Thomas A. Downes

The Impact of School Characteristics on House Prices: Chicago 1987-1991

Do estimates of the prices attached to different school characteristics depend on the characteristics utilised in the hedonic analysis or on the decision to use district-level or school level measures? To answer this question, we merge information from the American Housing Survey and the Illinois School Report Cards and assign to each house the school-level data for the closest school. In both district- and school-level analyses, we find that per-pupil expenditures and test scores have similar impacts on house values. However, unlike the district-level results, the school-level results imply that individuals respond to the racial composition of schools when choosing a home.

Understanding the Supply Decisions of Nonprofits: Modelling the Location of Private Schools

This research examines the location choice of California private schools in 1978-1979. We make use of some of the recent developments in the analysis of count data. The results indicate that the character of the population and the public schools influence location decisions. Private schools with different religious affiliations respond differently to population characteristics, which we argue is evidence of differences in the objectives of these different types of private schools. Location decisions of all types of private schools depend most on characteristics of the community in which a school locates, with attributes of surrounding communities having small effects on the location decision.

The Effect of School Finance Reforms on the Level and Growth of Per-Pupil Expenditures

In response to court rulings, states such as California and Washington have sought to promote greater equality in per pupil spending by shifting from local financing of public education to state financing. In this article, we investigate how constraints on local discretion resulting from this shift to state financing influence the level and growth of education spending. The analysis uses an expenditure function framework and a 21-year panel for the 50 states. To understand the extent to which expenditures are influenced by constraints on local discretion, we distinguish between court-ordered and other reforms of school finance systems. We show that the stringency of constraints on local discretion determines the effects of reforms on the level and growth of spending. In addition, we find that, for any type of reform, the characteristics of a states population and of that states schools determine the direction and magnitude of the postreform changes in spending.

Universal access and local internet markets in the US

Concern over the potential need to redefine universal service to account for Internet-related services motivates this study of the geographic spread of commercial Internet service providers (ISPs), the leading suppliers of Internet access in the US. The paper characterizes the location of 40,000 access points, local phone numbers offered by commercial ISPs, in the Fall of 1997. Markets differ widely in their structure, from competitive to unserved. Over 92% of the US population has easy access to a competitive commercial Internet access market, while approximately 4.5% of the US population has costly access.

Intergovernmental Aid To Reduce Fiscal Disparities: Problems of Definition and Measurement

This article examines the problem of structuring intergovernmental aid to correct for fiscal disparities. In general, distributing aid to equalize average tax effort will not eliminate underlying fiscal disparities. To do so requires that aid be distributed so as to equalize the local tax rate necessary to finance a base level of public services. Reviewed briefly are the potential consequences of these two approaches for horizontal equity and tax base mobility. Using data for Arizona school districts, the two approaches are shown to have widely disparate implications for the distribution of state school aid.

Entry into the Schooling Market: How is the Behaviour of Private Suppliers Influenced by Public Sector Decisions?

This research examines the location choice of private schools entering the California schooling market in 1979-80. We find that entrants are more likely to locate in public school districts with lower levels of per-pupil expenditure and higher fractions of public school students who reside in low-income households. In addition, we provide evidence of differences in the responsiveness of different types of private schools to the underlying conditions. Also, in comparing our results to those of previous research, we find that the determinants of the location choices of entrants appear to be the same as the determinants of the location pattern of incumbent private schools. Copyright 2002 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the Board of Trustees of the Bulletin of Economic Research

Do Differences in Heterogeneity and Intergovernmental Competition Help Explain Variation in the Private School Share? Evidence From Early California Statehood

This essay documents the persistent tnterstate and mtrastate differences in private Abstract school enrollment shares in the United States and argues that heterogeneity of the population and the extent of intergovernmental competition could be important factors in explaining these differences. To further explore this argument, this article considers determmants of the public and private school shares in the early days of California statehood. Measures of the heterogeneity of school distncts, of the resultant ability of districts to provide publccly the optimal amount of education for the majority of their residents, and of the extent of intergovernmental competition are shown to explain a sIgnificant portion of the variation across California counties in the public and private shares. Furthermore, simulation results indicate that these determinants of private school demand played an important role in the evolution of the equilibrium public and pnvate shares in the early years of California statehood.

Does Fiscal Dependency Matter? Aid Elasticities for Dependent and Independent School Districts.

Abstract In New York state, there is a perception that the fiscally dependent status of the five large city school districts creates an impediment to the attainment of standards. I attempt to assess the impact of fiscal dependence on educational spending. The results suggest that levels of spending may be systematically lower in the fiscally dependent districts. There is, however, little evidence that the general purpose governments to which these districts are fiscally dependent “steal” a disproportionate share of state aid for education. I conclude by evaluating policies that could mitigate any detrimental impact that fiscal dependence might have. This evaluation leads me to the conclusion that, even if spending levels are inadequate, elimination of fiscal dependency may not be the best policy for addressing this problem. Instead, policy makers may want to consider governance changes that would better align responsibilities for allocating revenues to the schools and for governing the schools.

So Slow to Change: The Limited Growth of Nontax Revenues in Public Education Finance, 1991–2010

We examine changes in the use of nontax revenues for education finance from 1991 to 2010. Beyond the summary of usage over time, we ask whether nontraditional revenues like fees accentuate or mitigate the impact of downturns. More generally, we examine the extent to which school districts have responded to fiscal pressures by turning to nontax revenues. We also document the extent to which the use of nontax revenues varies across districts according to student poverty status. We show that alternative revenues continue to be a small source of local revenues and have increased quite little since the early 1990s. There was at most a minimal shift to nontax revenues in downturns, though there is evidence of greater use of these revenues among school districts facing more permanent fiscal pressures like tax limits. Differential access to fee revenues and other alternative revenues during downturns may slightly accentuate inequities in K–12 education spending.

School Finance Reform

Over the past four decades, school finance reforms, stimulated primarily by state supreme court decisions, have dramatically changed the educational landscape. This article summarizes the state of our knowledge of these changes. These finance reforms have reduced within-state variation in spending, but their effect on mean per-pupil spending has been less uniform, with the impact of the reforms in any state depending both on the context in which they have been implemented and the changes in incentives that have resulted. The reforms have tended to result in small, but significant, reductions in within-state variation in student achievement.