfers we make several suggestions regarding how original research through improved design and reporting might increase the validity and reliability of benefit transfers we also recommend that repositories for original research surveys and data be developed to insure long term availability of study information

educational vouchers and cream skimming educational vouchers and cream skimming epple and romano 1998 show equilibrium provision of education by public and private schools has the latter skim off the wealthiest and most able students and universal vouchers lead to further cream skimming here we study voucher design that injects private school competition and increases technical efficiencies without cream skimming conditioning vouchers on student ability without restriction on participating schools policies fails to affect significantly cream skimming however by adding restrictions like tuition constraints such vouchers can reap the benefits of school competition without increased stratification this is accomplished while allowing voluntary participation in the voucher system and without tax increases

meta analysis benefit transfer and methodological covariates implications for transfer error meta regression models in the valuation literature demonstrate that willingness to pay estimates vary according to methodological factors neither theory nor characteristics of policy sites dictate the treatment of associated covariates within benefit transfer however and the literature provides few insights into potential impacts of common empirical treatments this paper introduces a method to systematically characterize the impact of methodological variables on transfer error using a repeated leave one out convergent validity framework the analysis contrasts errors for a hypothetical ideal case in which correct methodological covariate treatments are known to the realistic case in which the correct treatment is unknown results indicate that the common assumption of mean values for methodological covariates leads to only a modest increase in mean transfer error relative to that found in the hypothetical ideal case

how large is the extent of the market for public goods evidence from a nationwide contingent valuation survey to assess the extent of the geographic area over which to sum vertically the public good benefits of removing two dams and restoring salmon populations households were surveyed throughout the us households were asked a dichotomouschoice contingent valuation question regarding their willingness to pay higher federal taxes for ten years to remove the dams and restore salmon populations while the distance from the site of the dam removal is statistically significant and negative in the logit willingness to pay equation benefits per household fall off slowly and the extent of the market is nationwide with a majority of households living outside the immediate area of the dam the rest of the us households reflect 97 of the national benefits for dam removal and salmon restoration this example suggests that failure to account for the national public good market can result in a serious underestimate of the value of public goods

a nonparametric revealed preference approach to measuring the value of environmental quality we develop an approach to valuing non market goods using nonparametric revealed preference analysis we show how nonparametric methods can also be used to bound the welfare effects of changes in the provision of a non market good our main context is one in which the non market good affects the marginal utility of consuming a related market good this can also be framed as a shift in the taste for or quality of the market good a systematic approach for incorporating quality taste variation into a revealed preference framework for heterogeneous consumers is developed this enables the recovery of the minimal variation in quality required to rationalise observed choices of related market goods the variation in quality appears as a adjustment to the price for related market goods which then allows a revealed preference approach to bounding compensation measures of welfare effects to be applied

enhanced geospatial validity for meta analysis and environmental benefit transfer an application to water quality improvements meta regression models are commonly used within benefit transfer to estimate willingness to pay wtp for environmental quality improvements theory suggests that these estimates should be sensitive to geospatial factors including resource scale market extent and the availability of substitutes and complements valuation meta regression models addressing the quantity of non market commodities sometimes incorporate spatial variables that proxy for a subset of these effects however meta analyses of wtp for environmental quality generally omit geospatial factors such as these leading to benefit transfers that are invariant to these factors this paper reports on a meta regression model for water quality benefit transfer that incorporates spatially explicit factors predicted by theory to influence wtp the metadata are drawn from stated preference studies that estimate per household wtp for water quality changes in united states water bodies and combine primary study information with extensive geospatial data from external sources results find that geospatial variables are associated with significant wtp variations as predicted by theory and that inclusion of these variables reduces transfer errors

