Public Policy Commons^™

Three Essays On Rural Education: Descriptive Studies Focused On Federal Rural Definitions And Policy Changes, Kyung Ha Oh

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

Rural education issues in K-12 public schools are understudied despite a large rural student population in the U.S. This dissertation studies how different federal definitions of rural change how rural school districts and their diverse communities are portrayed, in comparison to their non-rural counterparts. This study also explores the recent federal rural policy changes on rural district revenue and student academic outcomes.

This dissertation consists of three descriptive essays. The first chapter shows how we choose to define ‘rural’ changes what differences are accentuated between rural and non-rural districts. Definitions of ‘rural’ is closely related to who gains access to …

A Multilevel Jurisdictional Analysis Of The Impact Of Walmart On Host Communities, Matt Young

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

This research takes a holistic approach to answer the empirical question about what impacts Walmart has on host jurisdictions. This consists of a thorough review of the extant literature; a formalization of Walmart’s potential impact into a theoretical framework; a consideration of endogeneity within Walmart’s operations from multiple angles; a nationwide analysis of impacts on labor and retail markets at both the county and municipal level; a nationwide analysis of the impacts on housing prices and property tax revenue post Walmart; a multistate analysis of host jurisdictions’ reactions to these changes through the lens of local sales taxes; finally, a …

Three Essays On Consumption Taxation In Indonesia, Partomuan Transparenter Juniult

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

Consumption taxes play a major role in revenue generation for many developing countries. They are also used to encourage or discourage certain consumption behaviors. However, the administrative aspects of implementing these taxes can create challenges for the tax authorities, and lead to distortions in taxpayer behavior. To overcome these challenges, efforts have been made to simplify policies and utilize technology to improve administration and compliance. My dissertation aims to provide empirical evidence on the effects of three consumption or commodity tax policy reforms in Indonesia. The dissertation consists of three essays as follows.

In my first essay, titled “The effect …

Three Essays On Governance, Inequality, And Social Equity, Sarah Ausmus Smith

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

Comprised of three essays, my dissertation is linked by a common focus: the relationship between state or local governance arrangements and inequality or facets of social equity. I draw upon a range of literatures to motivate my research questions and inform my methodologies—welfare and social policy, public economics, intergovernmental relations, public finance and management.

In the first essay, I ask: does localizing welfare governance impact geospatial access to the social safety net? This is an important question because proximity is highly salient to program utilization. I geocode the location of human services nonprofits from tax filings in eight states using …

Collaborative Competition In Homeless Services: Three Essays On Federal-Local Partnerships, Andrew Alfred Sullivan

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

The United States’ federal government funds homeless services provided at the local level through the McKinney-Vento Act, encouraging collaboration among providers. This dissertation studies three aspects of homelessness: merging of local planning bodies, identification of homeless students, and the relationship between experiencing homelessness in high school and long-term educational outcomes.

The first chapter studies the effect of merging Continuums of Care (CoCs), local planning bodies for homeless services. While merging brings organizations into the same network and could make use of economies of scale, it brings service provision to a less-local level, taking away responsiveness to the community and inter-jurisdictional …

Three Essays On Tax Compliance In Indonesia, Himawan Saputro

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

This dissertation studies the impacts of major tax reforms designed to improve tax compliance, particularly in the context of developing countries with limited enforcement capacity due to informality and lack of third-party data using the Indonesian tax administrative data as well as relevant empirical research methods. In order to describe this dissertation, I discuss each essay as the following.

The first essay is titled "How Do Small Taxpayers Respond to Tax Simplification? Evidence from the Indonesian Turnover Tax Reform." This essay studies the firms' behavioral responses to tax simplification in Indonesia by exploiting the implementation of turnover tax in 2013 …

Move Or Improve? Place, Policy, And Educator Labor Markets, Cory Curl

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

What is the role of place and policy in shaping educator labor markets during the decade following the Great Recession of 2008? This research leverages data on Kentucky students, educators, schools, and school districts from 2009 to 2018, with a focus on the rural, isolated Appalachian region. Many counties in the region have long struggled with poverty, low rates of labor force participation, lower educational attainment, and dependence on public transfers (Ziliak, 2019). Despite these challenges, the people of Appalachia demonstrate a strong attachment to the region. With this research, I enhance understanding of contexts and conditions, such as unique …

