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ABSTRACT This paper examines the effects of state merit-based student aid programs on college attendance and degree completion. Our primary analysis uses microdata from the 2000 United States Census and 2001-2010 American Community Survey to estimate the effects of exposure to merit programs on educational outcomes for 25 states that adopted such programs by 2004. We also utilize administrative data for the University System of Georgia to look more in depth at the effects of exposure to the HOPE Scholarship on degree completion. We find strong consistent evidence that exposure to state merit aid programs have no meaningfully positive effect on college completion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: 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. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In 2002, Jamaica conducted a property tax revaluation, the first revaluation in nine years. In response, Jamaica reduced the property tax rates of its progressive-rate structure and added a set of property tax caps. In this article, the author reports on an analysis of the tax rate structure for its land value property tax, focusing especially on options for reforming the rate structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents estimates of the effect of private school competition on public school performance. Using data on school districts in Georgia, the authors estimate models relating tenth- and third-grade test scores for either reading or mathematics to the level of private school competition. Test scores are not measurably or significantly higher in areas with greater private school competition, a result robust through multiple estimations using three measures of private school competition and a variety of control variables. The authors address the possible endogeneity between test scores and private school competition using instrumental variables estimators, with percentage of the population that is Catholic, county population in 1980, lagged competition, and various other measures as alternative instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alternative hypotheses exist regarding the impact of local sales and income taxes on local governments' taxing and spending decisions. One hypothesis is that local governments use sales and income taxes to pay for spending increases and leave properly tax collections unchanged, while an equally plausible alternative is that local governments use sales and income taxes to reduce property taxes. Traditional models that restrict the impact of these local taxes to be the same across all local governments are not able to capture both types of behavior The methodological difficulty lies in allowing for differences in behavior with no a priori information on which cities belong in which category. In this article, the authors use panel data to estimate a mixture model of spending and property tax response to the existence of local taxes. These empirical results provide evidence to support both hypotheses. These differences are both substantive and statistically significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines several issues concerning the proposed implementation of a single sales and use tax within states in the U.S. and its impact on electronic commerce in the country. Background on the use of levy local sales and use tax by cities and counties in the U.S.; Discussion on the complexity of local sales tax rates in several states; Challenges in implementing a uniform local tax rate.

Focuses on a study which examined the issues surrounding the implementation of single sales and use tax rate in several states in the U.S. Relationship of state and local sales tax rates; Effect of electronic commerce on taxation; Proposal concerning the uniformity of tax sales by the local government.

This paper makes use of a unique data set to explore the issue of whether inner-city residents are more likely to be hired by a new inner-city development than non-residents. A selection model with partial observability is specified and estimated. This partial observability model allows us to control for self-selection at the application stage and to obtain unconditional estimates at the hiring stage. We determine, holding individual and neighbourhood characteristics constant, that while inner-city residents are less likely to be considered 'hireable', their greater propensity to apply for jobs at this development means that they were at least as likely as non-residents to both apply and be hired. We also tentatively conclude that distance between an applicant's residence and the location of the development does not appear to have been an issue in the application decision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

City governments were better prepared to face the 1990-1992 recession than were state governments, and they adjusted their budgets with relatively less fanfare. The absence of widespread bankruptcy notwithstanding, the fiscal position of cities has deteriorated and some of the necessary adjustments were painful. Services were reduced as real per capita expenditure growth declined, taxes were increased and the entire local government sector remained in deficit during the past six years. The problem has not been softened by federal or state policies; in fact, the flow of both federal and stare aid slowed markedly during the late 1980s. A combination of economic and social forces suggests that many of the nation's older cities will not outgrow this fiscal stress and their budgetary well-being will be more dependent on state and federal policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to show that property tax financing, as opposed to other sources of revenue, provides renters and owners with incentives to support different levels of public goods. We show that, while homeowners always bear costs from an inefficient provision of public goods, renters never bear such a welfare cost. In order to isolate our argument from the alternatives listed above, our analysis is developed for owners and renters with identical income and preferences and without fiscal illusion. Thus our proposition provides a theoretical explanation for the observed divergent behavior of owners and renters that does not rely upon those factors other authors have relied upon, namely differences in income or preferences or fiscal illusion.[4] The analysis yields a number of implications about the use of property tax financing for local public services. In the next section we develop our argument with the help of a simplified multijurisdictional model. Section III examines the implications and contains concluding comments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past thirty years the sect trend in black youth employment rates has been downward, both absolutely and relative to the employment rates for white youth. The suburbanization of low-skill jobs and continued housing market segregation have acted together to reduce the job opportunities of black youth in comparison to those available to white youth. In this article, the relationship between the measures of jobs and youth job probability is explored using measures of job access that do not suffer from the limitations of those employed in previous work. Blacks living in neighborhoods with low job proximity may be unemployed because they have limited information on job opportunities, or they may experience difficulty commuting to places where jobs are available, or they may be reluctant to search for jobs in unfamiliar areas. Knowledge of the relative importance of these various factors is crucial to establishing effective policies to combat the black youth employment problem.

This paper develops and applies a method for estimating the sensitivity of the Abstract size and distribution of benefits to changes in property tax circuit-breaker formulas. Distributions of housing values and rental values by income classes are calculated using available data. Based on these distributions, several alternative circuit-breaker formulas are then simulated to derive estimates of the total benefits from each formula and the distributions of benefits among income classes, between owners and renters, and between metro and nonmetro residents in Georgia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In studying urban population density gradients the assumption is usually made that population density decreases at a constant rate as one moves in any direction from the central business district (CBD); that is, the relationship between distance and density is given by a negative exponential function. The article aims to explore the use of an alternative technique for studying density gradients that allows for gradients to be direction specific and for the existence of secondary centers. The first section outlines the method used in trend surface analysis (TSA) to accomplish spatial data analysis. The second section is devoted to a brief review of the more traditional density-gradient studies with an application of this traditional method to 1970 Atlanta Census data. The third section illustrates the use of TSA on these same data and indicates how the results obtained differ from those of the traditional studies. A final section summarizes the findings and suggests other possible uses of TSA by economists.