Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 4 of 4
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Optimal Fiscal Policy With Robust Control, Justin Svec
Optimal Fiscal Policy With Robust Control, Justin Svec
Economics Department Working Papers
This paper compares the fiscal policies implemented by two types of government when confronted by consumer uncertainty. Consumers, lacking confidence in their knowledge of the stochastic environment, endogenously tilt their subjective probability model away from an approximating probability model. The government does not face this uncertainty. Through its choice of a labor tax and the supply of one-period public debt, the government manipulates the competitive equilibrium allocation and the consumers' probability distortion. I consider two types of altruistic government. A "benevolent" government maximizes the consumers' expected utility under the approximating probability model, whereas a "political" government maximizes the consumers' expected …
Booms, Busts, And Gambling: Can Gaming Revenues Reduce Budget Volatility?, Brad R. Humphreys, Victor Matheson
Booms, Busts, And Gambling: Can Gaming Revenues Reduce Budget Volatility?, Brad R. Humphreys, Victor Matheson
Economics Department Working Papers
Over the past 20 years, state and provincial governments in North America have expanded legal gambling opportunities to consumers. One of the primary policy goals of this expansion of gambling opportunities has been to increase government revenues. Gambling is an attractive source of new government revenues because consumers are relatively insensitive to the implicit “tax” rate imposed on gambling activities and gambling is a voluntary activity, only those who chose to gamble are subject to this implicit tax. In this paper, we document the contribution that gambling revenues make to state and provincial tax receipts, and the extent to which …
The Labor Market Effects Of The Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, Robert Baumann, Bryan Engelhardt, Victor Matheson
The Labor Market Effects Of The Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, Robert Baumann, Bryan Engelhardt, Victor Matheson
Economics Department Working Papers
The local, state, and federal governments, along with the Salt Lake City Organizing Committee, spent roughly $1.9 billion in direct costs related to planning and hosting the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. In this paper, we investigate whether these expenditures increased employment. At the state level, we find strong evidence it increased employment in leisure related industries in the short run and potentially in the long run. However, the results indicate it had no long term impact on employment in retail trade or in the overall economy.
The Effect Of Sports Franchises On Property Values: The Role Of Owners Versus Renters, Katherine A. Kiel, Victor Matheson, Christopher Sullivan
The Effect Of Sports Franchises On Property Values: The Role Of Owners Versus Renters, Katherine A. Kiel, Victor Matheson, Christopher Sullivan
Economics Department Working Papers
This paper estimates the public benefits to homeowners in cities with NFL franchises by examining housing prices rather than housing rents. In contrast to Carlino and Coulson (2004) we find that the presence of an NFL franchise has no effect on housing prices in a city. Furthermore, we also test whether the presence and size of the subsidy to the team affects values and find that higher subsidies for NFL stadium construction lead to lower house prices. This suggests that the benefits that homeowners receive from the presence of a team are negated by the increased tax burden due to …