The Diffusion of Energy Efficiency in Building

We analyze the diffusion of buildings certified for energy efficiency across US property markets. Using a panel of 48 metropolitan areas (MSAs) observed over the last 15 years, we model the geographic patterns and dynamics of building certification, relating industry composition, changes in economic conditions, characteristics of the local commercial property market, and the presence of human capital, to the cross-sectional variation in energy-efficient building technologies and the diffusion of those technologies over time. Understanding the determinants and the rate at which energy-efficient building practices diffuse is important for designing policies to affect resource consumption in the built environment.

Understanding the Racial Disparity in Graduation Rates at a Large Ivy League University

This paper examines the graduation rate disparity between members of underrepresented minority groups (African Americans and Hispanics) and their white and Asian peers at a large Ivy League university. To accomplish this, we use data from a variety of sources, including confidential institutional data on admissions and financial aid as well as publicly available data from the National Center for Educational Statistics and the College Board. We examine the extent to which high school and neighborhood characteristics may be responsible for the disparity. Specifically, we are interested in how the presence of members of a person’s own racial group in high school affects his or her college-level performance, especially for blacks and Hispanics. We find that these own-race effects do not play a significant role in determining graduation probability. We also find that neighborhood characteristics such as the poverty rate and school characteristics such as per-pupil expenditure are not significant. However, it is shown that the institution’s opportunity program plays an important role in fostering the academic success of black students, and a modest role in ensuring that they graduate. We also show that students who are financial aid recipients tend to have a slightly lower graduation rate than nonai

Essays on Infrastructure and Urban Economics

This study examines the effects of infrastructure improvements on various outcome measures of economic performance. I focus on three different examples: (1) the opening of the aviation system in the United States, (2) the effects of improving or labeling certain airports as "hub" airports, and (3) improvements in decades-old public school buildings for energy efficiency and sustainability. Together, each case provides substantial evidence that infrastructure is an important input in the functioning and/or performance of economic activity.The first chapter considers the effects of small and mid-size commercial airports on their local economies over the post World War II period, specifically 1950-2010. To estimate these effects, I use a detailed, novel dataset of Census Based Statistical Area (CBSA) level employment outcomes, geographic, transportation, and city characteristics, along with previously unexploited historical aviation data. Using an instrumental variables approach, one-to-one Mahalanobis distance matching with caliper and pooled synthetic controls, I show that airports have had substantial effects on CBSA population and employment over time. The larger effect on tradable industry employment implies that the overall employment and population effects may result from direct effects on tradable sector industry productivity, perhaps by facilitating information flows. Effects vary by initial city size and region, and are generally robust to the choice of instruments and/or estimator.The second chapter considers the marginal effect of having a hub designation by an airline on its cities economic fortunes relative to cities that have airports, but not hub airports. Using panel regression methods and event study techniques, I find that while hub airports do not significantly affect city employment levels, hubs do contribute 1-2 percent of personal income to their respective cities, as well as establishment growth of 1-2 percent. I find the effects of hubs on employment to be most salient in the air transportation and hotel industries; however, the same is not necessarily true for other sectors where tourism might affect employment. This implies that the effects of hub airports, in most cases, operate through their ability to facilitate business travel, as hubs increase non-stop market access by at least 15 percent.The third chapter considers an infrastructure improvement of a different type: improvements to public school buildings to increase sustainability and reduce energy costs. Said improvements, such as improving ventilation systems, temperature control, and adding more sunlight, are thought to enhance student learning outcomes. To test this, two panel data sets are created: a nationwide panel with school districts as the unit of observation, and a California panel with schools themselves as the unit of analysis. Panel data methods including fixed-effects regression and event study techniques exploit differences in conversion timing to examine the schools' effect on dropout rates, test scores, and school quality indices. Nationwide, I find evidence that energy cost reductions may not be the primary factor driving adoption of green schools. Additionally, considering the evidence from California, it appears that in general energy efficient school buildings have a negligible effect on academic performance, even after looking at a variety of measures, suggesting that sustainable buildings are no panacea for improving school performance. Taken together, this study demonstrates that infrastructure can affect economic performance. Larger interventions will have a larger effect, while more marginal interventions may have smaller, or even negligible, effects

Why Do Field Differentials In Average Faculty Salaries Vary Across Universities?

Average faculty salaries at American colleges and universities differ widely across fields at American colleges and universities and the magnitudes of these field differences in salaries have been growing over time. What is less well known, however, is that at any point in time there are wide differences in the magnitudes of field differences in faculty salaries across academic institutions. Our paper uses institutional level data by field on average faculty salaries, which we were granted access to by the universities that participate in a national data exchange, to analyze why these differences across institutions exist. Our main finding is that differences in the quality of faculty present in different fields at a university, as measured by differences in the National Research Council ratings of graduate programs at the university, are important predictors of the field differences in average faculty salaries that exist at the full professor level at the university.cheri_wp60.pdf: 3929 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Full Lead Service Line Replacement: A Case Study of Equity in Environmental Remediation

In the U.S., approximately 9.3 million lead service lines (LSLs) account for most lead contamination of drinking water. As the commitment to replace LSLs with safer materials grows, empirical evidence is needed to understand which households are benefitting most from current replacement practices. This exploratory study analyzes factors predictive of whether an LSL was replaced fully (from water main to premise) or partially (only the portion on public property). Conventional ordinary least squares, negative binomial, and geographically weighted regression models are used to test the hypothesis that full lead service line replacements (LSLRs) were less common in lower-income, higher-minority neighborhoods under a cost-sharing program design in Washington, D.C. between 2009 and 2018. The study finds supportive evidence that household income is a major predictor of full replacement prevalence, with race also showing significance in some analyses. These findings highlight the need for further research into patterns of full versus partial LSLR across the U.S. and may inform future decisions about LSLR policy and program design