Evidence-Based Approach To Drug Crisis, Jiebing Wen

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

I am devoted to health policy research, especially tackling the opioid crisis, and evaluating marijuana laws and newly emerging issues associated with legal recreational drugs. Opioid overdose in the United States continues to jeopardize public health. Meanwhile, the majority of states have legalized medical marijuana and one third of them further liberalized recreational marijuana. Marijuana liberalization, although originally independent of the growing opioid crisis, may be a harm reduction approach to the crisis because marijuana may be a substitute for opioids in pain management at a relatively lower risk. However, marijuana liberalization may also lead to marijuana-related harms, such as …

Essays On Economic Development Policies, Hakyeon Lee

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

Tax increment financing (TIF) policy is the most popular economic development policy in the United States. Despite the popularity of research on TIF, only a few comprehensive reviews of previous studies on TIF policy tool have been conducted. In light of this, the purpose of this paper is to review previous TIF studies relating to the controversy surrounding TIF programs. Specifically, previous studies do not provide clear answers about the efficacy of TIF and, indeed, raise more questions than answers. At the same time, this situation begs the question: why do local governments frequently use economic development policies? This is …

The Effects Of Natural Resource Dependence And Democracy On The Incremental Budgeting Theory And Punctuated Equilibrium Within A Budgetary Context, Barrak Ghanim Algharabali

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

I contribute to the literature by providing additional factors that could affect the incremental budgeting theory and punctuated equilibrium theory (PET) within a budgetary context. Because of the fluctuation in the price of natural resources, I argue that dependence on natural resources could lead to less stable budgets than ones not dependent on natural resources. I also argue that democracy is another source that leads to stability in the budget, relative to countries that are not democratic. I theorize that countries with no democracy and heavy dependence on natural resources will have budgets with more volatility than the rest of …

Three Essays On Municipal Structure And Government Fiscal Management Outcomes, Wenchi Wei

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

This dissertation aims to reclassify municipal structures of the U.S. municipalities and investigates the effect of municipal structures on government fiscal management outcomes, including fiscal conditions and fiscal slack balances. This dissertation is comprised of four chapters. The first chapter briefly introduces, and each of the remaining three is an independent research article. The second chapter investigates seven essential structural characteristics of the U.S. municipalities and constructs a municipal structure political-administrative index. It then examines the determinants of municipal structures on a political-administrative dimension. The empirical results show that municipal structure choices are statistically significantly associated with citizens’ socioeconomic and …

Three Essays On Welfare Policies In American States: Explaining American Welfare States In The Post-Welfare Reform Era, Hyokyung Kwak

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

This dissertation consists of three empirical studies that address questions regarding state welfare policy making in the post-welfare reform era. The first empirical study pays close attention to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) as a federal block grant program, which is a big departure from most previous TANF studies, to ask why American states differ in their decisions to allocate federal block grants across specific programs. Drawing on research on fiscal federalism and state and cross-national welfare politics, the study uses cross-sectional time-series data covering 50 states over the fiscal years 2004-2016 to examine factors that have an …

Three Essays On Public Finance And Public Policy: Financial Disclosure And Policy Reinvention In U.S. State And Local Governments, Jinhai Yu

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

This dissertation consists of three essays. The first essay, or Chapter 2, advances the literature by examining the conditional effects of lobbying on the relationship between policy learning and policy reinvention. Scholars have consistently shown that learning of successful policies in other states leads to higher likelihood of policy adoption. This essay extends this finding two ways. First, policy learning can also lead to more comprehensive adoption of successful policies. Second, the effect of policy learning on policy comprehensiveness is conditional on lobbying by interest groups, an alternative source of information about policy success. To test these hypotheses, I conduct …

A Multidimensional Poverty Index For The United States, Nate Kratzer

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

A multidimensional poverty index for the United States is designed, evaluated, and defended as a useful measurement tool for policymakers to evaluate poverty. Chapter 1 presents a normative case for the index. Chapter 2 reviews the literature on poverty measures. Chapter 3 constructs the proposed index. Chapter 4 is a statistical examination of the internal structure of the index. Chapter 5 explores the index across states, over time, and among population subgroups, as well as presenting policy applications.

American Obesity: Rooted In Uncertainty, Institutions And Public Policy, James Woodward

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

Despite the efforts of policymakers, medical professionals, and other stakeholders, obesity and related health problems show no signs of receding from their record-high rates. Public policy has largely taken the form of consumer advice, (e.g., USDA’s Dietary Guidelines). Since consumers bear most of the costs associated with their obesity, the goal of obesity prevention appears to be incentive-compatible, prima facie. That is, there is no a priori case for much further policy intervention unless existing advice is deficient or consumers’ exhibit systematically poor decision-making.

