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Precarious Paradise: The Financial Well-Being Of Hispanic Immigrant Day Laborers In Malibu, Luisa Blanco, Lila M. Carlsen, Daniel R. Morrison, George Carlsen, Ashley Chaparro, Erick Molina Dec 2017

Precarious Paradise: The Financial Well-Being Of Hispanic Immigrant Day Laborers In Malibu, Luisa Blanco, Lila M. Carlsen, Daniel R. Morrison, George Carlsen, Ashley Chaparro, Erick Molina

Lila McDowell Carlsen

Using a mixed method approach we conducted a study consisting of written surveys, focus groups, and individual interviews with 58 men and women who were seeking employment through the Malibu Community Labor Exchange (MCLE) at the time of the study and were predominantly Hispanic immigrants. A central aim of this study is to develop an understanding of how Spanish-speaking Hispanic immigrant day laborers have fared financially in the aftermath of the economic crisis of 2007-2008. We find in our study that weak labor market conditions and intersecting inequities have led to job insecurity, job scarcity, and wage stagnation among workers …


Investor Valuations Of Japan's Adoption Of A Territorial Tax Regime: Quantifying The Direct And Competitive Effects Of International Tax Reform, Sebastien J. Bradley, Estelle Dauchy, Makoto Hasegawa Dec 2017

Investor Valuations Of Japan's Adoption Of A Territorial Tax Regime: Quantifying The Direct And Competitive Effects Of International Tax Reform, Sebastien J. Bradley, Estelle Dauchy, Makoto Hasegawa

Sebastien J Bradley

Despite an extensive literature on the normative implications of different international tax regimes and an empirical literature addressing individual specific predictions, there exists little evidence encompassing the broad range of effects of taxing corporations' foreign-source income on a worldwide or territorial basis. This paper takes a more comprehensive quantitative approach by examining stock market reactions surrounding four events over the course of which Japan's 2009 adoption of a dividend exemption system was developed into proposed law. Using an event study methodology which leverages individual firm characteristics and accounts for contemporaneous financial market developments, we find that Japanese firms with less …


Inattention To Deferred Increases In Tax Bases: How Michigan Homebuyers Are Paying For Assessment Limits, Sebastien J. Bradley Feb 2017

Inattention To Deferred Increases In Tax Bases: How Michigan Homebuyers Are Paying For Assessment Limits, Sebastien J. Bradley

Sebastien J Bradley

The Michigan property tax system gives rise to wide variation in taxable basis across comparable homes due to the application of acquisition-value based assessment limits. Exploiting the fact that the resulting differences in property tax liability are temporarily inherited by new homebuyers, I estimate the degree of capitalization of these largely-idiosyncratic tax differences in a setting free of many of the econometric problems that typically plague estimation of property tax capitalization in order to evaluate whether homebuyers understand the tax implications of their home purchases. Consistent with anecdotal evidence, I find that homebuyers are woefully inattentive to the temporary nature …


Round-Tripping Of Domestic Profits Under The American Jobs Creation Act Of 2004, Sebastien J. Bradley Jan 2016

Round-Tripping Of Domestic Profits Under The American Jobs Creation Act Of 2004, Sebastien J. Bradley

Sebastien J Bradley

The American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 provided a substantial tax benefit to U.S. multinational corporations in the form of a temporary 85 percent deduction for repatriated dividends. An unforeseen consequence of this tax holiday may have also been to induce firms to reallocate earnings toward low-tax foreign subsidiaries for immediate repatriation and thereby escape higher rates of corporate income taxation. I estimate this unconventional form of round-tripping to have increased reported earnings among repatriating affiliates by $17 billion, suggesting moderate aggregate effects of a large temporary reduction in the repatriation tax on short-run income reallocation activity. Results involving measures …


Cross-Country Evidence On The Preliminary Effects Of Patent Box Regimes On Patent Activity And Ownership, Sebastien J. Bradley, Estelle Dauchy, Leslie Robinson Nov 2015

Cross-Country Evidence On The Preliminary Effects Of Patent Box Regimes On Patent Activity And Ownership, Sebastien J. Bradley, Estelle Dauchy, Leslie Robinson

Sebastien J Bradley

This paper evaluates the initial impacts of patent box regimes in light of their primary stated objectives: stimulating domestic innovation and retaining mobile patent income to limit base erosion. Despite their lack of nexus requirements, we find that patent box regimes yield a 3 percent increase in new patent applications for every percentage point reduction in the tax rate on patent income. We find no significant impact of these regimes on deterring outward cross-border attribution of patent ownership, or on attracting ownership of foreign inventions. Increased patenting activity hence appears focused on inventions involving co-located (domestic) patent owners and inventors.


