The Impact of Minimum Lot Size Regulations on House Prices in Eastern Massachusetts

There has been an increasing focus on exclusionary zoning; particularly in suburban areas, as a cause of the high house prices in many metropolitan areas in the United States. Most of the recent evidence, though, is indirect given the difficulty of isolating the direct causal impact of zoning on house prices. One main problem to overcome is that zoning is not exogenous but is rather the result of economically rational behavior on the part of residents. Another problem is the lack of good data on land use regulations. One further complication is that the ability of a town to sustain a price increase from zoning depends on its monopoly zoning power; that is, the lack of towns that are close substitutes. this study seeks to bridge this gap by investigating the regulatory price effect of minimum lot size zoning on house prices through the use of several excellent data sources which provide parcel level housing and geocoded regulatory data. We have data on all transactions ofsingle-family homes in the greater Boston area from 1987 to 2006, unit characteristics, and changes in minimum lot size zoing over this period. We estimate a model of house prices that include changes in minimum lot size at the zoning-district level, variables that account for possible spillover effects in the same town and in nearby towns, and zoning district fixed effects. The latter will control, to a large extent, the endogeneity bias due to land use regulations. We also account for monopoly zoning power through the use of town fixed effects. We find thta the price effect is highly nonlinear in monopoly zoning power with price increases of more than 20% at the upper tail of the monopoly power distribution. We also find evidence of significant spillover effects within and across towns; though not as large as those in the zoning districts where the minimum lot size changes. Finally, we find that the impact increases over time.

Entity Query Feature Expansion Using Knowledge Base Links

Recent advances in automatic entity linking and knowledge base construction have resulted in entity annotations for document and query collections. For example, annotations of entities from large general purpose knowledge bases, such as Freebase and the Google Knowledge Graph. Understanding how to leverage these entity annotations of text to improve ad hoc document retrieval is an open research area. Query expansion is a commonly used technique to improve retrieval effectiveness. Most previous query expansion approaches focus on text, mainly using unigram concepts. In this paper, we propose a new technique, called entity query feature expansion (EQFE) which enriches the query with features from entities and their links to knowledge bases, including structured attributes and text. We experiment using both explicit query entity annotations and latent entities. We evaluate our technique on TREC text collections automatically annotated with knowledge base entity links, including the Google Freebase Annotations (FACC1) data. We find that entity-based feature expansion results in significant improvements in retrieval effectiveness over state-of-the-art text expansion approaches

Mixed Agency: a Historical & Ethical Examination of the Health Professional\u27s Role in the U.S. Military Medical System

My thesis seeks to examine the dual roles a military care provider must fulfill through the historical development of the U.S. military medical system and the patient physician ethic. I begin by outlining the crucial ethical choices made in the development of the United States\u27 system, and then move to the development of the patient physician ethic. The struggle between soldier/duty and healer/patient-physician ethic is at the core of both the policies that dominate modern military physician\u27s as well as modern soldiering practice. Through critically examining these conflicting roles (this mixed agency), I try to dissolve the seemingly indestructible dichotomy, and find myself dancing around the timeless question .. . What should military medicine look like

Africa's Lagging Demographic Transition: Evidence from Exogenous Impacts of Malaria Ecology and Agricultural Technology

Much of Africa has not yet gone through a "demographic transition" to reduced mortality and fertility rates. The fact that the continent's countries remain mired in a Malthusian crisis of high mortality, high fertility, and rapid population growth (with an accompanying state of chronic extreme poverty) has been attributed to many factors ranging from the status of women, pro-natalist policies, poverty itself, and social institutions. There remains, however, a large degree of uncertainty among demographers as to the relative importance of these factors on a comparative or historical basis. Moreover, econometric estimation is complicated by endogeneity among fertility and other variables of interest. We attempt to improve estimation (particularly of the effect of the child mortality variable) by deploying exogenous variation in the ecology of malaria transmission and in agricultural productivity through the staggered introduction of Green Revolution, high-yield seed varieties. Results show that child mortality (proxied by infant mortality) is by far the most important factor among those explaining aggregate total fertility rates, followed by farm productivity. Female literacy (or schooling) and aggregate income do not seem to matter as much, comparatively.

