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ItemPostsecondary success outcomes for veteran and nonveteran students at a public university in Georgia(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2017-11-13) Boyd, Jonathan R.Every year, the federal government distributes $11 billion in education benefits to nearly one million veterans (GAO, 2013). Despite the substantial price tag and reach of these benefits, we understand very little about how veteran students fare in postsecondary programs and why outcomes may be different for veteran students. Theory and related evidence predict that veteran students should be less successful than their nonveteran peers, yet the limited past research suggests that they are actually as successful as, if not more successful than, nonveterans. This is the student veteran paradox. I posit seven potential explanations to resolve this paradox: bias in past research, background characteristics of veterans, enrollment behaviors of veterans, maturation from delayed entry, education aid benefits for veterans, unobservable factors associated with selection into the military, or the direct effects of military service. I use OLS regression and logistic regression to assess three metrics of student success: grades, retention, and completion. I also leverage variations in the GI Bill program to assess whether higher levels of funding lead to better student success outcomes. Finally, I use matching to test whether unobservable factors associated with military enlistment or the direct effects of military service could drive veteran student success. Student veterans hold many characteristics that predict lower probabilities of college success, but veterans and nonveterans generally have similar academic outcomes. When controlling for background characteristics, enrollment patterns, age, and term of entry, predicted first year GPA is lower for veterans, but veterans are more likely to return after the first year and are more likely to graduate. Generally, students with higher levels of veteran education benefits xii have better retention and graduation outcomes, but aid levels seem to have little impact on first year grades. Veterans still have lower grades than similar matched nonveterans, but the veterans are more likely to return after the first year and are more likely to graduate. For retention and graduation, these results rule out the bias, background characteristics, and maturation explanations, but support the enrollment patterns and funding explanations. The results are consistent with the direct effects explanation, but the selection explanation cannot be ruled out completely.
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ItemInnovation pathways in the Chinese economy(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2017-11-07) Li, YinThis study investigates emerging innovation pathways in the Chinese economy. An innovation pathway is defined as the historical and evolutionary process through which business firms establish and accumulate capabilities in technology development and market access that enables them to compete with international technology and market leaders. The study proposes a framework for understanding the development of innovation capabilities through the interactions of institutional forces of state, market, and globalization. The main proposition is that innovation pathways in China emerge when the government policy synchronizes with domestic market development and global industry evolution in providing opportunities, resources, and a broad set of complementary capabilities necessary for technology development. Conversely, where public policy is out of step or asynchronous with global industry and domestic market institutions, this delays or inhibits the emergence of innovation pathways. Searching for synchronization requires the co-evolution of government policy and business strategy. The framework and theory is used to explore case studies of leading Chinese firms in two critical information technology industries: the telecom equipment industry and the semiconductor industry. In the semiconductor industry, leading Chinese firms struggled to close technological gaps with international leaders. This was because state-led development was out of step with global industry evolution while business-led development was decoupled from domestic markets. In comparison, in the telecom equipment industry, innovative indigenous companies emerged from a synchronization of public research, government investment in infrastructure, multi-layer domestic markets, and accessible global suppliers in the 1990s. The exceptional case of Huawei Technologies Co., the Chinese telecom equipment maker that has become an international innovation leader, shows how innovative Chinese firms capitalize on and complement government policies by strengthening internal R&D and aggressive internationalization. This study contributes to economic theories on how firms from emerging economies can learn to innovate. Traditional views emphasize transferring technologies from advanced economies, following a learning sequence of reverse product cycles, and more recently, specializing in manufacturing in the global value chains. This study offers an alternative view that in today’s advanced industrial and globalized world, emerging economy firms can succeed in innovation by exceling in new technology development and market access capabilities, provided that government policy synchronizes with domestic market and global industry conditions to offer a broad range of complementary capabilities.
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ItemClimate Change Policy in the Age of Trump – An Economic Perspective( 2017-10-30) Stavins, Robert N.