mobility targeting and private school vouchers simulations are derived from a three district model of low middle and highincome school districts calibrated to new york data with housing stocks that vary within and across districts in this model it is demonstrated that school district targeted vouchers are similar in their impact to nontargeted vouchers but vastly different from vouchers targeted to low income households furthermore strong migration effects are shown to significantly improve the likely equity consequences of voucher programs jel 122 128 h73 persistent frustration with the perceived low quality of public education exacerbated by concerns over the inherently unequal levels of public school quality across school districts has caused policy makers courts and researchers to investigate modifications and alternatives to the current public school system one idea that has received increasing academic and public attention is that of private school vouchers with proponents arguing that the competitive pressures of voucher programs would cause improvements in the efficiency of the publicschool system while at the same time addressing equity concerns if vouchers can be targeted to low income households or low income school districts but aside from a few limited experiments in some u s cities our experience with vouchers in the united states remains virtually nonexistent this limits the amount of information researchers can derive from standard empirical analysis in that it forces them to rely on only current nonvoucher induced differences in competition despite important suggestive results such work may not anticipate all the impacts from a large scale policy such as the voucher policies currently under discussion at the same time theoretical models of school finance are also limited in that they often either focus on only one particular aspect of the general equilibrium school finance problem or they are too rich and complex to yield crisp predictions

tiebout choice and universal school vouchers abstract this paper examines who is likely to gain and who is likely to lose under a universal voucher program following epple and romano d epple r e romano competition between private and public schools vouchers and peer group effects american economic review 88 1998 33 62 d epple r e romano neighborhood schools choice and the distribution of educational benefits in c m hoxby ed the economics of school choice the univ of chicago press chicago 2003 pp 227 286 and nechyba t j nechyba mobility targeting and private school vouchers american economic review 90 2000 130 146 t j nechyba introducing school choice into multidistrict public school systems in c m hoxby ed the economics of school choice the univ of chicago press chicago 2003 pp 145 194 we focus on the idea that gains and losses under a universal voucher depend on two effects changes in peer group composition and changes in housing values we show that the direction and magnitude of each of these effects hinge critically on market structure i e the amount of school choice that already exists in the public sector in markets with little or no tiebout choice potential changes in peer group composition create an incentive for high socioeconomic ses households to vote for the voucher and for low ses households to vote against voucher in contrast in markets with significant tiebout choice potential changes in housing values create an incentive for high ses households to vote against the voucher and for low ses households to vote for the voucher using data on vote outcomes from california s 2000 voucher initiative we find evidence consistent with those predictions

technological discontinuities and flexible production networks the case of switzerland and the world watch industry abstract the twentieth century history of the swiss watch industry illustrates how cultures and industrial production systems experience great difficulty adapting to external change at different points in time the current emphasis on production networks unique reservoirs of potential technological innovation realized through cooperation rather than competition among firms lacks a detailed appreciation of historic networks and in particular their fragile character in times of economic turmoil while networks can and do promote innovation within an existing technological framework historical experience suggests their fragmented atomistic structure is subject to disorganization and disintegration during periods of technological change an exclusive focus on production ignores other constraints that are powerful forces governing the reaction abilities of regions previous research has largely relied on a model of oligopolistic competition to explain how the swiss lost control of the world watch industry i conclude on the contrary that the swiss experience must be understood from the standpoint of how technological change challenges previous ways of organizing production industry culture and society technology shifts present a series of strategic turning points that industrial leaders must navigate during a period of technological change

the impact of school choice on student outcomes an analysis of the chicago public schools we explore the impact of school choice on student outcomes in the context of open enrollment within the chicago public schools cps roughly half of the students opt out of their assigned high school to attend a different cps school and these students are much more likely than those who remain in their assigned schools to graduate to determine the source of this apparent benefit we compare outcomes across i similar students with differential access to schooling options and ii travelers and non travelers within the same school the results suggest that other than for students who select career academies the observed cross sectional benefits are likely spurious

choice of ontario high schools and student sorting by ability to what extent can offering more choice in schooling lead to cream skimming or the sorting of students by ability i study whether increased choice leads to student sorting by ability into high schools in the greater toronto area on average 41 of students opt out of the high school to which they would normally be assigned based on their residence students are more likely to opt out in areas where accessibility to other schools is greatest due to population density and explicit open enrolment policies while students of higher ability are generally more likely to opt out an interaction term between school choice and ability is insignificant suggesting that increased choice does not have differential impacts by student ability findings are robust to changes in assumptions about instrument exogeneity

