The Effect of Sports Franchises on Property Values: The Role of Owners versus Renters

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 the subsidies paid to the franchises.impact analysis, stadiums, football, mega-event, tourism

Luck or Skill? An Examination of the Ehrlich - Simon Bet

In 1980, Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon placed a famous bet on whether the prices of a bundle of natural resources would rise or fall over the ensuing decade. Simon won the bet as the real price of the bundle fell significantly, and the result of this bet has been taken as proof that technological progress is likely overcome any Neo-Malthusian concerns about natural resource scarcity. Contrary to the popular perception, however, an examination of the price history of the identical bundle of goods from 1900-2007 shows that Ehrlich and not Simon would have won a majority of the bets over the past century and would have done so by a wide margin.Natural resources, scarcity, Neo-Malthusian

New Measurements with Stopped Particles at the LHC

Metastable particles are common in many models of new physics at the TeV scale. If charged or colored, a reasonable fraction of all such particles produced at the LHC will stop in the detectors and give observable out of time decays. We demonstrate that significant information may be learned from such decays about the properties (e.g. charge or spin) of this particle and of any other particles to which it decays, for example a dark matter candidate. We discuss strategies for measuring the type of decay (two- vs three-body), the types of particles produced, and the angular distribution of the produced particles using the LHC detectors. We demonstrate that with O(10-100) observed decay events, not only can the properties of the new particles be measured but indeed even the Lorentz structure of the decay operator can be distinguished in the case of three-body decays. These measurements can not only reveal the correct model of new physics at the TeV scale, but also give information on physics giving rise to the decay at energy scales far above those the LHC can probe directly.Comment: 31 pages, 6 figures. References added, updated to reflect recent experimental results, version accepted for publication in Physical Review

The Effect of Natural Disasters on Housing Prices: An Examination of the Fourmile Canyon Fire

In September 2010, the Fourmile-Lefthand Canyon forest fire burned 6,181 acres, destroyed 169 homes, and caused $217 million in property damages making it by far the most expensive fire in Colorado history at the time. This paper examines how the fire affected housing prices in vulnerable neighboring areas that were not directly impacted by the fire, controlling for the property’s level of risk. This damaging fire may have increased home owners’ perceptions about the risk of living in forested areas subject to wildfires to a significant degree adding to the total direct economic losses from the fire. Utilizing a unique fire risk data set and a difference-in-difference approach, we test whether buyers of houses in areas with different risk levels prior to the fire adjust expectations differently. We find buyers in the highest risk area are most likely to change their perceptions in response to a fire with houses in these areas experiencing a statistically significant 21.9% decline in sale price

Understanding the organizational barriers of promoting electronic delivery options in the United States healthcare system: an insurer’s perspective

Consumer-driven technologies are rapidly transforming how industries conduct business both internally and externally. From online banking to retail, the broad adoption of smart devices, internet access, and wearables amongst consumers has shifted the way enterprises develop software and conduct information technology (IT) operations. Although successful adoption of consumer-driven technologies is a reality for many industries, the healthcare platform is lagging. The promotion and adoption of online patient engagement is widely perceived to be one of the biggest hurdles faced by healthcare organizations (Carr, 2014). While setting up patient portals and electronic delivery options can be relatively simple, promoting consumer utilization and achieving widespread use of these portals use has posed challenges. The healthcare paradigm has shifted in recent decades from viewing the patient as incidental to the delivery of healthcare to a more patient-centric approach. The previous model of indirectly funding Medicare, Medicaid, or employers has been noted as one of the greatest flaws of the healthcare system by contributing to cost inflation (Carr, 2014). Recent trends have promoted patient-empowered care, but have generally transferred the burden of cost to the individual. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) stimulated this shift by creating insurance exchanges which allow insurers to directly reach consumers; however, these readily-available healthcare options now require higher monthly premium payments from shoppers. This new model proposes that as patients become increasingly financially liable, they become more invested in their healthcare trajectories

Furnishing the Galaxy with Pulsars

The majority of pulsar population synthesis studies performed to date have focused on isolated pulsar evolution. Those that have incorporated pulsar evolution within binary systems have tended to either treat binary evolution poorly of evolve the pulsar population in an ad-hoc manner. Here we present the first model of the Galactic field pulsar population that includes a comprehensive treatment of both binary and pulsar evolution. Synthetic observational surveys mimicking a variety of radio telescopes are then performed on this population. As such, a complete and direct comparison of model data with observations of the pulsar population within the Galactic disk is now possible. The tool used for completing this work is a code comprised of three components: stellar/binary evolution, Galactic kinematics and survey selection effects. Here we give a brief overview of the method and assumptions involved with each component. Some preliminary results are also presented as well as plans for future applications of the code.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figures, Conference: "40 years of pulsars: Millisecond pulsars, magnetars and more", McGill University, Montreal, Canada, ed. A.Cumming et al., AI

Luck or Skill? An Examination of the Ehrlich - Simon Bet

In 1980, Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon placed a famous bet on whether the prices of a bundle of natural resources would rise or fall over the ensuing decade. Simon won the bet as the real price of the bundle fell significantly, and the result of this bet has been taken as proof that technological progress is likely overcome any Neo-Malthusian concerns about natural resource scarcity. Contrary to the popular perception, however, an examination of the price history of the identical bundle of goods from 1900-2007 shows that Ehrlich and not Simon would have won a majority of the bets over the past century and would have done so by a wide margin

The Effect of Sports Franchises on Property Values: The Role of Owners versus Renters

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 the subsidies paid to the franchises

New Species, New Combinations and New Synonymies Towards a Treatment of Acanthaceae for the Manual de Plantas de Costa Rica

In preparation for the publication of the Manual de Plantas de Costa Rica, new species, names, combinations, and synonymies are provided in six genera of Acanthaceae: Anisacanthus, Chamaeranthemum, Dicliptera, Justicia, Ruellia and Stenostephanus. The new species are A. grace-woodiae, J. altior, J. lithophila and S. chavesii. A new name at the species level, R. leonardiana, is provided for R. tubiflora var. hirsuta. With Habracanthus, Hansteinia, Kalbreyeriella and Razisea being subsumed within Stenostephanus, the new combinations S. blepharorhachis, S. citrinus, S. leiorhachis (= Razisea spicata non S. spicatus), S. strictus, S. ventricosus, S. villosus and S. wilburii are formalized. Seven new synonymies are presented for species of Chamaeranthemum, Dicliptera, Justicia and Stenostephanus, as well as lectotypifications in the first and latter two genera