Query-Specific Knowledge Graphs for Complex Finance Topics

Across the financial domain, researchers answer complex questions by extensively "searching" for relevant information to generate long-form reports. This workshop paper discusses automating the construction of query-specific document and entity knowledge graphs (KGs) for complex research topics. We focus on the CODEC dataset, where domain experts (1) create challenging questions, (2) construct long natural language narratives, and (3) iteratively search and assess the relevance of documents and entities. For the construction of query-specific KGs, we show that state-of-the-art ranking systems have headroom for improvement, with specific failings due to a lack of context or explicit knowledge representation. We demonstrate that entity and document relevance are positively correlated, and that entity-based query feedback improves document ranking effectiveness. Furthermore, we construct query-specific KGs using retrieval and evaluate using CODEC's "ground-truth graphs", showing the precision and recall trade-offs. Lastly, we point to future work, including adaptive KG retrieval algorithms and GNN-based weighting methods, while highlighting key challenges such as high-quality data, information extraction recall, and the size and sparsity of complex topic graphs.Comment: AKBC 2022 Workshop, Knowledge Graphs in Finance and Economic

Meta-analyses of Post-acquisition Performance: Indications of Unidentified Moderators

Empirical research has not consistently identified antecedents for predicting post-acquisition performance. We employ meta-analytic techniques to empirically assess the impact of the most commonly researched antecedent variables on post-acquisition performance. We find robust results indicating that, on average and across the most commonly studied variables, acquiring firms’ performance does not positively change as a function of their acquisition activity, and is negatively affected to a modest extent. More importantly, our results indicate that unidentified variables may explain significant variance in post-acquisition performance, suggesting the need for additional theory development and changes to M&A research methods

Vote Goat: Conversational Movie Recommendation

Conversational search and recommendation systems that use natural language interfaces are an increasingly important area raising a number of research and interface design questions. Despite the increasing popularity of digital personal assistants, the number of conversational recommendation systems is limited and their functionality basic. In this demonstration we introduce Vote Goat, a conversational recommendation agent built using Google's DialogFlow framework. The demonstration provides an interactive movie recommendation system using a speech-based natural language interface. The main intents span search and recommendation tasks including: rating movies, receiving recommendations, retrieval over movie metadata, and viewing crowdsourced statistics. Vote Goat uses gamification to incentivize movie voting interactions with the 'Greatest Of All Time' (GOAT) movies derived from user ratings. The demo includes important functionality for research applications with logging of interactions for building test collections as well as A/B testing to allow researchers to experiment with system parameters

Intensive Cultural Resources Survey of the Legacy Austin Tract, Austin, Travis County, Texas

