Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Essays On Environmental Policies Under Incomplete Enforcement, Lirong Liu

Doctoral Dissertations

Essay 1
In this paper I model the optimal monitoring and enforcement strategy when inspection capacity is fixed by budget or manpower constraints. I adopt a leverage enforcement structure that classifies firms into two groups with different enforcement intensities. Optimal monitoring and enforcement requires effective allocation of the fixed number of inspections to the two groups. In each period, a fixed number of firms are selected from each group for inspection, and those with the highest emissions are placed in the targeted group in which the inspection probability is higher. This transition structure induces rankorder tournaments among inspected firms. Once …

Essays On Urban Sprawl, Julie L. Marshall

Doctoral Dissertations

Essay 1

Sprawl is an ill-defined and complex concept and this contributes to the difficulties in addressing it. Many studies and local policies are implemented without defining the very situation that is trying to be prevented. In this dissertation, I address this issue by computing and empirically testing a number of different measures that capture some of the elements of sprawl. While controlling for a number of other explanatory factors, I examine different fiscal factors that may contribute to the level of sprawl an area experiences. Because the property tax is the predominant source of local tax revenue, my main …

An Empirical Investigation Of The Fairtax As An Alternative To The Federal Personal Income, Corporate Income, Estate And Gift, And Payroll Taxes, Yingxu Kuang

Doctoral Dissertations

Dissatisfaction with the current federal tax system is fostering serious interest in a national retail sales tax. Specifically, the FairTax Plan intends to replace most of the federal taxes with a national retail sales tax and is gaining momentum in Congress because of its purported progressive features. The FairTax is promoted as being progressive but there is considerable opposition to this claim.

Using the most recent 2005 Consumer Expenditure Survey (CES) data and estimating lifetime income from a Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) panel tracked over 1968-2005, the distribution impacts of the FairTax Plan are examined, as well as …

School Finance Reform: Responses, Equity And Outcomes, Laura D. Ullrich

Doctoral Dissertations

School finance reform cases have become immensely more common since the Serrano v. Priest case in California in 1971. Tennessee’s case Small Schools v. McWherter led to a significant reform of the Tennessee school finance system during the 1992-1993 school year. This reform created a new system of education funding in Tennessee known as the Basic Education Program (BEP). Essay 1 examines the impact Tennessee’s school finance reform had on education spending as well as local and stateprovided education revenues from 1989-2006. Results indicate that as state funding for education improved, locally-provided funding decreased, all else constant. In addition, institutional …