Date of Award

Summer 2024

Language

English

Embargo Period

7-22-2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

College/School/Department

Department of Economics

Program

Economics

First Advisor

Ulrich Hounyo

Second Advisor

Chun-Yu Ho

Third Advisor

Daiqiang Zhang

Committee Members

Ulrich Hounyo, Chun-Yu Ho, Daiqiang Zhang

Keywords

Housing Value, Taxation, Government Finance, Causal Inference, Exchange Market Pressure, Macroprudential Policy, Bootstrap

Subject Categories

Econometrics | Education Economics | Finance | Geographic Information Sciences | International Economics | Policy Design, Analysis, and Evaluation | Public Economics | Real Estate | Regional Economics | Social Welfare | Taxation

Abstract

The first chapter examines New York State's Fiscal Score Monitoring program to find the effect of two quality labels on school district outcomes: fiscal stress scores, reflecting the budget solvency, and environmental stress labels reflecting economic and demographic conditions. Using the NYS school district data from 2013-22, I employ the regression discontinuity design to find the effect of stress labels, in response to the political pressure on district finances, housing, and school outcomes. I find the effect of fiscal stress label is limited, leading to a decrease in the fund balance ratio and an increase in the tax rate. However, districts are more responsive to environmental stress labels, especially when facing tight political pressure. The fund balance ratio and surplus ratio, unassigned fund balance ratio, and general operating surplus significantly declined. Among the housing variables, the property values decline, while the tax rate and tax levied increased significantly. Districts are sensitive to environmental indicators of school quality, especially for districts under high pressure. The overall findings suggest that the fiscal stress management system serves as an “early warning sign” and allows active political parties and representative entities to take more proactive actions under tight political pressure to circumvent possible fiscal and environmental distress.

The second chapter examines the COVID-19 pandemic led to changes in the housing market in the United States that led residents to move away from city centers to suburbs, and that has potential fiscal implications for the local governments. Considering the unit of data at the school district level from 2006-22, I employ difference-in-differences methods to measure the impact of changes in the housing market due to COVID, on local government’s revenues and expenditures in the New York State (NYS). Results indicate evidence of an increase in revenues, generated from the collection of property taxes. The effect is mainly driven by districts at the intermediate distance from the city, relatively less dense areas. The overall expenditures did not increase significantly, but I found a slight growth in spending toward debt services, employee benefits, and general government needs.

In the thirst chapter, I study the impact of macroprudential policy on measures of Exchange Market Pressure (EMP) in Emerging Market Economies and OECD countries. Using the quarterly panel data from 2000 to 2019, I analyzed the adoption of policy using the difference-in-difference (DD) approach. I find a significant impact on one of the three measures of EMP, while the other two EMPs show no effect. I also attempt to document the potential problems related to sample bias and estimation associated with variation in treatment timing, small samples, and conventional DD standard errors. Using Wild bootstrap methods, I find that the policy effect significantly impacts one of the EMP measures.

License

This work is licensed under the University at Albany Standard Author Agreement.

Download

Share

COinS