Attitude–Behavior Consistency In Tax Compliance: A Cross-National Comparison, Alice Guerra, Brooke Harrington Nov 2015

Attitude–Behavior Consistency In Tax Compliance: A Cross-National Comparison, Alice Guerra, Brooke Harrington

Brooke Harrington

Are individuals’ attitudes about paying taxes consistent with their behavior? A direct link between attitudes (tax morale) and behavior (tax compliance) has long been assumed, despite an extensive social scientific literature attesting to the generally weak congruence between the two. This study builds on an emerging body of work questioning the link between tax morale and compliance. It innovates with a cross-national experimental research design whose results indicate that populations with high levels of tax morale exhibit higher evasion rates than those with low levels of tax morale; thus, the study finds that individual self-reported tax morale cannot predict actual …


Socially Efficient Control Of Carcinogen Emissions From Open Top Vapor Cleaners In Lndiana, Robert S. Main Mar 2015

Socially Efficient Control Of Carcinogen Emissions From Open Top Vapor Cleaners In Lndiana, Robert S. Main

Robert S. Main

Robert Main's contribution to the Indiana Academy of the Social Sciences Proceedings, 1995.


Assessing The Cross-National Transferability Of Policy Measures For Tackling Undeclared Work, Colin C. Williams, Rositsa Dzhekova, Marijana Baric, Josip Franic, Lyubo Mishkov Aug 2014

Assessing The Cross-National Transferability Of Policy Measures For Tackling Undeclared Work, Colin C. Williams, Rositsa Dzhekova, Marijana Baric, Josip Franic, Lyubo Mishkov

Colin C Williams

The aim of the present Working Paper No. 5 is to provide a preliminary assessment of the appropriateness of possible policy approaches for tackling undeclared work as well as their transferability to three target countries: Bulgaria (BG), Croatia (HR) and FYR Macedonia (FYROM). This assessment will result in highlighting a set of promising policy practices that can be tested empirically in terms of their acceptability among the population and stakeholders in the three Southeast European states.


Subsidizing Non-Polluting Goods Vs. Taxing Polluting Goods For Pollution Reduction, Robert S. Main May 2014

Subsidizing Non-Polluting Goods Vs. Taxing Polluting Goods For Pollution Reduction, Robert S. Main

Robert S. Main

Pigovian taxes on polluters are politically unpopular, but subsidies for non-polluting sources are politically attractive. This paper presents a linear demand and supply model and numerical example to explore the trade-offs between taxing polluting sources of a good versus subsidizing non-polluting sources of the same good. While the model (along with the associated numerical example) shows the optimality of Pigovian taxes, it also shows how much welfare is reduced if subsidies for nonpolluters are employed instead. Further, it shows the optimal tax, given any level of subsidy and the optimal subsidy, given any level of tax.


Willingness To Pay For Vehicle To Grid (V2g) Electric Vehicles And Their Contact Terms, George R. Parsons, Michael K. Hidrue, Willett Kempton, Meryl P. Gardner Apr 2014

Willingness To Pay For Vehicle To Grid (V2g) Electric Vehicles And Their Contact Terms, George R. Parsons, Michael K. Hidrue, Willett Kempton, Meryl P. Gardner

George Parsons

Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) electric vehicles can return power stored in their batteries back to the power grid and be programmed to do so at times when the grid needs reserve power. Since providing this service can lead to payments to owners, it effectively reduces the life-cycle cost of owning an electric vehicle. Using data from a national stated preference survey, this paper presents the first study of the potential consumer demand for V2G electric vehicles. In a choice experiment, 3029 respondents compared their preferred gasoline vehicle with two V2G electric vehicles. The V2G vehicles were described by a set of electric …


Investor Responses To Dividends Received Deductions: Rewarding Multinational Tax Avoidance?, Sebastien J. Bradley Oct 2013

Investor Responses To Dividends Received Deductions: Rewarding Multinational Tax Avoidance?, Sebastien J. Bradley

Sebastien J Bradley

Central to the debate over U.S. international tax reform is understanding how multinational tax avoidance behavior might respond to a reduction in taxes on repatriated foreign-source earnings. Beginning in early 2009, several attempts have been made to re-institute a temporary 85 percent dividends received deduction that would have reduced such taxes for U.S. multinational corporations. Despite an intense lobbying effort, the measure was ultimately cast aside in late 2011, temporarily yielding to the criticism, in part, that the original such provision enacted under the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 offered a generous reward for international tax avoidance. Exploiting the …


Property Tax Salience And Payment Delinquency, Sebastien J. Bradley Jul 2013

Property Tax Salience And Payment Delinquency, Sebastien J. Bradley

Sebastien J Bradley

Despite only modest supporting evidence, shocks to households' personal finances are commonly cited as one of the principal causes of homeowner defaults. In this paper, I investigate the extent to which different component sources of annual variation in property tax obligations influence the probability and magnitude of property tax delinquency|a precursor to mortgage default. Under Michigan's system of property tax limitations, rational homeowners should readily anticipate changes in tax liability, making such changes an unlikely cause of delinquency, regardless of the underlying source. Looking at tax payment records for the city of Ann Arbor, Michigan for the period 2006-2009, I …


