Property tax appeals provide property owners with a mechanism to challenge their assessments and reduce their property tax bill. Appeals are frequently filed not by the homeowner but by a tax representative who often works on their behalf for a contingency fee. Using appeals from Miami-Dade...

Trends in residential house values can be expressed by changes in House Price Indexes (HPIs). Since the recent housing crash, distressed sales have increased in numbers and have led to concerns about how they affect HPIs. This paper has three parts. First, FHFA’s standard HPIs are compared to...

Property tax appeals have increased dramatically at significant cost to local governments. Little is known about whether or how well the appeals process resolves potential assessment errors. This paper investigates the efficiency and equity of this process. Regarding the efficiency of correcting...

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the adoption of state accreditation has diffused or spread among Florida municipal police law enforcement agencies. The study group consists of all municipal police departments operating continuously in the State of Florida from 1997 through 2006....

In 2003, the Florida Supreme Court lifted the ban that prohibited sheriff deputies from engaging in collective bargaining. Borrowing data from the Criminal Justice Agency Profile, an annual census of Florida law enforcement agencies, enables this study to entertain two questions. First, what...

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether accredited police agencies display higher clearance rates than their non-accredited counterparts. The study group consists of all municipal police departments operating continuously in the State of Florida from 1997 through 2006. Independent...

While a recent analysis of unionization among Florida county sheriff deputies was informative, that study failed to provide a comprehensive picture of all law enforcement unionization activity in that state. More specifically, county sheriff offices account for only 20% of all local law...