AVI: The Shift in the Tax Burden

As proposed, the Actual Value Initiative (AVI), Philadelphia's sweeping property tax overhaul, is revenue neutral. The plan is to raise the same amount of revenue through real estate taxes, $1.2 billion, in 2014 as in 2013. But under AVI, as a result of the citywide reassessment done to correct years of inaccuracy, residential property would account for a greater share of the city's overall property value -- and thus the tax burden -- and commercial property for less.Several proposals made by Mayor Michael Nutter and members of City Council, including a homestead exemption for all owner-occupied residences, would lessen the magnitude of this shift, perhaps significantly, but likely not eliminate it.According to the data released by the city's Office of Property Assessment (OPA) in March, residential properties would represent 59.9 percent of the city's total assessed taxable value of nearly$100 billion in 2014. For 2013, that share was 53.9 percent. This difference of 6 percentage points would result in $72 million in additional taxes for homeowners as a group, making AVI not revenue neutral for them

Shuttered Public Schools: The Struggle to Bring Old Buildings New Life

Large-scale public school closures have become a fact of life in many American cities, and that trend is not likely to stop now. This report looks at what happens to the buildings themselves, studying the experiences of Philadelphia and 11 other cities that have decommissioned large numbers of schools in recent years: Atlanta, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Kansas City, Mo., Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Tulsa and Washington

Revolution in the Defence Electronics Market? An Economic Analysis of Sectoral Change

Within the defence sector there have been marked changes in the nature of the composite industries. This is particularly true of the electronics industry which continues to grow in importance, with electronic components built into nearly every weapons system and piece of equipment. Given the “Revolution in Military Affairs” (RMA) it seems certain that this growth will continue, impacting on both product and process. The result, however, may not be the contestable open market many expect (and hope for) as Network Enabled Warfare may result in new entrants, such as IT specialist and increased competition. Alternatively the nature of the market may continue to benefit the incumbents. This paper presents an analysis of the changes taking place in the industry using firm-level, primary, survey-based, qualitative data on corporate conduct. The results suggest that in practice the incumbents do seem to be in a strong position. The new demands of the customer require much more than mere technical capability. Specialists who do not have established industry relationships, who do not understand industry “protocols” and who cannot communicate effectively with the customer are unlikely to survive. This suggests that rather than new entrants, there may in fact be exits from the industry and further consolidation.

Isomorphisms between big mapping class groups

We show that any isomorphism between mapping class groups of orientable infinite-type surfaces is induced by a homeomorphism between the surfaces. Our argument additionally applies to automorphisms between finite-index subgroups of these `big' mapping class groups and shows that each finite-index subgroup has finite outer automorphism group. As a key ingredient, we prove that all simplicial automorphisms between curve complexes of infinite-type orientable surfaces are induced by homeomorphisms.Comment: v3: 11 pages; updated and added references; final version to appear in IMR