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Due to restrictive racial housing policies, in 1970, 82% of Black residents in the city of Atlanta lived in 41 census tracts that had very high population densities. We take the density as a measure of the impact of these housing policies. The 1968 Fair Housing Act weakened these barriers to housing location choice. We explore by decade how Black residents adjusted to this high density and take the decrease in density as measure of the effect of the act. We find that there was substantial movement of Black residents out of these census tracts in the 1970s and that the exodus continued for several additional years. We also explore by decade the effects of density on the location of the Black population throughout the Atlanta region. We find that in each decade the change in the number of Black residents in census tracts is negatively and statistically correlated with the population density at the beginning of the decade. We find that it wasn’t until 2020 that the residential distribution of Black residents by density was similar to that for white residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

TAXATION AND MIGRATION edited by REUVEN S. AVI-YONAH AND JOEL SLEMROD (Kluwer Law International, 2015, Leiden, The Netherlands, 216 pages) Upon first hearing the title of this book, I assumed, [...]

We add to the small literature on private school supply by exploring exits of K-12 private schools. We find that the closure of private schools is not an infrequent event and use national survey data from the National Center for Education Statistics to study closures of private schools. We assume that the probability of an exit is a function of excess supply of private schools over demand as well as of the school's characteristics, such as age, size, and religious affiliation. Our empirical results generally support the implications of the model.

This paper provides information about the importance of non-pecuniary school characteristics, such as race and poverty, on teacher turnover in Georgia. Simple descriptive statistics indicate that new teachers are more likely to leave schools with lower test scores, lower income, or higher proportions of minorities. A linear probability and a competing risks model of transitions out of first teaching jobs allow us to separate the importance of these highly correlated school characteristics. The estimates imply that teachers are much more likely to exit schools with large proportions of minority students, and that the other univariate statistical relationships are driven to a large extent by their correlation with the minority variable. Thus, while the common notion that teachers are more likely to leave high poverty schools is correct, it occurs because teachers are more likely to leave a particular type of poor school--one with a large proportion of minorities.

During the 1980s, many urban areas in the United States experienced a widespread expansion in the use of drugs in general and crack cocaine in particular. This expansion of crack use is thought to have resulted in various behavioral changes, e.g., an increase in crime and an increase in expenditures to reduce drug use. This paper examines how local police spending responded to the spread of crack cocaine. We use a pooled cross-section, time series data set consisting of 18 cities over the period 1982 through 1989 to estimate the impact of crack cocaine use on police spending, and find that police expenditures increased significantly as crack cocaine use rose.

Objective: The Great Recession of 2007‐09 was a very significant economic event with substantial effects across the economy. An important but unexplored consequence of the Great Recession is its effect on income or earnings mobility. In this paper we explore the effect of the Great Recession on earnings mobility among low‐wage workers. Methods: Using Georgia administrative data, we identify quarterly earnings of low‐income individuals over 14 years. We calculate earnings mobility indices for 7‐year periods and explore the differences in mobility between the pre‐ and post‐Great Recession periods. We also calculate earnings mobility indices for 51 overlapping three‐year (12‐quarter) intervals over the 2000 to 2015 period. Results: We find that mobility is greater in the post‐Great Recession period. We also find that there is substantial variation in mobility indices in the post‐2007 period and that the variation in three‐year mobility indices is closely related to the unemployment rate. Conclusions: The magnitude of earnings mobility was affected by the Great Recession and by the unemployment rate in general. An understanding of earnings mobility during times of economic upheaval helps policy makers better evaluate the overall impact of recessions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

INTRODUCTION Much has been made over time of the existence of a marriage tax and subsidy. This literature has focused on the issue of the equity of a marriage tax [...], The effect of the differential tax treatment of married and unmarried couples, the so-called marriage tax, on the rate and timing of marriages is analyzed Using time-series data, we study the effect of the marriage tax on the fraction of unmarried women over the age of 15 years who marry in each year. We find no effect We also investigate whether couples shift the timing of their marriage from the end of one year to the beginning of the next year in response to an increase in the marriage tax. We find empirical support for this behavior.

Travel costs and metropolitan decentralization account for differences in the employment rates, wages, durations and travel time between white and black youth. The 'spatial mismatch hypothesis' accounts for this phenomenon, stating that inner-city blacks are at a disadvantage relative to suburban residents as jobs shift toward the suburbs. Previous findings have supported this hypothesis by documenting an inverse relation between job access in terms of travel time and employment rates for blacks, across metropolitan areas. The persistence of the labor market mismatch is examined in the context of barriers to the relocation of blacks to the suburbs, in order to explain why blacks do not adjust to job decentralization by moving out of the inner cities. Analysis of data from the 1981-1982 National Longitudinal Survey Youth Cohort suggests that high travel costs in terms of time for blacks living in these areas prevent them from commuting to follow jobs.

Two specifications of a simple general equilibrium model of a local public goods economy with median voters setting tax-expenditure package in each location arepresented. Property tax and local income tax are compared within the specifications of the model. It is shown that price, income, utility level and allocation of individuals across jurisdictions are dependent on the tax regime used.

Summary. This paper examines the effect of access to employment opportunities on the employment probabilities of black and white youth aged 16-19 years. The empirical results, based on data from the central cities of 43 SMSAs, suggest that the nearness of jobs is an important determinant of teenager employment probability.