As former manufacturing cities attempt to participate in a modern economy no longer dependent upon manufacturing, aging infrastructure like factory warehouses become a potential asset. Rather than demolishing historic buildings, some cities are taking advantage of tax incentives and a public shift toward hip urban spaces, and remaking their city to fit a Creative Class culture. The process of remaking place incorporates the historic legacy of the place, the collective identity of its residents, and the contemporary ideal of a creative urban space. Much of the literature discussing place remaking or the rise of the Creative Class city focuses upon the recent transformation of demographics, culture, and economy. Often overlooked is the historic context and the role of the place’s collective identity. Demonstrated here are the benefits of incorporating historic context. Also demonstrated are the important role played by residents’ collective identity and how this identity is an intimate contributor to the landscape. The renovation of the historic landscape is efficient for cities and it is an attraction for the Creative Class, but it is also a critical period for people who are attached to historic sites. Through the use of oral histories, I am able to examine the complex nature of these relationships, discovering intricacies in the process of place remaking that are otherwise difficult to determine. GIS mapping technology is used to further investigate historic trends and their role in current identity making. Three major points regarding collective identity and place remaking are uncovered. First, the oral histories reveal that the formation of a collective identity connected to a particular place is not dependent upon a shared, identical experience. Second, a collective understanding about the quality of a place can be generated based upon the unique circumstances of one group. The creation of a shared place identity is not only dependent upon the agents involved in the place making, but also the bystanders (or witnesses) to such efforts. Finally, when the integrity of place is honored and sites retain meaning, the function of the place can be fluid. Place is not static.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that restrictions on independent political expendi- tures by corporations and labor unions are unconstitutional on First Amendment grounds (Citizens United v. FEC, 2010). In this paper, we test the hypothesis that the decision gave an electoral boost to Republicans, at the expense of Democrats. The 50 U.S. states provide an ideal testing ground for this hypothesis as the ruling only affected a subset of states. We find that Citizens United had a positive and statistically significant effect of two to three per- centage points on the probability of Republicans winning in state congressional elections.

This paper describes the theoretical underpinnings and provides empirical evidence for a model that predicts a positive impact of immigration on entrepreneurial activity. Immigrants, we hypothesize, facilitate innovation and entrepreneurship by being willing and able to invest in new skills. At the heart of this theoretical prediction is the observation that human capital not immediately valued in the U.S. labor market is useful for learning new skills. Because immigrants face a lower opportunity cost of investing in new skills or methods, this transfer of source-specific skills to the U.S. may lead immigrants to be more flexible in their human capital investments than observationally equivalent natives. Areas with large numbers of immigrants (even if they are not self-employed) may prove to be areas in which entrepreneurship and innovation are easier to accomplish. Our theory offers a unique perspective on the contributions of immigrants to economic development beyond traditional perspectives that focus on low-cost immigrant labor or immigrant entrepreneurship.

This research investigates the relationship between municipal annexation and local government’s financial condition. It addresses a significant gap in the literature by focusing on the roles of local government revenue structure and land use situations in affecting annexation’s fiscal implications. The major research question is how these two categories of local circumstances affect annexation’s fiscal implications, and what patterns may emerge based on the empirical evidence. With two parts of empirical analyses, I explore the features of the moderating effects of these two local circumstances: how the interactions between annexation and local circumstances influence local government’s financial condition. The first part of the analyses examines the role of local government’s revenue structure in affecting annexation’s fiscal implications. Using a sample of more than six thousand municipalities, empirical analyses of OLS and interactive regression models show the effects of local taxing authority and revenue reliance. The second part underscores the effects of land use along with annexations in municipalities in the Phoenix metropolitan area across two decades. Utilizing GIS data for annexation and land use, it presents spatial patterns of annexation activities and land use changes. A fixed effects model with panel data is used to investigate the joint effects of annexation and land use on local government’s financial condition. The complicated effects of different land use situations are identified. The findings suggest that annexation has the potential for fiscal gains to local government, but its positive fiscal effects may diminish if the municipality has less capability to make suitable revenue arrangement, and if a high proportion of land in the municipality that remains undeveloped. Above all, this research offers a comprehensive perspective regarding municipal annexation, land use and local government finance, to inform a larger debate of urban growth and local financial management.