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ItemImmigration, regional resilience, and local economic development policy(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2017-10-27) Huang, XiThe rapid growth of immigrants across a wide range of U.S. metropolitan areas has brought increasing attention to immigration and its impacts on regional development. Recent economic recessions have also stimulated a renewed interest in sustainable development among urban planners and scholars. This dissertation examines the role of immigrants in regional economic resilience and the effects of the rising wave of local immigrant integration policies. Drawing on data from various sources, including the U.S. Decennial Census, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Building Resilient Regions (BRR) database, this dissertation explores three independent but interconnected themes. The first theme focuses on resilience capacity and examines how immigrants have helped U.S. regions build resilience capacity over the period 1980-2010. With a fixed effects approach, this investigation finds that immigrants contribute to the development of the economic capacity, socio-demographic capacity, and community connectivity capacity of regional systems, though some of the effects are small. The second theme considers regional economic resilience in the face of the recent Great Recession. Its focus is on how regions respond to and recover from the recession, different from the resilience capacity perspective that emphasizes preparedness for disturbances. To address the potential endogeneity of immigrants’ residential choice, this analysis employs an instrumental variable approach to isolate the portion of immigration exogenous to the local economic conditions. It finds that high levels of immigration lead to regional resilience during and after the recession in both employment and per capita income growth. This positive relationship is independent of other regional capacities identified in previous studies, suggesting that the resilience literature should broaden its scope and consider local immigration as a critical contributor to resilience building. Focusing on the Global Detroit initiative as a case study, the third theme investigates whether the latest local immigrant policies have achieved their intended goals. Global Detroit is one of the earliest regional immigrant integration efforts in the country, therefore providing a long enough post-treatment period for evaluation. This analysis constructs a synthetic control group almost identical to Detroit and finds mixed evidence of the program effects on local immigration level, immigrant employment, and immigrant entrepreneurship. While the Global Detroit initiative has increased immigrants’ shares in the local population and workforce, it has not increased their upward mobility as indicated by the average wage earning and self-employment rate. These findings underscore the potential of immigrant integration programs in attracting and retaining immigrants as well as the need for program improvement to address broader labor market dynamics and developmental issues.
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ItemSustainable transitions in energy and water systems(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2017-08-24) Burkhard, CarolineA Multi-Level Perspective (MLP) of Sustainable Transitions is applied to five case studies of technological and policy innovation in energy and water systems. The MLP framework analysis is supported by the policy and engineering literatures of participatory democracy, policy entrepreneurs, and system analysis. Each case study focuses on the subsystems of actors, policy institutions, and public participation in a sustainable transition. In three of the case studies, I develop system and econometric models to evaluate the value of distributed resources and their opportunities for deployment. When evaluating the actions on niche and intermediary actors and their strategies for sustainable transitions, this research suggests that scale may play a bigger role in the development of niche innovations and policies than simply an exploratory space to analyze the success of actors’ strategies. When evaluating the role of policy institutions, this research suggests that strong user preferences, supportive niche policies, and favorable economic landscapes can be insufficient to facilitate a regime change without qualitative changes to the regulatory models. When evaluating the role of the public, this research suggests that neither the niche nor the regime actors are consistently incorporating public participation. Combined, this dissertation speaks to the need for rigorous analytical work, the expansion of the definition of ‘value’ for these niche technologies, as well as the institutions and regulations which dictate how value is determined.
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ItemGreen certification pathways: The roles of public goods, private goods, and certification schemes(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2017-08-02) Flowers, Mallory EliseThis dissertation examines evidence on the effectiveness of voluntary certification programs in the built environment. Drawing on unique data from buildings certified under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) label, the technologies adopted toward certification are examined. Analysis reveals strengths and weaknesses of the program design, including apparent promotion of energy and water efficiency, but limited promotion of public good provision. These findings motivate extensive theoretical development around the valuation of environmental products: traditional economic signaling perspectives are argued to be of little value in understanding “noisy” signals of environmental quality. Drawing on perspectives from organizational theory and strategic management, a framework for noisy signals is developed, and applied to three empirical questions. First, the extent to which noisy signals are strategically adopted is examined by assessing patterns in technology adoption toward green building certification. Second, the evolving distribution of LEED scores is assessed against a dynamic imputed counterfactual to reveal the extent to which the certification fosters a “Race to the Top.” Here, signaling and learning are posited as a mechanism for such a “Race,” in a critique of past theory. Finally, the shift in practices contributing from public goods to private gains is evaluated over time, calling to question how we should measure the success of environmental programs which aim to promote improvements with regard to myriad concerns. In sum, this work contributes to our understanding of corporate sustainability, certification programs, signaling theory, and technology learning.
