The Impact of Environmental Disamenities on Property Values: Evaluating the Municipal Fringe
By Ryan B. Hoecker This paper analyzes the municipal fringe of cities in Eastern North Carolina between 2006-2016, and how the values of individual properties on the outskirts can fluctuate after they are incorporated within a city. A large portion of the research process consisted of manually recreating annexation ordinances from scanned photocopies on ArcGIS, […]
Japan’s Furusato Nouzei (Hometown Tax): Which Areas Get How Much, and Is It Really Working?
by Kay Hasegawa Abstract In 2015, 7,260,093 individuals donated a total of ¥165,291,021,000 (approximately 1.5 billion USD total) to 1,741 municipalities in Japan using the furusato nouzei system (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications). In this paper, I examine this system in two ways. Firstly, I predict the amount of donations each municipality receives based […]
Structural Estimation of FCC Bidder Valuation
By Renhao Tan, Zachary Lim, and Jackie Xiao We modify a method introduced in Fox and Bajari (2013) which structurally estimates the deterministic component of bidder valuations in FCC spectrum auctions based on a pairwise stability condition: two bidders cannot exchange two licenses in a way that increases the sum of their valuations, and we […]
Tax Evasion and Tax Morale in Latin America
By Sofia Becerra Taschetti Tax evasion throughout the world is widely endured, but not widely understood. The decision making process of the taxpayer may include many concerns outside of the monetary payoffs. The tax compliance decision considers social norms and social sanctions in addition to deterrence levels. The goal of this paper is to illuminate […]
Neighborhood Effects and School Performance: The Impact of Public Housing Demolitions on Children in North Carolina
By Rebecca Aqostino This study explores how the demolitions of particularly distressed public housing units, through the Home Ownership for People Everywhere (HOPE VI) grants program, have affected academic outcomes for children in adjacent neighborhoods in Durham and Wilmington, North Carolina. I measure neighborhood-level changes and individual effects through regression analysis. All students in demolition […]
The Determinants and Social Benefit of Student Summer Activity: An Analysis of the Determinants of Summer Activity Participation by Elementary and Secondary Students, and the Resulting Social Benefit of Summer Activity Participation on Crime
By Elad Gross Using data from 1996, this study first identifies the socioeconomic determinants of a child’s participation in an organized summer activity. Models are produced for summer activity in general and for different types of summer activities. The results indicate the importance of caregiver supervisory capability in choosing whether to send a child to […]
Assessing Abortion The Impact of Legalized Abortion on the Welfare of American Women
by Katherine N. Fisher Abstract By examining data on educational attainment, workforce participation, and marriage market bargaining power, this paper assesses the impact of legalized abortion on women’s welfare. Access to abortion is found to increase education levels and employment rates. However, such access may also increase rates of sexually transmitted disease and disadvantage women […]
Federal Excise Taxes and the U.S. Beer Industry’s Three-Tier System of Distribution: Do beer manufacturers benefit from federal excise taxes?
by Ankur Sunildatta Fadia Abstract On January 1, 1991, the federal excise tax on beer increased from $9 to $18 per barrel. Young & Bielinska-Kwapisz (2002) discovered that this $9 per barrel tax increase led to a $15-$17 per barrel increase in the end-of-sale price of beer. No study has yet explained why the beer […]