We study the extent to which the U.S. housing boom and subsequent housing bust during the 2000s masked (and then unmasked) the sharp, ongoing decline in the manufacturing sector. We exploit cross-city variation in manufacturing declines and housing booms and jointly estimate their e§ects on local employment and wages. Between 2000 and 2007, we Önd that a one standard deviation decrease in manufacturing labor demand reduces the share of non-college men employed by 0:9 percentage points, and a one standard deviation positive housing demand shock increases the employment share by roughly the same magnitude ñenough to fully o§set the adverse e§ects of declining manufacturing. We also Önd that housing booms signiÖcantly increase the likelihood that a displaced manufacturing worker Önds employment, suggesting that at least some of our aggregate ìmaskingî represents non-employment growth that would have occured earlier in the absence of the housing boom. Lastly, applying our estimates to the national labor market, we Önd that non-employment growth was reduced by roughly 30 percent between 2000 and 2007 due to the large, temporary increases in local housing prices, and we Önd that roughly 40 percent of the aggregate change in non-employment between 2000 and 2011 can be attributed to the decline in manufacturing.

Many studies specify human mortality patterns parametrically, with a parameter change affecting mortalityrates at different ages simultaneously. Motivated by the stylized fact that a mortality decline affects primarily younger people in the early phase of mortality transition but mainly older people in the later phase, we study how a mortality change at an arbitrary age affects optimal retirement age. Using the Volterra derivative for a functional, we show that mortality reductions at older ages delay retirement unambiguously, but that mortality reductions at younger ages may lead to earlier retirement due to a substantial increase in the individuals expected lifetime human wealth.

The South Atlantic has recently experienced region-wide droughts. There is concern that water scarcity may become more common or prevalent due to a warming climate. Problems associated with water scarcity are compounded by under-developed water allocation policy in the historically water abundant South Atlantic. This dissertation examined the potential causes of water scarcity related to changes in average streamflow from 1934-2005, 1934-1969 (Mid-20th Century) and 1970-2005 (Late-20th Century). Second, the contribution of climate versus anthropogenic drivers of change in mean annual streamflow in the Late 20th Century was evaluated using Budyko curves. Third, hydrologic drought was characterized in the South Atlantic and changes in drought characteristics were assessed over multiple time periods. Fourth, water interconnections, which form an important component of water infrastructure and water management, were assessed for the potential to transfer water from a drought free to a drought stricken area. Results showed that streamflow abruptly shifted from a drier regime in the Mid-20th Century to a wetter regime in the Late-20th Century with trends of significantly decreasing streamflow since 1970. Climate contributed to increased streamflow during the Late-20th Century throughout the South Atlantic; whereas human factors varied between basins and either amplified or decreased the climate change effect on streamflow. Human impacts were equivalent to or exceeded climate impacts in some basins. Seventy-one percent of drought events were shorter than 6 months with a recurrence interval of 6 years. Less than 7% of droughts were longer than one year, yet these longer duration droughts resulted in region-wide water scarcity. There were few significant temporal trends in drought characteristics over the studied time periods. The short interconnection distances (median=11.6 km) rarely extended beyond the spatial extent of multi-year droughts; interconnected water systems were simultaneously in drought 98±3% of the time from 2000-2008. Water managers face many challenges with a steadily growing demand and fluctuating long-term and short-term water supply needs that can be partially met through interconnections. Decision-making will benefit from monitoring changes in climate, human activities, and streamflow, as well as continually assessing the ability of current water infrastructure to perform under normal and adverse conditions.

We build on prior research on the motherhood wage penalty and consider the longer term impact of childbearing on womens careers. We utilize all 35 years of the NLS-YW panel to model patterns of labor force participation, wages and occupational status, across the adult life course as women age from their twenties to their fifties. We find that the motherhood penalty to womens careers is strongest when women are in their peak childbearing ages, but declines significantly thereafter. By the time they reach their fifties, mothers and childless women are almost equally likely to be employed; however employed childless women continue to earn significantly higher wages and work in higher status occupations than high parity mothers (but not mothers of only 1 or 2 children).

