The Value of Historic District Status in Georgia

The designation of historic districts is a popular policy tool for promoting the preservation of neighborhoods and culturally significant areas as well as for economic development. Designation of a specific geographic area as a historic district may take place at the federal level through the National Register of Historic Places, the state level, or the local level. This report separately analyzes the effects on property values of being in a historic district that becomes listed on the National Register and being in one that is designated as a local historic district. Using detailed data on district boundaries and parcel-level transactions data from 1990-2015 for Fulton and DeKalb counties, this research documents the change in property values by type of historic district. The estimates suggest single-family residential property values increased by 13-14 percent in historic districts after becoming listed on the National Register and by approximately 7 percent in historic districts after being designated as a local historic district.The estimated effects in this report suggest fears of negative property value effects associated with local historic designation or listing on the National Register are unwarranted

Jobless Capital? The Role of Capital Subsidies

Using tax abatements, financial incentives, and public investments to attract (or retain) firms is the primary economic development tool for many local governments. Often local job creation policies focus on increasing capital through grants, low-interest financing, and other economic development incentives. Theory predicts that capital subsidies induce firm behaviors that limit their job creation effects. This paper employs the Incentives Environment Index, constructed from state constitutional provisions that limit and structure the ability of state and local governmental entities to aid private enterprises, and five-year county panels to test theoretical predictions on county capital expenditure and input mixes as well as industry establishment shares. The results indicate the act of increasing capital subsidy tools is associated with capital-labor substitution, decreased employment density, and changes in local industry mix. Results are robust to alternative empirical specifications and measures of capital subsidy availability

Born to Care (or Not): How Gender Role Attitudes Affect Occupational Sorting

Occupation segregation explains a significant portion of the gender wage gap, with women working in lower paid female-dominated occupations. We examine how childhood and adolescent exposure to gender biased norms about work influence this occupational sorting. We document that early life exposure to traditional gender role attitudes, which view women’s role as caretakers, increase women’s likelihood of employment in care occupations and decrease the likelihood for men, thereby increasing the gender care occupation gap. A decomposition of the factors affecting this sorting shows that a primary channel is through differences in the choice of post-secondary field of study or major. Our results suggest that traditional gender role attitudes may work to segment the labor market for men and women and contribute to the gender wage gap. This suggests that more egalitarian gender role attitudes which increase the share of men entering care occupations would increase wages for both men and women, lowering the gender wage gap

Age-Based Property Tax Exemptions in Georgia

Many local jurisdictions offer property tax exemptions or similar concessions to older citizens, especially from the school portion of the tax bill. Such exemptions can be controversial. This report is a step toward informing (but surely not settling!) such debates in Georgia. First, we apprise readers of a new resource, the Georgia Property Tax Database, housed at Georgia State University’s Fiscal Research Center. Second, we describe the patterns of the data, documenting the kinds of jurisdictions offering age-targeted exemptions and the steady increase in their prevalence and coverage over time. Third, we show how these data can be used to estimate the fiscal impacts of such exemptions on local budgets using static scoring. Fourth, we show how the data can be used to estimate the effect of these exemptions on the migratory and location decisions of older households. Finally, we include an age-based homestead exemption estimate calculator in the appendix

Jobless Capital? The Role of Capital Subsidies

Using tax abatements, financial incentives, and public investments to attract (or retain) firms is the primary economic development tool for many local governments. Often local job creation policies focus on increasing capital through grants, low-interest financing, and other economic development incentives. Theory predicts that capital subsidies induce firm behaviors that limit their job creation effects. This paper employs the Incentives Environment Index, constructed from state constitutional provisions that limit and structure the ability of state and local governmental entities to aid private enterprises, and five-year county panels to test theoretical predictions on county capital expenditure and input mixes as well as industry establishment shares. The results indicate the act of increasing capital subsidy tools is associated with capital-labor substitution, decreased employment density, and changes in local industry mix. Results are robust to alternative empirical specifications and measures of capital subsidy availability

Identifying the Local Economic Development Effects of Million Dollar Facilities

Presented on February 22, 2013 from 12:35 pm-2:00 pm in the Architecture East Building, room 217 on the Georgia Tech campus.Dr. Carlianne Patrick is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Georgia State University.Runtime: 74:15 minutesUsing tax abatements, financial incentives, and public investments to attract (or retain) firms is the primary economic development tool for many local governments. Recent estimates suggest Million Dollar Plants (MDPs) generate large productivity spillovers which may justify the substantial incentive packages used to lure them. This paper employs the Greenstone, Hornbeck, and Moretti (2010) identification strategy, as well as an alternative identification strategy, to estimate aggregate county effects from “winning” the competition for a MDP. Using both identification strategies, I test for the presence of agglomeration spillovers as well as for MDP effects on public revenues and expenditures. The identification strategies tell different stories about MDP effects. Evidence in favor of productivity spillovers is modest when identified by the alternative strategy. Neither identification strategy provides much evidence that MDPs induce the virtuous cycle of economic development

Jobless Capital? The Role of Capital Subsidies

The proposed research investigates the mechanisms behind recent estimates that suggest non-tax economic development incentives have either negative or no job creation effects. I exploit variation in structural constraints to isolate the effects of capital subsidies and investigate their influence on capital investment and sectoral composition in US counties 1972-2002. To strengthen identification, the research will also estimate effects for two important subsets of the US (continental) county panels: counties near shared state borders and counties within multi-state MSAs. The research will provide important insight into capital subsidies as a local job creation policy