My review of the literature shows that scholars have long conveyed a consistent narrative regarding …

Applying A Positive Theory Of Organizations: A Closer Examination Of State Environmental Protection Agencies, Emily Bedwell

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

Why do American states organize as they do for environmental protection? According to Moe (1990), “a positive theory of organizations has two goals: 1) explain where institutions come from and why they take the forms they do, and 2) understand their effects for political and social behavior.” This paper will examine Moe’s question in terms of state environmental agencies: What influences state adoption of a comprehensive environmental structure? To address this question, I develop a theory of state adoption of organizational structure drawing on organizational theories of public organizations. The latest comprehensive examination of state agency structure in the literature …

Three Essays On Public Organizations, Changgeun Yun

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

Organizations play key roles in modern societies. The importance of organizations for a society requires an understanding of organizations. In order to fully understand public organizations, it is necessary to recognize how organizational settings affect subjects of organizations and organizing. Although public and private organizations interrelate with each other, the two types are not identical. In this dissertation, I attempt to describe public organizations in their own setting by discussing three important topics in public organization theory: (1) innovation adoption in the public sector; (2) representative bureaucracy; and (3) decline and death of public organizations.

In Chapter II, I scrutinize …

Charter School Locations Across The U.S. And Their Influence On Public School District Revenues, Peter A. Jones

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

Since Minnesota passed the first charter school law in 1991, charter schools have become one of the most prominent school reforms in the U.S. While charter schools educate a small portion of public school enrollments, their existence has prompted various responses from traditional public school districts. For example, districts may change expenditure patterns or work to increase test scores in an effort to retain enrollments. In this sense, a charter school’s most significant impact on public school students may work indirectly through the traditional public school reactions they invoke.

This dissertation explores education finance implications for charter schools and their …

Three Essays On Local Government Debt, Robert Greer

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

The local government tax-exempt debt market is a growing, and complex, sector of public finance. As local governments turn to debt financing the factors that contribute to interest costs of that debt have become important considerations for local government officials and politicians. Governance at the local level involves a network of overlapping governments some of which share a tax base. This system of overlapping governments that share a tax base are subject to externalities that arise from taxation, expenditures, and debt. These externalities are usually analyzed in terms of tax or expenditure reactions, but there are implications for local government …

Three Essays On Fiscal Stress And Financial Stability In State Government Finance, James B. Gibson

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

State government finance is a substantial endeavor in the United States. The management of a multitude of revenues and expenditures often involves some level of fiscal stress. In an age of increased public scrutiny, policymakers must be mindful of possible causes of fiscal stress, and the policy options available to mitigate fiscal stress and increase financial stability. This dissertation contains three essays that examine different elements of fiscal stress, and in some cases, the applicable policy responses.

Chapter two examines rainy day funds and their countercyclical goal of reducing recessionary fiscal stress. This essay takes a different approach from much …

Funding Defined Benefit State Pension Plans: An Empirical Evaluation, Cezar Brian C. Mamaril

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

Defined Benefit (DB) state pension trust funds are an integral component of state finances and play a major role in the country’s labor and capital markets. The last decade though has seen a substantial growth in unfunded pension obligations and a seeming inability by states to make the contributions needed to cover funding shortfalls. When coupled with even larger unfunded retirement health benefits, the looming threat of insolvent state retirement systems pose both current and long-term fiscal challenges to state governments already struggling with the ongoing economic downturn and billions of dollars in budget deficits. The convergence of these factors …

Intergenerational Dynamics And Political Outcomes, Joshua J. Poulette

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

This dissertation explores the relationship between intergenerational dynamics and politics outcomes in several distinct contexts. It is motivated by the remarkable demographic shifts exhibited by people in advanced countries over the past several decades. Individuals on average have longer lives and fewer children than ever before. Combining these shifts with the large intergenerational public policies that exist in many such states (education, old-age social welfare, healthcare) provokes several distinct yet related research questions addressed in the chapters below. First, do political traits matter for fertility behavior? If so, could the presence of differential fertility behavior across political groups lead to …

Voter Ideology, Tax Exporting, And State And Local Tax Structure, John M. Foster

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

State and local governments play an important role in financing and delivering public services in the United States. In 2008, state and local governments collected 57 percent of total federal, state, and local revenue (Urban Institute and Brookings Institution, Tax Policy Center, 2009). The decentralization of fiscal responsibility has enabled a high degree of variation in state and local tax structures to emerge. This dissertation presents two empirical studies that extend the positive literature on state and local tax policy.

The extant literature contains evidence of a direct relationship between voter ideology and state and local tax progressivity. However, the …