Do Singaporeans Spend Too Much On Housing?, Sock Yong Phang Jun 2013

Do Singaporeans Spend Too Much On Housing?, Sock Yong Phang

PHANG Sock Yong

According to a 2011 IMF study, Singapore's level of government intervention in housing finance is the highest in the developed world (Slide 3). This level of intervention in housing finance has correspondingly produced the highest level of homeownership amongst advanced countries. This housing outcome is the result of our very unique HDB-CPF housing framework – an institutional framework that was established in the 1960s during the formative period of our country?s history (Slides 4 and 5). Singapore was, at that particular point in time, faced with a situation of chronic housing shortage, low homeownership rates and an underdeveloped housing mortgage …


Tackling Undeclared Work In Croatia, Colin C. Williams, Marijana Baric, Piet Renooy May 2013

Tackling Undeclared Work In Croatia, Colin C. Williams, Marijana Baric, Piet Renooy

Colin C Williams

No abstract provided.


The Shadow Economy, Colin C. Williams, Friedrich Schneider May 2013

The Shadow Economy, Colin C. Williams, Friedrich Schneider

Colin C Williams

No abstract provided.


Tackling Undeclared Work In Montenegro, Colin C. Williams, Marijana Baric, Piet Renooy May 2013

Tackling Undeclared Work In Montenegro, Colin C. Williams, Marijana Baric, Piet Renooy

Colin C Williams

No abstract provided.


Tackling Undeclared Work In Fyr Macedonia, Colin C. Williams, Marijana Baric, Piet Renooy May 2013

Tackling Undeclared Work In Fyr Macedonia, Colin C. Williams, Marijana Baric, Piet Renooy

Colin C Williams

No abstract provided.


Tackling Undeclared Work In Turkey, Colin C. Williams, Marijana Baric, Piet Renooy May 2013

Tackling Undeclared Work In Turkey, Colin C. Williams, Marijana Baric, Piet Renooy

Colin C Williams

No abstract provided.


Tackling Undeclared Work In Iceland, Colin C. Williams, Marijana Baric, Piet Renooy May 2013

Tackling Undeclared Work In Iceland, Colin C. Williams, Marijana Baric, Piet Renooy

Colin C Williams

No abstract provided.


Tackling Undeclared Work In Croatia And Four Eu Candidate Countries, Colin C. Williams, Marijana Baric, Piet Renooy May 2013

Tackling Undeclared Work In Croatia And Four Eu Candidate Countries, Colin C. Williams, Marijana Baric, Piet Renooy

Colin C Williams

No abstract provided.


Adverse Selection And Incentives In An Early Retirement Program, Kenneth T. Whelan, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Kevin F. Hallock, Ronald L. Seeber Jan 2013

Adverse Selection And Incentives In An Early Retirement Program, Kenneth T. Whelan, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Kevin F. Hallock, Ronald L. Seeber

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

We evaluate potential determinants of enrollment in an early retirement incentive program for non-tenure-track employees of a large university. Using administrative record on the eligible population of employees not covered by collective bargaining agreements, historical employee count and layoff data by budget units, and public information on unit budgets, we find dips in per-employee finance in a budget unit during the application year and higher recent per employee layoffs were associated with increased probabilities of eligible employee program enrollment. Our results also suggest, on average, that employees whose salaries are lower than we would predict given their personal characteristics and …


Economic And Statistical Analysis Of Discrimination In Hiring, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Robert Smith Jan 2013

Economic And Statistical Analysis Of Discrimination In Hiring, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Robert Smith

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Legal and administrative determinations of employers' compliance with "equal employment opportunity" (EEO) requirements often hinge on the Issue of the availability of protected class members to employers. That is, courts and affirmative action review agencies compare the hire rates of protected class members (the ratio of the number of protected class members hired to the number who applied or who were potentially available) to the comparable ratio for other applicants, in assessing whether an employer's hiring policies meet the standards required of them by equal opportunity regulations. The purpose of this paper is to review what economic theory suggests affects …


An Economic Analysis Of The Market For Law School Students, Ronald G. Ehrenberg Jan 2013

An Economic Analysis Of The Market For Law School Students, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

This study utilizes data from a number of sources to estimate how lawyers' starting salaries relate to their ability, the quality of law school they attended, and whether the law school was a private institution. Based upon this analysis, a benefit—cost analysis is conducted of the value of attending a high-quality private institution. Analyses are also done of how the financial attractiveness of law vis-a-vis other careers has changed in recent years and a conceptual framework discussed for law schools to use in allocating their financial aid resources.