financial market reactions following technological discontinuities a non event study in two industries a large body of literature has explored the challenges of technological change for established firms much of this work has focused on factors internal to firms such as inertial routines or managers cognitive limitations that constrain incumbents development of new capabilities and response to new technologies but institutional pressures arising from financial markets and the securities analysts who mediate such markets likely also play a role in whether and how incumbent firms respond to technological change we know little about how financial markets and securities analysts react as an incumbent firm is faced with a radical technological discontinuity that threatens to substitute for the existing technology understanding such reactions is critical as they further influence whether and how incumbents respond to technological discontinuities in this article i explore securities analysts reactions to incumbent firms faced with technological discontinuities in two industries digital technology in photography and voice over internet protocol voip technology in wireline telecommunications i find that these discontinuities go largely unmentioned in analysts reports and appear to have little influence on analysts recommendations or stock prices even for several years the findings suggest further that analysts and investors continue to reward incumbents for cash flows arising from focusing on the existing business and technology despite the increasing certainty of technological obsolescence copyright 2008 oxford university press

customer power strategic investment and the failure of leading firms why might firms be regarded as astutely managed at one point yet subsequently lose their positions of industry leadership when faced with technological change we present a model grounded in a study of the world disk drive industry that charts the process through which the demands of a firm s customers shape the allocation of resources in technological innovation a model that links theories of resource dependence and resource allocation we show that established firms led the industry in developing technologies of every sort even radical ones whenever the technologies addressed existing customers needs the same firms failed to develop simpler technologies that initially were only useful in emerging markets because impetus coalesces behind and resources are allocated to programs targeting powerful customers projects targeted at technologies for which no customers yet exist languish for lack of impetus and resources because the rate of technical progress can exceed the performance demanded in a market technologies which initially can only be used in emerging markets later can invade mainstream ones carrying entrant firms to victory over established companies

capitalization and the voucher an analysis of precinct returns from california s proposition 174 abstract in 1993 californians voted on a school voucher initiative we hypothesize that homeowners in good school districts understood the voucher to be a threat to their property values and thus voted against it precinct returns from los angeles county confirm this hypothesis we also examine an alternative hypothesis explaining the relationship between school quality and precinct returns according to the alternative voters perceived the initiative to be a referendum on public school quality to distinguish between the two hypotheses we compare the voting patterns of homeowners and renters the comparison does not favor one hypothesis over the other

mobility housing markets and schools estimating the effects of inter district choice programs abstract in theoretical models of residential sorting a household s location decision is closely linked to its demand for local public services such as schooling since school choice programs weaken the link between residential location and schooling options they have the potential to affect both property values and residential location choices results derived from computable general equilibrium models suggest these effects could be large but there is limited empirical evidence concerning whether they actually occur this paper develops and tests predictions concerning the impact of inter district choice programs on housing values and residential location decisions our empirical results strongly confirm our theoretical predictions and the findings of the computable general equilibrium literature after their states adopt inter district choice programs districts with desirable nearby out of district schooling options experience relatively large increases in housing values residential income and population density

which school attributes matter the influence of school district performance and demographic composition on property values abstract increasing levels of segregation in american schools raises the question do home buyers pay for test scores or demographic composition this paper uses connecticut panel data spanning eleven years from 1994 to 2004 to ascertain the relationship between property values and school district attributes such as student test scores and the racial and ethnic composition of the student body town and census tract fixed effects are included to control for neighborhood unobservables the effect of changes in school district attributes is also examined over a decade long time frame in order to focus on the effect of long run changes which are more likely to be capitalized into prices the study finds strong evidence that increases in percent hispanic have a negative effect on housing prices in connecticut but mixed evidence concerning the impact of test scores on property values student test scores also appear to have increased in importance for explaining housing prices in recent years while the importance of percent hispanic has declined finally the study finds that estimates of property tax capitalization increase substantially when the analysis focuses on long run changes

capitalization and community size abstract studies often show taxes and public services capitalized into house prices but no one has tested whether the rate of capitalization depends on community size the theoretical model of w h hoyt 1999 regional science and urban economics 29 155 171 predicts that capitalization occurs but that the rate of capitalization is weaker in large communities hoyt s model is tested empirically using a house price hedonic framework the tax capitalization results are less clear but the school quality and crime results firmly support the model s predictions using both school districts and municipalities to measure communities larger communities weaken the rate of capitalization

