Georgia Per Capita Income: Indentifying the Factors Contributing to the Growing Income Gap with Other States - Brief

This report explores why Georgia's per capita personal income growth over the past decade has been slow, resulting in Georgia being ranked 50th in the nation in per capita income growth. FRC Brief 20

Comparison of Georgia's Tobacco and Alcoholic Beverage Excise Tax Rates - Brief

This brief provides a detailed comparison of excise tax rates across the United States. FRC Brief 19

Industry views on water resources planning methods – prospects for change in England and Wales

This paper describes a qualitative study of practitioner perspectives on regulated water resources planning practice in England and Wales. The study focuses on strengths and weaknesses of existing practice and the case for change towards a risk-based approach informed by stochastic modelling assessments. In-depth, structured interviews were conducted to capture the views of planners, regulators and consultants closely involved in the planning process. We found broad agreement that the existing water availability assessment methods are fallible; they lack transparency, are often highly subjective and may fail to adequately expose problems of resilience. While most practitioners believe these issues warrant a more detailed examination of risk in the planning process, few believe there is a strong case for a fundamental shift towards risk-based planning informed by stochastic modelling assessments. The study identifies perceived business risks associated with change and exposes widespread scepticism of stochastic methods

Productivity differences: the importance of intra-state black-white schooling differences across the United States, 1840-2000

Using newly created data containing real output per worker, real physical capital per worker, and human capital per worker for US states from 1840 to 2000, Turner et. al (2007) analyze the growth rates of aggregate inputs and total factor productivity (TFP). We continue this line of work by documenting the importance of TFP differences in explaining cross sectional variation in the levels of (log) output. We construct plausible upper bounds on the fraction of the variance in output levels that can be explained by TFP and inputs. Similar to the growth rate analysis, we find that TFP can, on average, explain nearly 90% of output variance while inputs can explain up to only 50% of output variance. We then consider the possibility that one major institutional difference across states, the extent to which blacks were denied access to formal education, might explain TFP differences across states. To this end, we generate and present a years of schooling measures, by race, at the state level from 1840 to 2000. While directly exploiting this series has very little impact on the upper bound of the fraction of output variation that can be explained by inputs, we do find that the size of the gap between white and black years of schooling is negatively related to TFP in the period from 1840 to 1950. We also consider the extent to which time-varying rates of return on education alters the upper bound on the fraction of output variation that can be explained by inputs, finding that time-varying rates have little impact. Finally, we find some evidence for external effects of higher education and physical capital.black-white schooling differences; state productivity differences

Essays on Crime and Tax Evasion

This dissertation consists of three essays addressing two issues related to crime and tax evasion. The first essay investigates the relationship between property and violent crime with law enforcement expenditures. The second essay examines the market structure in transition economies and the effects on firm-level tax evasion. The third essay investigates the incidence of tax evasion in a general equilibrium framework. The topics in all three essays are linked by their focus on criminal or illegal behavior. The essays also answer questions related to developing sound governmental policy and decision-making. Chapter one attempts to identify the impact on crime of increasing law enforcement expenditures. We examine the specific channels the public has to influence crime (e.g., the level of expenditures, the number of police officers), to determine what role, if any, they may play in influencing crime rates for property crime and for violent crime. Conclusions in previous research are equivocal, and often do not adequately address the obvious simultaneity of crime and enforcement efforts. We use the Arellano-Bond system GMM estimation method to control for this simultaneity. Results from our preferred GMM estimation method show clearly that increases in law enforcement expenditures help reduce crime rates; other methodologies typically give results that are not robust. The second chapter extends previous empirical work evaluating the determinants of tax evasion by firms in which tax evasion may be similar to a tax advantage under the law. This chapter contributes to the tax evasion literature by identifying market structures in which it may be easier to evade or where high levels of evasion take place. Results indicate that fighting corruption is still an important factor in determining the level of evasion. However, the data also suggests a long run situation in which the tax advantage of evasion has been replicated and competed away; more competitive markets have lower levels of evasion whereas monopolistic markets have higher levels of evasion. Further, tax evasion will occur in more service oriented industries. Chapter three develops and calibrates a general equilibrium model to investigate how tax evasion affects the incidence of taxes. Previous tax incidence work has considered tax evasion; however little has been done considering the distributional impact of tax evasion. There may be cases in which individuals, other than evaders, indirectly benefit or lose from tax evasion. This work contributes to the literature by clearly linking the individual or firm decision to evade to a general equilibrium analysis of tax evasion using microeconomic foundations. Including evasion decisions in tax incidence analysis has implications for both tax policy and enforcement agency decision making, and is an important step toward understanding how evasion affects the whole economy

Income and education of the states of the United States: 1840–2000

This article introduces original annual average years of schooling measures for each state from 1840 to 2000. The paper also combines original data on real state per-worker output with existing data to provide a more comprehensive series of real state output per worker from 1840 to 2000. These data show that the New England, Middle Atlantic, Pacific, East North Central, and West North Central regions have been educational leaders during the entire time period. In contrast, the South Atlantic, East South Central, and West South Central regions have been educational laggards. The Mountain region behaves differently than either of the aforementioned groups. Using their estimates of average years of schooling and average years of experience in the labor force, the authors estimate aggregate Mincerian earnings regressions. Their estimates indicate that a year of schooling increased output by between 8 percent and 12 percent, with a point estimate close to 10 percent. These estimates are in line with the body of evidence from the labor literature.

Estimating Physical Capital and Land for States and Sectors of the United States, 1850-2000

This paper introduces new estimates of physical capital and land for the states of the United States covering up to 150 years, from 1850{2000. The estimates of physical capital are decomposed into estimates for agriculture, manufacturing, and a residual sector, while the estimates of land are for agriculture only. The paper describes the data sources and methodology used to generate the estimates. It provides sensitivity analysis when alternative choices are possible and comparison to alternative bench-marks when available.state physical capital, state land, farming, land, non-manufacturing, non-farming

Using air quality monitoring to reduce second-hand smoke exposure in homes : the AFRESH feasibility study

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This research was supported by a grant from the Medical Research Council’s Public Health Intervention Development scheme. The research team would like to thank Christine Foster and the staff and volunteers of Healthy Valleys, Lanarkshire, for their support in carrying out this work, and Beverley Scheepers and Joanne Buchan of ASH Scotland for their assistance in developing training material. FUNDING Medical Research Council PHIND Grant MR/M026159/1.Peer reviewedPublisher PD