Objectives Describe the health status and risk indicator trends in a representative sample of US healthcare workers aged 45+ years. Methods Using pooled data from the 1997–2009 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), logistic regression analyses were performed to determine if age-group specific morbidity risks differed within occupational subgroups of the healthcare workforce (N=6,509). Health and morbidity trends were examined via complex survey adjusted and weighted Chi-square tests. Results Rates of functional limitation and hypertension increased among diagnosing/assessing healthcare workers. The prevalence of hearing impairment, cancer, and hypertension was 2–3x greater in health diagnosing/assessing workers 60+ years versus younger workers. Healthcare service workers were up to 19x more likely to be obese, compared to workers who diagnose/assess health. Conclusions Healthier workplaces and targeted interventions are needed to optimize the ability to meet healthcare demands of this aging workforce.

Significant attention has been paid to executive pay. In over a thousand studies published on the topic of executive pay (Gomez-Mejia, Berrone, and Franco-Santos, 2010), most of the research revolves around answering one question: are executives rewarded for the performance of their organization? This literature, which is primarily based on agency theory, states that there is a separation of ownership and control in organizations, and because executives’ interests are likely to diverge from owners’ interests, executives may pursue their own interests over the interests of owners. Agency theory proposes that pay-for-performance systems are a key mechanism organizations can use to reduce agency costs (Jensen and Meckling, 1976). Therefore, under agency theory, an executive’s pay is expected to vary with the performance of the organization he or she leads. Yet, although there is a substantial amount of research that investigates pay-for- performance in for-profit firms, the results are generally mixed. Additionally, very few studies have addressed the pay incentives of nonprofit leaders. Therefore, we are left without a clear understanding of how organizations are compensating their top executives and whether agency theory offers the best explanation of executive pay. My three-paper dissertation seeks to provide a better account of how organizations in different sectors use pay-for-performance systems to reward their top executives and why organizations across sectors may compensate their CEOs differently. More specifically, I investigate the pay-performance link in both for-profit firms and nonprofit organizations, which includes “charitable and religious” organizations and labor unions. In the first chapter of my dissertation, I examine whether the strength of the relationship between executive pay and organizational performance increases with performance level, and how this relationship compares in the for-profit and nonprofit sectors and between female and male CEOs. In my second dissertation chapter, I study whether nonprofit CEOs are paid based on organizational performance and what organizational factors affect the pay-performance relationship in charitable nonprofits. Last, my third dissertation chapter focuses on the pay of union leaders by examining the extent to which two commonly used compensation theories, that is, agency theory and tournament theory, help explain the pay of union presidents.

Research on coresidence between parents and their adult children in the United States has challenged the myth that elders are the primary beneficiaries, and instead has shownthat inter-generationally extended households generally benefit the younger generation more than their parents. Nevertheless, the economic fortunes of those at the older and younger ends of the adult life course have shifted in the second half of the twentieth century, with increasing financial well-being among older adults and greater financial strain among younger adults. This paper uses U.S. Census data to examine the extent to which changes in generational financial well-being over the late 20th century have been reflected in the likelihood of coresidence and financial dependency in parent-adult childhouseholds between 1960 and 2000. We find that younger adults have become more financially dependent on their parents and older adults have become more independentof their adult children. We also find that the effect of economic considerations in decisions about coresidence became increasingly salient for younger adults, butdecreasingly so for older adults.

Understanding how immigrants assimilate to the U.S. labor market over time is important, but measuring the true effect of time is difficult. We know little about the assimilation of African immigrants, a group that has recently begun to enter the US in large numbers. The African foreign-born are unique among US immigrants in their racial diversity, with substantial numbers of both Black and White migrants. This paper examines the effect of duration on African immigrant mens earnings between 1990 and 2000. Using Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) 5% and 1% sample data from the 1990 and 2000 censuses, it applies a double-cohort method of analysis (Myers and Lee, 1996) that avoids problems presented by trying to measure age-period-cohort effects. The paper examines the differential tempo of assimilation for Black and White African immigrant men. While White African-born mens earnings surpass those of White US-born men over time, Black African-born men continue to experience a disadvantage in earnings that cannot be explained by human capital characteristics. Additionally, while some age-and-migration cohorts of Black African-born men experience steeper increases in earnings over time compared to White African-born men, racial inequities in earnings remain, suggesting that racism continues to depress the earnings of Black African immigrant men despite their advances over time.

