Adam T. Jones

Federal Reserve independence: the Fed Funds Rate under different regimes

The independence of central banks is an important feature of a properly functioning and stable monetary system. The structure of the Federal Reserve is designed to minimize political influence and insulate policy makers from political pressure. Nevertheless, members of the Fed’s Federal Open Market Committee are members of society and informed about public opinion, potentially opening them to political bias, even if unintentional. This article uses a Taylor rule structure to examine changes in the Fed’s reaction function to unemployment and inflation under different political administrations and chairman. Preliminary results show that the Fed is more responsive to the output gap under Republican presidential administrations and sets the Federal Funds Rate at a lower level under Republican administrations.

Determining the Propensity for Academic Dishonesty Using Decision Tree Analysis

This article investigates the propensity for academic dishonesty by university students using the partitioning method of decision tree analysis. A set of prediction rules are presented, and conclusions are drawn. To provide context for the decision tree approach, the partition process is compared with results of more traditional probit regression models. Results of the decision tree analysis complement the probit models in terms of predictive accuracy and confirm results previously found in the literature. In particular, students’ moral character—whether they believe cheating is acceptable—is found to be the most important factor in determining the propensity for academic dishonesty.

Producing drama: a comparison of film tax incentives to alternative uses

ABSTRACT Incentive packages are popular tools for economic development. However, development projects are often considered in isolation without an analysis of opportunity costs. In this study, we use an intuitive framework for comparing projects and weigh alternate projects against North Carolina’s film incentive programme. The results indicate that there are substantial differences in the economic impact of the projects we consider in this study. Our results suggest that policy decisions by governments and economic development officials should weigh a potential project against alternative uses in order to optimize the use of incentives.

Impact Fees and Employment Growth

Local jurisdictions across the country continue to adopt alternative financing options, although the effects of these remain uncertain. There are two views of impact fees: (a) an old view, that fees are a tax on development increasing prices and reducing quantity and (b) a new view, that fees provide services and reduce future taxes, thus increasing demand and prices. The research presented in this study, based on data from Florida counties, finds that the relationship between fees on commercial development and fees on employment differs across different categories of economic activity. The use of fees is positively related to service-sector employment growth and negatively related to manufacturing employment growth. This result suggests that different sectors realize different levels of benefits from infrastructure provided through fee revenue and that policy decisions based on total employment may suffer from overaggregations and lead to unintended consequences.