Optimal Allocation Of Resources In Airport Security: Profiling Vs. Screening, Aniruddha Bagchi Dec 2012

Optimal Allocation Of Resources In Airport Security: Profiling Vs. Screening, Aniruddha Bagchi

Aniruddha Bagchi

No abstract provided.


Reaching For The Brass Ring: The U.S. News & World Report Rankings And Competition, Ronald Ehrenberg Nov 2012

Reaching For The Brass Ring: The U.S. News & World Report Rankings And Competition, Ronald Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] The behavior of academic institutions, including the extent to which they collaborate on academic and nonacademic matters, is shaped by many factors. This paper focuses on one of these factors, the U.S. News & World Report (USNWR) annual ranking of the nation’s colleges and universities as undergraduate institutions, exploring how this ranking exacerbates the competitiveness among American higher education institutions. After presenting some evidence on the importance of the USNWR rankings to both public and private institutions at all levels along the selectivity spectrum, I describe how the rankings actually are calculated, then discuss how academic institutions alter their …


Crafting A Class: The Trade-Off Between Merit Scholarships And Enrolling Lower-Income Students, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Liang Zhang, Jared M. Levin Nov 2012

Crafting A Class: The Trade-Off Between Merit Scholarships And Enrolling Lower-Income Students, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Liang Zhang, Jared M. Levin

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] It is well known that test scores are correlated with students’ socio-economic backgrounds. Hence, to the extent that colleges are successful in “buying” higher test-score students, one should expect that their enrollment of students from families in the lower tails of the family income distribution should decline. However, somewhat surprisingly, there have been no efforts to test if this is occurring. Our paper presents such a test. While institutional-level data on the dollar amounts of merit scholarships offered by colleges and universities are not available, data are available on the number of National Merit Scholarship (NMS) winners attending an …


The 1995 Nrc Ratings Of Doctoral Programs: A Hedonic Model, Ronald Ehrenberg, Peter Hurst Nov 2012

The 1995 Nrc Ratings Of Doctoral Programs: A Hedonic Model, Ronald Ehrenberg, Peter Hurst

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

We describe how one can use multivariate regression models and data collected by the National Research Council as part of its recent ranking of doctoral programs (Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States: Continuity and Change) to analyze how measures of program size, faculty seniority, faculty research productivity, and faculty productivity in producing doctoral degrees influence subjective ratings of doctoral programs in 35 academic fields. Using data for one of the fields, economics, we illustrate how university administrators can use the models to compute the impact of changing the number of faculty positions they allocate to the field on …


The Impact Of U.S. News & World Report College Rankings On Admissions Outcomes And Pricing Policies At Selective Private Institutions, James Monks, Ronald G. Ehrenberg Nov 2012

The Impact Of U.S. News & World Report College Rankings On Admissions Outcomes And Pricing Policies At Selective Private Institutions, James Monks, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Despite the widespread popularity of the U.S. News & World Report College rankings there has been no empirical analysis of the impact of these rankings on applications, admissions, and enrollment decisions, as well as on institutions' pricing policies. Our analyses indicate that a less favorable rank leads an institution to accept a greater percentage of its applicants, a smaller percentage of its admitted applicants matriculate, and the resulting entering class is of lower quality, as measured by its average SAT scores. While tuition levels are not responsive to less favorable rankings, institutions offer less visible price discounts in the form …


Faculty Turnover At American Colleges And Universities: Analyses Of Aaup Data, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Hirschel Kasper, Daniel Rees Nov 2012

Faculty Turnover At American Colleges And Universities: Analyses Of Aaup Data, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Hirschel Kasper, Daniel Rees

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

This paper uses institutional level data collected by the American Association of University Professors as part of their annual survey of faculty members' compensation to analyze faculty turnover. Analyses of aggregate data over almost a twenty-year period highlight how remarkably stable faculty retention rates have been nationwide and how little they vary across broad categories of institutions. Analyses of variations in faculty retention rates across individual institutions stress the role that faculty compensation levels play. Higher levels of compensation appear to increase retention rates for assistant and associate professors (but not for full professors) and the magnitude of this effect …


Advance Notice Provisions In Plant Closing Legislation: Do They Matter?, Ronald Ehrenberg, George Jakubson Nov 2012

Advance Notice Provisions In Plant Closing Legislation: Do They Matter?, Ronald Ehrenberg, George Jakubson

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

This paper evaluates the cases for and against plant closing legislation. In spite of the growth of legislative efforts in the area, there has been surprisingly little effort devoted to analyzing what the effects are of existing plant closing legislation, of provisions in privately negotiated collective bargaining agreements that provide for advance notice in case of plant shutdowns and/or layoffs, and of voluntary employer provision of advance notice. The paper summarizes the results of previous research, and our own empirical analyses that used the January 1984 Bureau of Labor Statistics Survey of Displaced Workers, on the effects of advance notice …