Eric J. Brunner

Homeowners, property values, and the political economy of the school voucher

Abstract A school voucher would decrease property values in neighborhoods with superior public schools and increase property values in neighborhoods with inferior public schools. These potential gains and losses may influence voting on voucher initiatives, particularly for homeowners without school children. This paper examines that possibility, using a survey of potential voters on Californias 2000 voucher initiative. We find evidence that homeowners voted to protect their property values. For homeowners without school children, the probability of voting for the voucher was 39 percent if they lived in neighborhoods with superior public schools and 56 percent if they lived in neighborhoods with inferior schools.

School finance reform and voluntary fiscal federalism

California has transferred the financing of its public schools from localities to the state. In response, many families have supplemented the tax revenue of their local public schools with voluntary contributions. This paper analyzes that phenomenon. We propose a model of partial cooperation among parents in making voluntary contributions to their public schools. Under reasonable conditions, the model predicts that contributions per pupil should decline with school size. We estimate this relationship using data on contributions to California schools. Our estimates reveal that contributions per pupil do decline with size; however, the rate of decline is surprisingly slow.  2002 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Free riders or easy riders?: An examination of the voluntary provision of public radio

This paper tests the widely accepted hypothesis that when a pure public good is voluntarily provided incentives to free ride increase with the number of individuals consuming the good. Specifically, I use unique data on the number of listeners and contributors to public radio to test two hypotheses. First I test whether the proportion of contributors falls as group size increases and second I test whether contributions per contributor falls as group size increases. I find that increases in group size result in significantly more free riding. However, I also find that group size has no effect on contributions per contributor.

ECONOMICS AND POLICY PREFERENCES: CAUSAL EVIDENCE OF THE IMPACT OF ECONOMIC CONDITIONS ON SUPPORT FOR REDISTRIBUTION AND OTHER BALLOT PROPOSALS

Using California ballot proposition returns and exogenous shifts to labor demand, we provide the first large-scale causal evidence of the impact of economic conditions on policy preferences. Consistent with economic theory, we find that positive economic shocks decrease support for redistributive policies. More notably, we find evidence of a need for cognitive consistency in voting behavior as economic shocks have a smaller significant impact on voting on noneconomic ballot issues. While we also demonstrate that positive shocks decrease turnout, we present evidence that our results reflect changes in the electorates preferences and not simply to its composition.

Universal Vouchers and Racial and Ethnic Segregation

We use data on vote outcomes from a universal voucher initiative to examine whether white households with children in public schools will use vouchers to leave predominantly nonwhite schools, thereby contributing to more racially and ethnically segregated schools. We find that white households are more likely to support vouchers when their children attend schools with larger concentrations of nonwhite schoolchildren, an effect that is absent for nonwhite households and households without children. This result may be driven less by race or ethnicity and more by other characteristics, such as student performance, that are correlated with race or ethnicity.

Probation Length and Teacher Salaries: Does Waiting Pay Off?

Tenure policies for elementary and secondary school teachers is a controversial issue in many states, but there is virtually no empirical evidence on how tenure affects teacher labor markets. This paper begins to fill this research void by using cross-state variation in tenure policies to identify the effects, if any, of the length of the probationary period on entry-level teacher salaries. Using data from the Schools and Staffing Survey, the authors investigate whether districts in states with longer probationary periods offer higher wages to teachers as a way to compensate for the extended evaluative period. Results suggest that they do, although effects are concentrated in districts that are most likely to be competing for teachers with districts in neighboring states with shorter probation periods. The authors also find that the relationship between probation length and wages is stronger for experienced teachers and in districts that engage in collective bargaining.

Homeowners, Renters and the Political Economy of Property Taxation

Studies find that renters are more supportive of public spending that is financed by the property tax than homeowners, a finding commonly referred to as the “renter effect.” The renter effect suggests that, all else equal, renters should prefer property taxation over other forms of taxation. We test that hypothesis using detailed micro-level survey data that contains voter responses to two key questions: their willingness to pay higher property taxes to fund public services and their willingness to pay higher sales taxes to fund those services. Using a difference-in-differences estimation strategy, we find first that renters are approximately 10 to 18 percentage points more likely than homeowners to favor a property tax increase over a sales tax increase, a finding consistent with the presence of a renter effect. However, these results are not driven by the survey responses of renters. Analysis based on separate regressions for renters and homeowners reveals that renters are indifferent between a property tax increase and either a sales tax or state income tax increase, while homeowners strongly oppose a property tax increase relative to either a sales tax or state income tax increase. Further, the strong opposition among homeowners to the property tax is not eroded by including controls for income and other demographics as might be expected if these differences were driven by economic incentives. Finally, an examination of the variation in tax burden created by Proposition 13 in California shows no evidence that homeowner aversion to the property tax increases with the homeowners relative tax burden. These findings of homeowner aversion to property taxes are consistent with recent work suggesting that salience matters when voters evaluate taxes, but also suggest that increased salience does not necessarily lead to more careful consideration of individual tax burdens.

School Quality, School Choice and Residential Mobility

Since the 1990’s the school choice options available to parents have expanded dramatically. As an alternative to their residentially zoned public school, parents in many states can now take advantage of charter schools, magnet schools, inter/intra-district choice plans and vouchers to attend private schools. Since school choice programs weaken the link between school quality and residential location, they have the potential to affect both property values and the residential location decisions of households. In this chapter I first review the literature on the link between residential location decisions and school quality when schooling options are determined by a strict residential-based assignment system. I then survey the emerging theoretical and empirical literature that examines how school choice policies that decouple the strict link between school quality and residential location affect housing markets and residential mobility.

The Housing and Educational Consequences of the School Choice Provisions of NCLB: Evidence from Charlotte, NC

We examine the housing market, residential mobility, and academic performance changes that occur soon after a school fails to achieve Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) (for the second time) in the Charlotte, NC school district. Charlotte is a school district with substantial opportunities for school choice and a number of oversubscribed, high quality schools. To comply with the 2002 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, students within the attendance zone of Title 1 schools that fail to meet AYP are given an advantage in the lotteries for oversubscribed schools. That advantage may create an incentive for households with strong preferences for school choice and/or school quality to move into the attendance zones of failing schools in order to improve their likelihood of being admitted into high performing, oversubscribed schools. Consistent with that notion, we find that housing prices and the incomes of new home-buyers rise in the highest quality neighborhoods within attendance zones of failing schools in comparison to trends in nearby neighborhoods just outside of the attendance zone. We also find that residential mobility decreases while the probability of attending a non-assigned traditional school or magnet school increases in these high quality neighborhoods. Further analysis reveals that the effect of failing designation on non-assigned school attendance is driven largely by the school choice decisions of new residents who are most likely to exploit the school choice advantages offered by a second failure to achieve AYP.

State Collective Bargaining Laws and Public-Sector Pay

Using the Public Use Microdata Sample from the 2005 to 2015 American Community Survey, the authors provide new evidence on how state collective bargaining laws affect public-sector wages. To isolate the causal effect of bargaining laws on public-sector pay, they examine wage differentials between otherwise similar public- and private-sector employees located in the same local labor market. They estimate difference-in-differences (DD) models that exploit two sources of plausibly exogenous variation: 1) policy discontinuities along state borders and 2) variation within states in collective bargaining laws in states where the majority of public workers are without collective bargaining rights. Findings show that mandatory collective bargaining laws increase public-sector wages by approximately 5 to 8 percentage points. Results therefore suggest that mandatory collective bargaining laws provide a formal mechanism through which public-sector workers are able to bargain for increased compensation.