Essays on Government Growth: Political Institutions, Evolving Markets, and Technology (As editor with Joshua Hall), Springer Nature, 2020
This book contains eight papers focusing on factors associated with the growth of government. There is a large literature in public economics, especially public choice, on the determinants of the growth of government. The papers in this volume focus on a number of arguments related to why government has grown in many developed countries during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Chapters focus on taxation, trade openness, technology, income changes, and tax compliance. The volume features prominent scholars such as Nobel Laureate Gary Becker, Casey Mulligan, Gordon Tullock, Randall Holcombe, and Tyler Cowen.
Job Market Paper: Stadiums and Traffic Congestion Generated by Major Sporting Events
This paper examines the effect of National Football League games on traffic congestion in Cincinnati, Ohio; Seattle, Washington; and Santa Clara, California during the 2018 and 2019 seasons. Building on current literature linking sporting events to congestion, this paper utilizes Uber's high-frequency vehicle movement speed data at the hourly level on individual road segments. This paper finds traffic speed declines range from 0.32 to 4 miles per hour, up to 7-miles from a stadium. Converting the average speed decline into a time delay, and utilizing the average city wage provides a congestion cost estimate ranging from \$37,881 to \$19 million per NFL home game. The results suggest wide-ranging spatial congestion externalities, representing up to 5\% of public contributions to stadium construction. These findings have important implications for urban transportation policy, and subsidies to professional sporting facilities, particularly for cities with large sports stadiums.
Exploring Bias in Causal Parameter Estimates of Infrastructure Historical Instrumental Variables: A Meta-Analysis - Under review at Journal of Regional Analysis & Policy
The prevalence of historical instrumental variables in urban and regional economics stems from their plausibly exogeneity to unobservable time-varying factors that may be correlated with both the explanatory variables of interest and outcome variables to address potential endogeneity. The exclusion restriction plays a key role, ensuring that the instrument only affects the dependent variable through the independent variable in instrumental variable (IV) regression models. However, the elapsed time between the historical instrument and contemporary covariates may allow alternative channels of influence to develop between the historical instrument and contemporaneous variables. These channels can lead to persistence in unobserved historical covariates, violating the exclusion restriction. This paper analyzes potential bias generated by the time elapsed between the measurement of infrastructure historical instruments and contemporary covariates on reported IV results in the urban and regional economics literature. Using a fixed effects, clustered-corrected standard error meta-analytical regression model, this paper finds a positive and significant bias of 0.02 on the estimated t-statistic on the IV variable of interest for each year increase in time elapsed between the measurement of the historical instrument and contemporary covariates. This implies a violation of the standard IV exclusion restriction inflating the significance on historical instruments on IV parameter estimates.
Between 2007 and 2011, the US Department of Defense implemented the Base Realignment and Closure 2005 Act which ordered the closure of numerous military bases across the US. The inconsequential cost and personnel required to maintain these bases represent a large local impact. The Galena Airport Forward Operating Location in Alaska for example represents a loss of roughly 2.2% of the county's total employment. This papers examines the effect of 28 installations slated for realignment and closure across 16 states. Using a difference-in-difference regression model, lost military jobs due to the base closures result in a negative impact on county's change in number of employees, and annual payroll. Lost civilian and contractor jobs due to base closures result in a positive effect. This suggest that when military bases close, military personnel migrate with the base, or within the military. Lost civilian jobs lead to civilians and contractors remaining in the county which assist mitigating the effect of base closures.
The Impact of Local Tax Changes on Migration between US States
Economic Growth, Capital Inflow, and Productivity Spillovers in Small Open Economics: Does Economic Freedom Matter? (with Sheng-Ping Yang, Gustavus Adolphus College)
Southern Economic Association - Fall 2023
Presented Stadiums and Traffic Congestion Generated by Major Sporting Events
Discussant on Assessing the Impact of Ferry Transit on Urban Crime for Bryan Weber, College of Staten Island, CUNY
WVU Economic Seminar Series - Fall 2023
Pennsylvania Economic Association - Spring 2023
Presented Stadiums and Traffic Congestion Generated by Major Sporting Events
Discussant on Moneyball, body mass, and salary for MLB hitters for Paul Holmes, Ashland University
WVU Brown Bag Seminar - Fall 2022
NAASE Graduate Student Paper Award - Fall 2024
Presidential Faculty-Student Collaboration Grant - Spring 2018
Hayek Fund - Fall 2018