Horizon Environmental Services, Inc. (Horizon) was selected by ECS Southwest, LP (ECS) on behalf of a private real estate developer to conduct a cultural resources inventory and assessment of potential US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) jurisdictional areas within a 14.7-hectare (36.4-acre) proposed development tract in Austin, Travis County, Texas. The tract is located at the southeastern corner of Parmer Lane (a.k.a. Farm-to-Market Road [FM] 734) and East Yager Lane, and an unnamed tributary of Harris Branch flows southeastward across the tract. The proposed undertaking is located on private property and would be privately funded. However, the developer has proposed impacts to the unnamed tributary of Harris Branch that flows across the tract. This water feature potentially meets the criteria for designation as “waters of the US” (WOTUS). As such, construction activities that would impact this jurisdictional feature would be subject to federal permitting by the USACE, Fort Worth District, under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act (CWA). As this is a federal permit, the proposed construction activities within the USACE jurisdictional areas fall under the jurisdiction of Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) of 1966, as amended. The purpose of the cultural resources survey was to determine if any cultural resources are located within the Area of Potential Effect (APE). The Area of Potential Effect (APE) associated with USACE jurisdictional features typically consists of the water feature(s) and the associated uplands on opposing banks. This jurisdiction does not extend for a standardized distance in any direction; however, for purposes of the current cultural resources survey and in an attempt to assess the full extent of areas the USACE could determine to fall within their jurisdiction, Horizon utilized an APE extending approximately 182.9 meters (600.0 feet) from the defined edges of proposed impact areas along the jurisdictional stream and associated wetlands. This archeological survey buffer would incorporate approximately 11.8 hectares (29.2 acres) (roughly 80%) of the 14.7-hectare (36.4-acre) tract. While typical profiles of the depth of ground disturbance are not available, subsurface impacts associated with foundation slab and utility construction likely will extend a maximum of 0.8 meter (2.5 feet) below surface based on typical construction practices. Deeper impacts extending to a depth of 3.0 meters (10.0 feet) or more below surface may be expected within the footprints of four proposed storm water detention ponds that would be constructed adjacent to the creek in the northern portion of the project area. On May 26 to 27, 2020, Horizon archeologist Colene Knaub conducted an intensive cultural resources survey of the Legacy Austin Tract. The survey was conducted under the overall direction of Jeffrey D. Owens, Principal Investigator. The purpose of the survey was to locate any cultural resources that potentially would be impacted by the proposed undertaking. Horizon’s archeologist traversed the archeological survey area on foot and thoroughly inspected the modern ground surface for aboriginal and historic-age cultural resources. The survey area consisted of a mix of open pastures covered in dense, ankle- to shin-high grasses, forbs, weeds, and wildflowers with occasional cedar and hackberry saplings and small shrubs and moderately densely forested areas covered in cedar and hackberry trees. Areas adjacent to the tributary of Harris Branch that flows across the tract were typically covered in large pools of standing water. Several small, overgrown piles of gravel are present within the northwestern portion of the project area. These gravels may have been intended for use in some fencing construction projects that appear to have been underway in the relatively recent past but which appear to have been abandoned. Ground surface visibility was generally poor due to dense grass cover (\u3c30%). In addition to pedestrian walkover, the Texas State Minimum Archeological Survey Standards (TSMASS) require a minimum of two shovel tests per 0.4 hectare (1.0 acre) for projects measuring 10.1 hectares (25.0 acres) or less in size plus one additional shovel test per 2.0 hectares (5.0 acres) beyond the first 10.1 hectares (25.0 acres). As such, a minimum of 51 shovel tests would be required within the current 11.8-hectare (29.2-acre) archeological survey area. Horizon excavated a total of 54 shovel tests, thereby exceeding the TSMASS for a survey area of this size. Shovel testing revealed dense black, olive, and pale olive clay loam sediments often overlying dark gray to pale olive sandy clay at depths of 20.0 to 35.0 centimeters (7.9 to 13.8 inches) below surface. Calcium carbonate concretions were observed within the clayey subsoil in several shovel tests. It is Horizon’s opinion that shovel testing was capable of fully penetrating sediments with the potential to contain prehistoric and historic-age cultural resources. No cultural resources of historic or prehistoric age were observed on the modern ground surface or within any of the shovel tests excavated during the survey. A wooden animal chute, a pile of demolished wood-plank fencing, and a pile of wooden fenceposts were observed scattered throughout the northwestern portion of the project area. The dimensional lumber observed in these piles was untreated and relatively new, and galvanized wire nails and other hardware were observed on the lumber piles and on the animal chute that had not yet rusted, suggesting that these features had been erected relatively recently and are not of historic age. Based on the results of the survey-level investigations documented in this report, no potentially significant cultural resources would be affected by the proposed undertaking. In accordance with 36 CFR 800.4, Horizon has made a reasonable and good faith effort to identify historic properties within the APE. No cultural resources were identified that meet the criteria for listing on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) according to 36 CFR 60.4. Horizon recommends a finding of “no historic properties affected,” and no further work is recommended in connection with the proposed undertaking. However, in the event that any human remains or burial objects are inadvertently discovered at any point during construction, use, or ongoing maintenance in the project area, even in previously surveyed areas, all work should cease immediately and the Texas Historical Commission (THC) should be notified of the discovery