Andres Jauregui

Which State Policies Lead to U.S. Firm Exits? Analysis with the Economic Freedom Index

This research investigates the relationship between public policy and firm deaths in the U.S. states. Policies that promote firm births may increase or decrease firm deaths. We use components of the Economic Freedom of North America index as a metric to evaluate the relationship between increased government size and firm deaths for the 50 states during 1989–2004. Elements of economic freedom are significantly related to firm deaths but in conflicting directions. We find that in the relevant range, some increases in state policy lead to firm death more than others. The paper also discusses our results and the implications for both future academic research and public policy.

House Price Impacts of Racial, Income, Education, and Age Neighborhood Segregation

We study housing prices and neighborhood segregation. We advance the literature by (1) studying not just racial segregation like previous studies, but also segregation by age, income, and education level, (2) using a finer unit of geography to construct segregation measures, (3) incorporating spatial statistics, and (4) separating segregation effects from underlying population level effects. We find race segregation is positively related to house prices, with an elasticity of 0.19. In contrast, income and educational segregation reduce housing values, with elasticities of −0.23 and −0.21. By comparison, house age has an elasticity of −0.15. Age segregation is not generally capitalized.

State Regulatory Spending: Boon or Brake for New Enterprise Creation and Income?

This article addresses a public policy question: Does state government regulation foster or deter economic development? The authors estimate a system of simultaneous equations for income growth, regulation growth, and growth in the number of new enterprises. It is found that regulation does not provide efficient solutions to conflicts and, therefore, does not foster economic development. It is also found that new enterprise formation does not necessarily indicate income growth and economic development.

Evaluating the legitimacy of entrepreneurship and small business as a field of study: An exploratory study in the USA

Purpose – The paper aims to clarify a debate about the legitimacy of entrepreneurship as a field of study. Katz and Kuratko continued this discussion by evaluating the legitimacy as an academic discipline. Their work extends the earlier contributions of Stephenson, Meyer, Finkle et al., and Fiet. Their research focused on the use of secondary data to consider this research question. This study uses an empirical evaluation of the actors that form the basis of this field of study, the faculty that teach entrepreneurship. Design/methodology/approach – This study used an online survey to ascertain the academic background, dissertation subject, doctoral course work, teaching assignments, and research output of individuals that described themselves as entrepreneurship faculty. Findings – The results show that a significant percentage of the sample of college instructors did not have a doctorate in entrepreneurship, nor did they study entrepreneurship in their curriculum thereby potentially undermining perceptio...

Open Space at the Rural-Urban Fringe: A Joint Spatial Hedonic Model of Developed and Undeveloped Land Values

We examine the impacts of different open space amenities on sales prices of developed and undeveloped land in two time periods ten years apart in a rapidly urbanizing county in central Ohio. Buffers within 0.25 and 0.5 miles are created that include percentages of agricultural, residential, park and golf course uses around each land sale and are used as explanatory variables. We contribute to the literature by estimating a unified model that accounts for spatial heterogeneity as well as for cross-correlations in developed and undeveloped land sales. Our findings suggest interactions between the land markets examined are complex and dynamic.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell: The Impact of Real Estate Agents on House Prices Near Environmental Disamenities

The purpose of this paper is to determine the impact of real estate agents on the price of houses that are located close to an environmental disamenity using Rosens (1974) hedonic price model. Our main hypothesis is that real estate agents obtain higher prices than those theoretically expected when the houses are located closer to an environmental disamenity. We attribute this result to differences in information about the presence of the environmental disamenity between buyers, sellers, and their real estate agent, that ultimately have an impact on their bargaining position. Our analysis is based on 2,967 transactions involving houses located close to four landfills in Franklin County, Ohio, in 1990. Using an estimated hedonic price model, we predict house values for transactions made with and without a real estate agent, and calculate their percentage differences at various distance intervals from the landfills. On average, results suggest that at distances less than 1 mile away from the landfills, the percentage increase in the house price obtained by a real estate agent is greater than the commission rate. For example, the weighted predicted rent for transactions made through a real estate agent at an interval distance of 0.75 miles away from the landfills is

Goodbye Columbus: Accommodation Taxes and OTAs

7,680.37, while the predicted rent for transactions made without an agent is

The Effect of Multitasking on the Grade Performance of Business Students

6,780.71. The difference between these two predicted house values is 13.27 percent. For an average real estate commission rate of 7 percent, real estate brokered sales results in surplus for houses closer to landfills. This effect erodes as distance away from the landfill is increased. These findings are consistent with theoretical expectations about differences between prices obtained by real estate agents and prices obtain by individual house sellers. In addition to the effects that real estate agents may have on house prices, results of this paper may be of interest to individuals using multiple listing service (MLS) data alone for hedonic studies. That is, our paper provides evidence that estimating hedonic price models with MLS data can downwardly bias estimated impacts of an environmental disamenity.

Housing Prices and Economic Freedom

In 2006, the community of Columbus, Georgia, filed a lawsuit over uncollected accommodation taxes aimed at online travel agencies [OTAs]. Defendants included companies such as Expedia and Orbitz. In retaliation for the lawsuit, the OTAs delisted the city’s hotels from their sites. Several years later, the lawsuits were settled and normalcy returned. The delisting period provided an interesting set of circumstances that allowed exploration of the power balance between OTAs and municipalities. It also provided, using nonexperimental “real-life” data, some insight into an issue that has received significant trade and academic attention—the influence of OTAs upon hotel occupancies and rates. The results provided should be of interest to communities and their tourism officials in disputes similar to that experienced by Columbus. Hoteliers, the third party caught in the crossfire of these disputes, will also find the research results of value.