Preventing Bankruptcy and Transforming City Finances after Hurricane Katrina

In 2010, when the Landrieu administration took office in New Orleans, we inherited a financial situation that the mayor compared to the massive oil spill occurring at that very time in the Gulf, the worst in US history. The city was nearly bankrupt. Much of what we faced was the result of factors—Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the subsequent failure of the federal levees, the great recession—that were far from the prior administration of Mayor Ray Nagin’s control. Much was the result of a culture of ineffectiveness and inefficiency that predated his administration. But much was the result of gross mismanagement and corruption during his time in office, too

A configurational view on technology acceptance: the example of highly integrated collaboration platforms

Highly integrated software environments for various routine and non-routine tasks promise productivity gains for organizations. To fulfill this promise, users need to be willing to employ the new technology. A combined perspective of sufficient and necessary conditions in the form of fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) and, necessary condition analysis (NCA) is used to examine the technology acceptance of workstream collaboration tools, advancing examinations from a multivariate perspective to a more holistic view. One hundred thirty participants were trained in the software application Slack for three months. Following the training period, configurational analysis using fsQCA and NCA based on a unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) framework was conducted based on 116 qualified questionnaires. Necessity assessment shows that all influence factors exhibit necessity properties, with facilitating conditions and effort expectancy most substantially constraining an individual’s intention to use. Sufficiency evaluation confirms UTAUT’s variable choice and identifies social influence as a key condition that enables intention to use. Segmentation according to gender further reveals that effort expectancy and facilitating conditions are necessary conditions for female users but not for males

County Finance, House Prices, and Financial Decision-Making

This work is in three chapters. The first chapter investigates the extent to which county-level property tax changes are capitalized into house prices. The literature mainly focuses on specific tax events, but this chapter generalizes the context to large U.S. cities. The main findings suggest that county-level property tax capitalization occurs and varies along the distribution of house prices. The second chapter measures differences in county-aggregated self-assessed valuations of house prices and county- aggregated sale prices to determine whether there are trends in the level of misperceived house value. Factors like age, time of tenure in a house, and house price all matter when analyzing the difference between self-assessed values and sale prices. Further, the empirical work aims to measure differences in salience for tax policies at different governance levels. The third chapter analyzes whether increases in financial-decision making capabilities has an impact on health insurance purchase decisions and other health-related financial decisions. Financial literacy is shown to reduce undesirable outcomes in these dimensions. These chapters focus on decisions that many households face, and housing and health make up large portions of the typical household budget. Adviser: Sam Allgoo

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Childcare

This paper attempts to analyze the effects of subsidized food dollars on the amount of daily childcare in households. More specifically, households in the low income category are of interest because they are the most likely to receive food subsidies. There has been a political debate recently in the United States which argues over the appropriate level of subsidies, if any. More importantly, food insecurity is an issue in the world; many do not know where will the next meal come from. This paper provides statistical evidence that food subsidies in the form of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) have a positive effect on the amount of childcare in which enrolled households engage. Childcare is measured in minutes per day, and SNAP assistance is measured in dollar assistance. These effects are analyzed both before and after the increases to SNAP benefits provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). Through the review of related literature, this paper will show that authors in the discipline that have done studies related to food economics and childcare argue that children who receive more childcare are better off later in their lives. Also, other authors show that SNAP enrollment can decrease food insecurity. Statistical analysis in this paper is done using combined datasets from the Current Population Survey and the American Time Use Survey and the STATA© statistical package. Regression analysis and statistical hypothesis tests are the main tools for determining statistical significance. Models reported are an ordinary least square model and a two-stage least square model. Both are included in this paper because the statistical tests for endogeneity of the of the main explanatory variable do not provide evidence to support which model is more appropriate for the approximation of the partial effect of SNAP on childcare. The main conclusion found from these statistical tests is that childcare is positively affected at the household level by subsidized food dollars from SNAP. An implication is that increasing the magnitude of food subsidies in other forms may also have a positive impact on childcare at the household level. Future studies ought to examine the effects of other food subsidies in order to determine their viability in aiding with time households can spend in childcare

The positive effects of combined breathing techniques and cold exposure on perceived stress : a randomised trial

A pranayama-inspired breathing technique, cold exposure, and their combined application were assessed for their potential to reduce perceived stress in adults and compared to a control group. An experiment involving four groups was conducted, yielding separate cells for breathing technique-only and cold exposure-only, as well as a combined treatment and a control group. Eighty-six individuals participated in the study. Perceived stress is measured employing the 10-item version of the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10) and the 20-item version of the Perceived Stress Questionnaire (PSQ). The instruments exhibit a substantial correlation (r = 0.842, p < 0.001). The combined group exhibited a medium to large positive effect on perceived stress compared to the control group. The breathing technique and cold exposure on their own were not found to yield substantial effects, indicating synergies between both exercises. Combinations of breathing techniques and cold exposure may be employed to decrease individuals’ perceived stress

How to Construct an Ideal Collaboration Tool for Coworking Spaces: An SP-CBC Application

Coworking spaces both require and foster communication and collaboration among members and providers’ staff as well as between members and providers. A variety of tools, denominated Workstream Collaboration software, seeks to fulfill this purpose. We show how a single-product choicebased conjoint (SP-CBC) approach can be used to develop an ideal Workstream Collaboration tool. 300 coworking spaces in Germany were used for data collection. The application shows the viability of the proposed approach and highlights the importance of an applications’ dissemination, modern security standards, and a plurality of collaborative instruments. We find network effects to be a tool’s critical feature. Communication functionality, surprisingly, seems to play only a subordinate role