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ItemEvaluation of the effect of rail intra-urban transit stations on neighborhood change(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2017-06-26) Wyczalkowski, Christopher KajetanDevelopment of heavy rail intra-urban public transportation systems is an economically expensive policy tool for State and Local Governments that is often justified with the promise of economic development and neighborhood revitalization around station areas. However, the literature on the effects of rail intra-urban transit stations on neighborhoods is relatively thin, particularly on the socioeconomic effects. This quasi-experimental study evaluated the effect of heavy rail intra-urban transit stations on surrounding neighborhoods, using Atlanta, Georgia and its transit authority, the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA), as a case study. Atlanta is an expansive American city, with a large public transportation system, but low population density and no large-scale policies promoting growth around MARTA rail stations. The study period, 1970 to 2014, covers the entire period of MARTA’s existence – stations opened between 1979 and 2000. Neighborhood change was operationalized with a neighborhood change index (NCI), built on the Neighborhood Life-Cycle framework, with an adaptation that incorporates both the filtering (negative NCI) and gentrification (positive NCI) models of neighborhood change. The study differentiates between an initial effect of new MARTA rail stations, and a long-term effect. Control groups were formed using one and three mile buffers, as well as a matching strategy. Difference-in-difference (DID) models find very little evidence of a positive relationship of NCI with the opening of new MARTA rail stations. The economic recovery that began in 2010 is of special interest for housing research. To address this time-period this study utilized two models, with mixed results. The DID model suggested a negative effect of stations on the NCI. To control for selection bias in the 2010 to 2014 economic time-period, this study utilized propensity score matching to balance the treatment and control group on observed characteristics. A time and tract fixed effects model using the matched treatment and control groups found a significant positive effect of stations on neighborhood change. To test the long-term effect, a time and tract fixed effects model (1970-2014) with the NCI as the dependent variable found a positive NCI effect of MARTA stations on neighborhoods. Therefore, overall, positive neighborhood change (on the NCI scale) can be attributed to MARTA transit stations. Since 2002 MARTA ridership has slightly declined; therefore, the study concludes that given stagnant ridership, lack of supporting policy, and the finding of a positive relationship between MARTA transit stations and gentrification, the stations are a positive amenity, and are a significant contributor to neighborhood change. However, neighborhoods are heterogeneous on many dimensions, and the effect of rail intra-urban transit stations on neighborhoods may depend on the tract’s location, service characteristics, accessibility, and many other unobserved characteristics. Future research will supplement this methodology with additional data and compare the effect of intra-urban transit stations on neighborhood change in other cities to better address potential neighborhood heterogeneity.