A 2009 Journal of Law and Economics article by Marc T. Law and Mindy S. Marks suggests that during the period 1890-1950 occupational licensing did not tend to affect blacks and women adversely. The biggest problem with the paper is that a Census-reported practitioner in a licensing state is not necessarily licenseda fact never mentioned by Law and Marksand yet that fact should greatly affect their treatment of the data and results. Information about plumbers in Maryland reveals that in treating the Census number of black plumbers as licensed black plumbersas Law and Marks implicitly dothey overstate the actual number by 4700 percent. It is therefore unsurprising that they do not find plumbing licensing to have negatively impacted blacks. The paper suffers from several other problems, as well, including: Law and Marks lump certification in with licensing; there is a sample selection bias in their method for including an occupation in the study; several of their findings are based on extremely low participation by blacks and women; they treat women as the minority in the field of nursing. Because of these and other problems, including the results of falsification tests, we judge their conclusions to be highly doubtful.

The digital revolution has vastly increased the ability of the scientific community to collect and store a tremendous variety and quantity of data in digital form, representing a potentially irreplaceable legacy that can support scientific discovery and scholarship in both the present and the future. However, it is not yet clear what organizations or institutions can and should maintain and store such data, ensuring their long-term integrity and usability, nor how such long- term stewardship should be funded and supported. Many traditional information preservation and access institutions such as libraries and museums are struggling to develop the skills, resources, and infrastructure needed for large- scale, long-term digital data stewardship. Government agencies often have strong technical capabilities, but are subject to political and budgetary pressures and competing priorities. Private organizations and companies can bring to bear innovations not only in technology but also in economic approaches that could provide financial sustainability. Developing long-term collaborative partnerships between different types of organizations may be one approach to developing sustainable models for long-term data stewardship. The development of objective criteria and open standards for trusted digital data repositories is another important step towards sustainable data stewardship. A critical challenge is the development of viable economic models for ensuring that the resources needed for long-term stewardship are put in place, while at the same time addressing the needs of the scientific community and society more generally for open access to scientific data and information resources. The development of a robust spatial data infrastructure can not only help reduce both the short- and long-term costs of data stewardship, but also provide a framework for the establishment and evolution of trustworthy data repositories that will be available for future generations of users to discover, access, and use the scientific heritage that is being created today.

This paper employs a two-stage residential sorting model2 to examine climate change impacts on residential location choices in the US. The estimated coefficients are used tosimulate population changes and US migration patterns across regions under hypothetical changes in climate. The main dataset used for estimation is the Integrated Public UseMicrodata Sample (IPUMS), which provides demographic characteristics of approximately 2.4 million households located in 283 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) of the US in the year 2000. Projected climate data (i.e. extreme temperatures) used for simulation are obtained from the North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program (NARCCAP). In the estimation component, a two-stage randomutility sorting model (RUM) is employed. The first-stage discrete choice model employs a multinomial logit specification to recover heterogeneous parameters associated with MSA specific variables, migration costs, along with the mean indirect utility of each MSA. In particular, the interaction terms of temperature extremes and individual-specific characteristics, such as ones birth region, age and educational attainment, are used to recover valuations of temperature extremes for different classes of people withpotentially different preferences. The second stage of this model decomposes the mean indirect utility obtained from the first stage into its MSA-specific attributes controllingfor unobservables using region fixed effects. In the simulation component, the estimated coefficients are used to simulate population changes across regions in the US underhypothetical changes in extreme temperatures. We find that extreme temperatures, extreme precipitation, and tornado occurrences reduce utility, and peoples preferencesfor temperature extremes are heterogeneous. The climate of ones place of birth and demographic characteristics such as age and educational attainment, are significantfactors that lead to preference heterogeneity. In addition, we find that population shares in the Southern region and California drop, while population share in Northeastern region increases under changes in climate.

Children of immigrants have received increasing attention in recent years because first and second- generation children of immigrant families are the fastest growing segment of the U.S. This paper ad- dresses the relationship between child access to and use of health services, and perceived health, and parental nativity after controlling for enabling, predisposing and need variables discussed in the litera- ture. Even though socioeconomic variability and background cannot entirely explain health differences across children, it is important to know the intergenerational effects of health inequalities among differ- ent groups. Using data from from the Integrated Health Interview Series from 2000 to 2010, I analyze the hypothesis that children of immigrants would perpetuate their parents’ health outcomes compared to children of natives by having lower health service utilization and lacking a usual place of care. There- fore, the issue on children of immigrant families health outcomes is not only one of access to care but also of how to actively incorporate these groups of parents into the health system so their kids would have better outcomes. Targeting the question of nativity would allow me to evaluate this matching outcomes almost completely ignored by the health and immigration literature.