Robert J. Shapiro

The Economic Benefits of New York City's Public School Reforms, 2002-2013

This study examines some of the economic consequences associated with the public school reforms introduced in New York City (NYC) by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, including their impact on housing values. The reforms focused primarily on increasing the autonomy and accountability of a school’s principal and teachers, and expanding school choice and charter schools. We found that those reforms have been followed by substantial improvements in a number of key measures of student performance, including Math and English test scores, high school graduation rates, and college enrollment rates. From 2006 to 2009, for example, the four-year graduation rate of NYC high school students increased from 49.1 percent to 60.4 percent, improvements driven mainly by the progress of African-American and Hispanic students. We estimate that from 2008 to 2012, 41,000 more NYC public high school students earned diplomas than would have occurred assuming the graduation rates for NYC students in 2006; and the net present value of the additional income that these additional high school graduates should earn over their lifetimes is

The Economic Implications of Restricting Spectrum Purchases in the Incentive Auctions

8.9 billion. Similarly, from 2008 to 2012, 30,900 more NYC public high school students enrolled in institutions of higher learning than would have occurred assuming the college enrollment rates of NYC students in 2006; and the net present value of the additional income that these additional NYC college attendees should earn over their lifetimes is

The Impact of Title II Regulation of Internet Providers on Their Capital Investments

6.4 billion. Our analysis further found that rising high school graduation rates increase housing demand in the neighborhoods where those graduation rates rose, which in turn has led to increased residential property values. We estimate that increasing NYC graduation rates by 1 percentage point in a zip code leads to an increase in residential property prices of 0.54 percent in that zip code. On this basis, we estimate that NYC’s rising graduation rates added as much as

The U.S. Software Industry as an Engine for Economic Growth and Employment

37.1 billion to NYC residential housing prices or values. Finally, the number of NYC charter schools climbed from 14 in 2001 to 183 in 2013, an average increase of 0.96 charter schools per zip code. We found that adding one new NYC charter school in a zip code increased residential property prices there by an estimated 3.69 percent. On this basis, the expansion of charter schools in NYC may have added as much as

How India Can Attract More Foreign Direct Investment, Create Jobs and Increase GDP: The Benefits of Respecting the Intellectual Property Rights of Foreign Pharmaceutical Producers

22.45 billion to NYC residential property prices or values.

The Flawed Reasoning and Evidence for the Department of Education's Gainful Employment Regulation of Private, For-Profit Colleges and Universities

This paper contains two chapters on the economic impact of proposed FCC restrictions on participation in the 2015 spectrum auction, which would limit access to additional spectrum by large incumbent Internet Service providers (ISPs). The first chapter by Holtz-Eakin and Bazelon reports that such restrictions could reduce FCC auction revenues by as much as

Unnecessary Injury: The Economic Costs of Imposing New Global Capital Requirements on Large U.S. Property and Casualty Insurers

12 billion or 40 percent, which in turn could mean that the FCC would be unable to purchase the full amount of spectrum being made available by broadcasters. They further report that this large shortfall could lead to a series of declining revenues and fewer frequencies allocated, and jeopardize funding for the new national network, FirstNet, planned for the exclusive use of public safety personnel. The second chapter by Shapiro reports that restricting auction participation by large, relatively-efficient incumbent ISPs would shift spectrum resources towards less efficient mobile carriers. This shift also would force the large incumbent carriers to deploy more costly responses to fast-rising consumer and business demand for bandwidth, raising prices and thereby slowing the transition to 4G technologies. Further, the slower transition to 4G would dampen the employment growth that should otherwise follow from the adoption of more advanced Internet technologies. Shapiro estimates that those effects could more than 118,000 jobs by 2017.

The Costs and Benefits of Half a Loaf: The Economic Effects of Recent Regulation of Debit Card Interchange Fees

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has requested comments on a proposal to end the regulation of Internet Service Providers ISPs) as information companies under Section 706 of the Communications Act of 1934 and regulate ISPs as common carrier telecommunications companies under the more extensive and restrictive provisions of Title II of that Act. This study presents a new approach for estimating how regulation of the ISPs’ wireline data services under Title II would affect their future capital investments. We first estimate the portion of capital investment from 2009 to 2014 subject to Title II regulation and the portion unencumbered by Title II, using a sample of five incumbent service providers headquartered in the United States, including the two largest providers (ATT and the wireline investments by these firms would be between 17.8 percent and 31.7 percent lower than expected. These reductions would reduce the efficiency of the Internet and potentially adversely affect its rate of innovation.

CONSERVING ENERGY AND PRESERVING THE ENVIRONMENT: THE ROLE OF PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION

This study is part of a long line of analyses in assessing the direct and indirect economic benefits of information and communications technologies, focused on the software industry rather than the overall ICT sector. To assess the software industry’s general economic impact, we use the Input-Output tables of the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) to track the direct value created by the industry in recent years and the flows of goods and services between the software industry and other industries. This analysis highlights both the industries on which the software industry depends and the industries that depend on software. In addition, the study assesses how software affects the operations of other industries by tracking and estimating the share and value of the output of other industries that can be attributed to productivity gains produced by their use of new software. For example, from 1997 to 2012, software industry production grew from

Discredited - The Impact of Argentina's Sovereign Debt Default and Debt Restructuring on U.S. Taxpayers and Investors

149 billion to