Publications

"Local Labor Markets and Job Match Quality: Teachers" (Labour Economics, 2022)

This paper examines how short-term variation in potential teachers’ outside options affects who chooses to teach in public schools. I use variation in state level unemployment rates as a source of plausibly exogenous variation in outside options available to first-year teachers among teachers surveyed in the NCES School and Staffing Survey. I find that those who become teachers when the local labor market is weak are both more likely to have come from highly selective colleges and more likely to express dissatisfaction with their jobs. Other observable demographic, educational, and certification characteristics of newly hired teachers are not affected. Teachers who enter during weaker labor markets are also no less likely to remain in teaching in the short run. Economic downturns provide a potential opportunity for schools to attract and retain academically talented workers, but this may come at a cost to those workers in the form of reduced job satisfaction.

"The Coal Transition and Its Implications for Health and Housing Values" (Land Economics, 2023) (with Josh Graff Zivin and Samuel Krumholz)

From 2005-2020, one-third of US coal plants had at least one coal-fired generator close. We utilize this natural experiment to estimate the effect of coal plant exposure on mortality and house values. Using a difference-in-differences design, we find that counties within 30 miles of a closing unit experience large health effects following shutdown. While these health improvements appear to capitalize into housing values, they only do so within 15 miles of the plant and only when the retirement is of all units. Taken together, these results underscore the importance of risk salience in shaping market-mediated price effects.

"Property Taxation as Compensation for Local Externalities: Evidence from Large Plants" (forthcoming, Journal of Public Economics) (with Samuel Krumholz)

The external costs and benefits of large capital-intensive projects such as industrial plants, ports and pipelines often occur on dramatically different spatial scales. When local jurisdictions have control over land use, this spatial mismatch can prevent socially beneficial projects from moving forward or allow socially harmful projects to be built. In this paper, we explore how local control of property taxation, one important localized benefit of these projects, can impact land use decisions in the context of large plants.  We first demonstrate that property tax payments from  plant openings are both economically large and valued by local residents as measured through changes in home prices. We next show that limiting local jurisdictions' access to property taxation affects the likelihood that it will contain large plants by using a series of school finance reforms as plausibly exogenous shocks. Following these reforms, we observe significant declines in large manufacturing establishments and local manufacturing employment per capita both in absolute and relative terms. These results suggest that increased property tax revenues are an important local benefit of large externality-producing projects and that policies which affect local property taxation can have major  unintended consequences for non-residential land use.

"Property Tax-Induced Mobility and Redistribution: Evidence from Mass Reappraisals"  (Public Budgeting & Finance, 2024)

I investigate the effect of property tax changes on homeowner mobility and voted tax rates using a panel of individual assessment and sales records in Ohio. I use regulatory stabilization rules that cause changes in individual taxes with no mechanical change in quantity of public goods to examine how changes in a homeowner’s tax bill influence foreclosure events, sales, and home equity loan origination. Using a leave-one-out by county random forest regression on assessed values to instrument for tax changes, I find that property tax increases reduce the likelihood that a home is foreclosed upon before the next reassessment cycle and increase the likelihood of sale. I also find suggestive evidence of increased voted tax rates at the school district level when the ratio of median to mean taxable value decreases.