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ItemGrowing an industrial cluster?: Movie production incentives and state film industries(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2017-06-19) Kolenda, Richard SalvatoreAfter witnessing the success of Canadian strategies to attract U.S. film production in the 1990s, states and localities began offering financial incentives in an effort to lure film and video production away from their traditional hubs in California and New York (Christopherson & Rightor, 2010). This effort increased dramatically in the 2000s, both in scope and in scale. Production activity can now locate in states offering rebates of up to 40 percent of costs, even if this exceeds their actual tax bills, and all but a handful of states offer some form of tax incentives (Christopherson & Rightor, 2010; Katz & Rosenthal, 2006; National Conference of State Legislatures, 2011; Vock, 2008). While some states may be reducing incentive packages in the current climate of fiscal austerity, others are doubling down on that strategy as an effort to stimulate job growth and increased economic activity. And while most states tout many successes from these programs in both metrics, the question of whether such policies promote long-term sustainable economic development has not been fully answered. First I use theoretical literature to construct a model of sustainable industrial development. I will then test this model using a variety of methods and data sets at the national, and state and county levels. In the following two analytical chapters, I will evaluate the impacts of incentives on state-level employment and firm growth, followed by an assessment of the economic effects of incentives in one such state: Georgia. By using this variety of approaches and units of analysis, I hope to shed light on both the macro- and micro-level impacts such incentives have on the industrial economic development of states. In the first study, I use data from the County Business Patterns (CBP) over the years 2002-2013 to view changes in economic activity by state by the level of incentives offered. Using panel data for industry employment, establishment and occupational employment, I use a fixed and random effects regression models to view the relationship between the presence of incentives and the levels of employment and firms in the film industry of each state. Next, I use Georgia as a case study with which to evaluate the degree to which financial incentives for the motion picture industry can create a sustainable network of local firms and workers. I test these theories by using confidential QCEW data to analyze establishment-level activity and relative locations. The results neither completely confirm nor disprove the hypothesis that attracting mobile productions with state tax incentives can establish a nascent industry and generate long-term employment in a region. However, there is some evidence that the number of years the MPIs are in effect does have a positive impact, especially on establishments and occupations. Additionally, the states’ climate and transportation access relative to Los Angeles and other locations are important factors in building a local industry.
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ItemA holistic approach to address deforestation(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2017-05-19) Liu, WenmanThe establishments of property rights and collective actions are viewed as key strategies to support sustainable management of forests and other common pool resources. However, previous discussion of the theories either address property rights or collective actions as aggregated terms or omit the role of biophysical and socioeconomic conditions. It is not clear which property rights or collective actions are effective and under what biophysical and socioeconomic circumstance that they have effects. The dissertation analyzes how specific rights and collective actions affect deforestation in two studies based on separate sets of institutional data obtained from the World Resources Institute and International Forest Resources and Institutions. By integrating remote-sensing, census and site survey data, a wide range of multi-disciplinary variables are integrated with the institutional data from numerous locations worldwide. Elastic Net and LASSO statistical methods are used to select significant individual variables from a large number of predictors and their interaction terms without excessive loss of information. Statistical analysis methods including linear, generalized linear and truncated normal regression analyses and cross validation are used. Both studies lead to similar conclusions. The first study analyzes data from 28,208 community forests in Cameroon, Colombia and Mexico and indicates that the effects of the alienation rights (right to lease, right to collateralize, and right to sell) can be either positive, negative or have no correlation, when preventing deforestation and reducing deforestation are the concerns. Furthermore, the alienation rights’ effects vary across locations. The second study analyzes data from 162 sites in 15 countries and indicates that the specific collective actions and property rights perform differently, with respect to gross deforestation. The effects can be either positive, negative or show no correlation, depending on the local biophysical and socioeconomic conditions. The studies conclude that we should not assume property rights or collective actions would ultimately lead to desired forest outcomes under all local conditions. The potential effects of a specific right or action should be considered carefully, and location-based solutions developed in the local biophysical and socioeconomic context may be needed to address deforestation.
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ItemMinor league metropolis: Urban redevelopment surrounding minor league baseball stadiums(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2017-04-10) Van Holm, Eric JosephSpecial Activity Generators have been a redevelopment tool utilized by governments in order to revitalize lethargic downtowns. For small and mid-sized cities, minor league baseball stadiums have become a popular anchor development as a type of Special Activity Generator; while sports facilities are well studied, minor league stadiums have not been the focus of significant research. My dissertation uses a sequential explanatory mixed methodology to answer whether minor league baseball stadiums are successful as Special Activity Generators. I first use a quantitative analysis of sixteen stadiums built around the year 2000 that shows a large effect for the areas around the stadium compared to the rest of the city. However, that growth is created by concentrating redevelopment, not creating new activity. Two case studies clarify that the stadiums were critical to the observed redevelopment efforts, but also highly the need for thorough planning and collocated amenities prior to construction in order to maximize the results from the public investment.