This paper examines how differences in state bankruptcy laws, specifically the amount of the homestead exemption, affect business location decisions. We expand upon the literature by narrowing the geographic scope and focus on the amount of entrepreneurial activity within a few miles of the...

This paper estimates the impact of violent crime on the location of business activity and entrepreneurship in five US cities. Central to our analysis is the idea that different sectors of the economy will sort into high- and low-crime areas depending on their relative sensitivity to crime. We...

type="main" <title type="main">ABSTRACT</title> <p>We examine how location-based tax incentives affect quality of life and business environment through changes in property values and equilibrium wages. Using the federal Empowerment Zone program, we determine whether offering tax incentives to firms improves the welfare of...</p>

This paper estimates spillover effects from a spatially-targeted redevelopment program, the Federal Empowerment Zone (EZ), on neighboring and economically similar areas. EZs are a set of generous tax incentives and grants aimed at small, economically depressed areas of large U.S. cities. We find...

This article examines the potential for location-based employment tax incentives to have a differential effect on establishment location and employment across industry sectors. The authors model the differential effect of the location-based federal Empowerment Zone (EZ) wage tax credit on...

The elderly are the population most likely to file for bankruptcy, with filings increasing by 150 percent from 1991 to 2007. This is likely because they live with relatively flat incomes and high medical expenses, and their retirement and housing assets are typically exempt from bankruptcy...

Policy makers at all levels of government believe that one of the key drivers of local economic growth is new businesses. Therefore, governments design policy with the intention of attracting businesses with the hopes that this will create future growth in struggling areas. Over the past few...

In this paper, we examine the effect of suburbanization on obesity rates. Our study is an improvement over the existing literature because we will use county level data for our analysis, enabling us to look at the effect of moving from the central city to the suburbs. Previous research has only...