Working in Progress

Papers Under Review 

Tax Incentives and Local Business Ownership: Evidence from the Florida Enterprise Zone Program (with Jamie Pavlik and Juan Sayago)  [WP Link]

The effect of place-based policies like enterprise zones has long been debated. Recent literature finds that even if the short-run effects of such policies are positive, the long-run effects tend to dissipate to zero. We focus on why this is the case. We argue that the lack of long-run effects is the failure to attract locally owned small businesses. We study the effects of enterprise zone designation on local business sorting in Florida. Utilizing a regression discontinuity design and establishment level NETS data, we find that enterprise zone designation reduces the likelihood of single-establishment local ownership but it attracts firm headquarters.

The Impact of Historic District Designation on House Prices in Fort Myers, Florida  (with Allison Conley * and Amelia Biehl)

Growing historic district designation literature has yet to come to a consensus, as evidence suggests that historic designation can positively or negatively affect house prices.  These findings are complicated by diverse designation rules across time and space.  In this paper, we model the benefits and costs of historic designation and show how historic regulations can differentially affect house prices based on neighborhood characteristics.  We empirically test our hypothesis using a sample of home sales in Fort Myers, Florida, a locality that historically designated homes in three different neighborhoods at approximately the same time.  Results are consistent with our hypothesis and suggest that historic designations affect home prices differently, consistent with pre-policy neighborhood characteristics.

How Hot is too Hot? An Analysis of Housing Markets in the U.S.  (with Andrea Santana* and Travis Jones)

This paper tests for the existence of a housing Kuznets curve by examining the relationship between the monthly National Association of Realtor’s Market Hotness Index metric and real median listing prices for homes in 1612 counties in the U.S over the period 2017-2024. Economic theory suggests that there should be a correlation between market hotness and housing prices, but the shape of this relationship – linear or polynomial – is an empirical question. Our results illustrate that there is an N-shaped relationship between market hotness and median listing prices and that movements in the supply side (median days on market) are leading the changes in prices rather than movements on the demand side (viewers per property). We also document that this relationship is more prominent in urban homes and those in the second and fourth price quartiles. 

Differential Effects of Enrollment in Online Classes on Graduation Rates  (with James Higgins* and Clarisse Halpern*)

This study examines the impact of online enrollment on undergraduate graduation rates across various demographic groups. Utilizing data from the Integrated Post-secondary Education Data System (IPEDS) and U.S. Census Bureau from 2012 to 2018, we document the heterogeneous effects of online enrollment on graduation rates in the United States. Our results show that graduation rates are not affected by the simple offering of classes but by the intake amount. In particular, our results suggest that women, White and Asian student population benefit the most from this modality. The results underscore the need for higher education institutions to consider the diverse impacts of online learning modalities on different student demographics.