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Some of the material in is restricted to members of the community. By logging in, you may be able to gain additional access to certain collections or items. If you have questions about access or logging in, please use the form on the Contact Page.
This dissertation involves the relationship between market structures and innovation, with an eye to implications for antitrust. The first chapter considers whether more competitive market structures encourage more cost-reducing, process...
Local governments are becoming an increasingly important arm of governance and public goods provision. As the role of counties and municipalities continues to expand so must our understanding of their inner workings and relationships to...
The essays comprising this dissertation intersect public policy and consequential personal decisions: attending college, adopting a child, or choosing the right neighborhood. These selections have an enduring effect on an individual’s...
It is commonly asserted that free market capitalism promotes economic efficiency at the expense of equality. This view is reflected in the common claim that the rich are getting richer and the poor getting poorer. The current research...
The Race to the Top (RTTT) federal grant program was an initiative that targeted improving Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education. However, the evaluation of the program reported only student outcomes for...
This dissertation is an economic analysis of the private security industry in the United States. In particular, private security's effect on crime, the rise of varied state level private security regulatory institutions, and the...
In order to improve student performance and close the achievement gap, accountability policies utilize three incentive-based approaches: (1) sanctions and rewards for schools; (2) the extensive use of student data in local decision...
Empirical research has consistently shown that married males earn more than single, never married males. Similar research for females is scarce. This dissertation is a collection of three essays on the female marriage premium. The...
This dissertation is composed of three related papers, all using natural experiments from the state of Wisconsin to examine critical issues in education policy such as the importance of school funding and teacher compensation reform for...
Recent literature on comparative institutional analysis has found that the set of institutions consistent with the concept of economic freedom correlates with higher levels of per capita income (Gwartney, Holcombe, and Lawson 2004), more...
The U.S. financial advisor industry seems to have all of the necessary ingredients for a classic lemons problem: an information asymmetry between advisor and client, frequent conflicts of interest between advisor compensation and client...
Following the neoclassical model of Robert Solow, several theories have been proposed to explain the fundamental causes of growth and economic development. This dissertation analyzes three of the main hypotheses. Chapter 2 explores the...
Current educational reform efforts are focused on enhancing school and teacher accountability as a means of improving student learning. One policy initiative resulting from these efforts is the inclusion of outcome-based teacher...
In first two chapters of this dissertation, I examine the effects of Certificate-of-Need (CON) regulation on technological investment and prices, and also examine decisions about service provision in hospitals and other non-profit...
The shortage of family medicine physicians is a predominant issue in the medical field. This dissertation investigates whether medical malpractice liability reforms impact defensive medicine among general practice physicians. The first...
Public Finance of Florida Municipalities: A Study of How Property Value, Revenue, and Expenditure Are Related to Taxes, Land Use Counts, and Parcel Density
Chapter one provides an introduction. Chapter two seeks to answer the question of how the property tax affects the tax base. Cities are divided into four types as defined by the census. Principal, central, suburban, and rural cities. The...
One in five adults in the United States experiences mental illness in a typical year. Less than half get treatment. The novel coronavirus pandemic has increased mental health pressures above that baseline. This dissertation addresses the...
My dissertation includes three essays on educational attainment and labor outcomes, where each paper details an interesting topic related to education. Chapter 1 is the introduction of my dissertation. In Chapter 2, I estimate the...
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