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Journal Article
A look at bankruptcy in the Tenth District and beyond
Working Paper
Student loans: overview and issues
This report provides a detailed overview of the student loan market, presents new statistics that highlight student loan debt burdens and delinquency rates, and discusses current concerns among many Americans about student loans, including their fiscal impact. The report is intended to enhance awareness of the state of student loan debt and delinquency and highlight issues facing borrowers, creditors, the federal government, and society at large. ; Student loan debt has been increasing at a rapid pace in the last decade, climbing from about $364 billion in the first quarter of 2005 to $904 ...
Journal Article
Why Aren’t More People Working in Low- and Moderate-Income Areas?
Although the U.S. labor market has seen strong growth in recent years, labor market conditions have been weaker in low- and moderate-income (LMI) communities. In particular, residents in LMI communities are much less likely to work than residents in higher-income (non-LMI) communities. As of 2017, 35 percent of residents in LMI communities age 18–64 were not working compared with 24.9 percent in non-LMI communities.In this article, I use a formal text analysis of a unique set of survey comments to examine prominent obstacles to working, and compare the prevalence of these obstacles, or ...
Working Paper
Financial Vulnerability and Personal Finance Outcomes of Natural Disasters
I evaluate the effects of hurricanes of varying intensity on the financial condition of a typical resident in both affected and unaffected census tracts, where the degree of affect is determined by the relative location of a census tract?s boundary with buffers around the tracks of hurricane eyes that occurred in the years 2000-2014. The primary question in the article is whether financial vulnerability, or, alternatively, ?financial preparedness,? affects post-hurricane disaster financial outcomes. {{p}} I find that hurricanes tend to lower credit scores, for the most, but outcomes are far ...
Journal Article
A new perspective on rising nonbusiness bankruptcy filing rates : analyzing the regional factors
Nonbusiness bankruptcy filing rates have increased almost five-fold since 1980. This alarming growth was largely the impetus for the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005. The intent of the new law, which went into effect in October, 2005, was to eliminate alleged abuses of the bankruptcy system and to reduce filing rates. ; In deliberations on the new law, Congress expressed concern about the underlying causes of bankruptcy. The tools currently available for analysis leave serious gaps in understanding bankruptcy behavior. While many studies have sought to discover ...
Working Paper
Worker's compensation and state employment growth
Workers Compensation reforms have been on the table in virtually every state over the last several years, and many states have launched comprehensive reforms. At least nine states undertook major reforms of their workers compensation systems in 2004 alone, and the reforms were driven largely by claims that higher workers compensation costs are driving away businesses and the employment that comes with them. Given the nearly universal assertion by promoters of workers compensation reforms that high cost states lose jobs to relatively low cost states, one would expect that substantial research ...
Journal Article
Nonprofit housing investment and local area home values
In the wake of the recent mortgage crisis, interest in neighborhood stabilization and redevelopment has shown renewed vigor. Decaying neighborhoods have been part of the urban landscape for decades, but their problems recently have been exacerbated by foreclosed and vacated properties, especially in low- and moderate-income areas. ; Edmiston analyzes the impact of housing investments in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods on neighborhood quality by estimating the effect of that investment on the value of nearby houses. Property values are a good measure of overall neighborhood impacts ...
Working Paper
Economic effects of apportionment formula changes : results from a panel of corporate income tax returns
To date empirical studies of the economic effects of changes in state corporate income tax apportionment policies have used only highly aggregated, state-level data. This study uses data at the individual firm level, which is provided by a population of corporate income tax returns from the State of Georgia over the period 1992 2002, to evaluate the economic development and revenue aspects of increasing the sales factor weight (and uniformly lowering the weights on payroll and property) in state corporate income tax apportionment formulas. Looking at the firm level, we find elasticities ...
Working Paper
Low-income housing tax credit developments and neighborhood property conditions
Public housing has long been a contentious issue for cities and regions. While there is a great need for affordable housing in many communities, neighbors of low-income housing developments fret about neighborhood decay. This paper evaluates the notion that low-income housing developments damage the communities in which they are placed. The focus is on the evaluation of low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC) financed developments, and the neighborhood indicator of interest is the physical condition of nearby properties. The results of the empirical analysis suggest that proximity to LIHTC ...
Journal Article
Rural Hospital Closures and Growth in Employment and Wages
Since 2011, 74 hospitals have closed in rural counties isolated from larger towns. I evaluate the implications for employment and aggregate wage growth in these counties and find that hospital closures are associated with substantially lower annual growth in county employment and aggregate wages. Smaller counties with a greater share of hospital employment in total employment may see the most severe economic outcomes.