directional heterogeneity in wtp models for environmental valuation many studies in the stated preference literature on environmental valuation do not include the effects of substitutes and distance in willingness to pay wtp models in spite of the relevance of these effects in aggregation and benefit transfer heterogeneity in the availability of substitutes over space may cause multidirectional distance effects in wtp as a result disregarding this spatial heterogeneity may lead to biased estimators of the distance effect and associated wtp values cameron 2006 in this paper we demonstrate that distance decay is subject to significant directional effects which tend to be related to differences in the availability of substitutes across the study area we apply a straightforward methodology to account for such spatial heterogeneity in choice experiments and assess the effect on wtp for improvements in ecosystem services in a lake district we model distance decay effects whilst controlling for heterogeneity between users and non users and non use related wtp reasons the directional effects result in significantly different wtp estimates different market sizes reflecting the population with positive wtp and differences in total wtp up to 32

valuing environmental goods and services using benefit transfer the state of the art and science abstract the purpose of this special issue of ecological economics is to elucidate the state of the art and science of environmental benefit transfer and to assist in the design and reporting of future benefit estimation research compiling the insights of thirty two international experts from seven countries the special issue reviews the latest developments in transfer techniques as well as ongoing efforts to standardize and validate them taken together the papers in this special issue provide fresh answers to some long standing questions offer original research insights on state of the art issues and identify fruitful areas for future research this introductory paper provides background and context for the issues addressed by the contributing authors its purpose is to place the interdisciplinary thinking contained here in a comparative context highlighting the need for integration and collaboration to maintain the momentum that has propelled environmental benefit transfer into a widely used approach for estimating the economic value of environmental goods and services worldwide

school finance spatial income segregation and the nature of communities in a general equilibrium model that links school and housing markets a purely public school system regardless of the degree of centralization results in substantially more spatial income segregation than a purely private system however the combination of a public system with a private school market yields the least residential segregation as housing price distortions from the capitalization of the public system generate incentives for middle and high income private school attendees to live with lower income public school attendees the impact of vouchers and the sensitivity of results to alternative school production models is also investigated

political economy of the inequality in school spending abstract this paper employs data from 45 states between 1972 and 1992 to investigate the basic forces affecting school resource inequality within a state we consider a wide range of determinants of inequality including voter preferences the tax and political structure within the state and the legal standing of education within the state constitution we find that state constitutional language regarding equity affects the degree of school spending equality in the state as does the political environment in the state and factors associated with the benefits and costs of tiebout sorting into school districts

unraveling the process of creative destruction complementary assets and incumbent survival in the typesetter industry when radical technological change transforms an industry established firms sometimes fail drastically and are displaced by new entrants yet other times survive and prosper drawing upon an unusually rich data set that covers the technological and competitive history of the typesetter industry from 1886 to 1990 this paper uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis to unravel this process of creative destruction it argues that the ultimate commercial performance of incumbents vs new entrants is driven by the balance and interaction of three factors investment technical capabilities and appropriability through specialized complementary assets in this industry specialized complementary assets played a crucial role in buffering incumbents from the effects of competence destruction and an analysis that examined investment or technical capabilities in isolation would have led to misleading results this work thus highlights the importance of considering multiple perspectives when examining the competitive implications of technological change 1997 by john wiley sons ltd

the capitalization of education finance reforms abstract the education finance reforms encouraged by state court rulings over the past 25 years have led to increased state aid and educational spending in poorer school districts this empirical study addresses whether these new resources were capitalized into the housing values and residential rents within those districts estimations based on district level census data indicate that the new educational expenditures generated by the court mandates substantially increased median housing values and residential rents this tiebout response implies that court mandated finance reforms increased the perceived quality of the poorer school districts in reform states however the existence and magnitude of this response also implies that these reforms had unintended distributional consequences for example these results indicate that for some the redistributive impact of education finance reform may have been sharply attenuated by the increased cost of residing in the districts that received new educational re

time series minimum wage studies a meta analysis time series minimum wage studies a meta analysis author s david card and alan b krueger reviewed work s source the american economic review vol 85 no 2 papers and proceedings of the hundredth and seventh annual meeting of the american economic association washington dc january 6 8 1995 may 1995 pp 238 243 published by american economic association stable url http www jstor org stable 2117925 accessed 04 11 2011 15 46