College of Behavioral & Social Sciences
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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..
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Item Studying the Causes and Consequences of Internal Labor Migration Using Survey and Administrative Data Sources(2016) Goetz, Christopher F.; Haltiwanger, John; Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation comprises three chapters. The first chapter motivates the use of a novel data set combining survey and administrative sources for the study of internal labor migration. By following a sample of individuals from the American Community Survey (ACS) across their employment outcomes over time according to the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) database, I construct a measure of geographic labor mobility that allows me to exploit information about individuals prior to their move. This enables me to explore aspects of the migration decision, such as homeownership and employment status, in ways that have not previously been possible. In the second chapter, I use this data set to test the theory that falling home prices affect a worker’s propensity to take a job in a different metropolitan area from where he is currently located. Employing a within-CBSA and time estimation that compares homeowners to renters in their propensities to relocate for jobs, I find that homeowners who have experienced declines in the nominal value of their homes are approximately 12% less likely than average to take a new job in a location outside of the metropolitan area where they currently reside. This evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that housing lock-in has contributed to the decline in labor mobility of homeowners during the recent housing bust. The third chapter focuses on a sample of unemployed workers in the same data set, in order to compare the unemployment durations of those who find subsequent employment by relocating to a new metropolitan area, versus those who find employment in their original location. Using an instrumental variables strategy to address the endogeneity of the migration decision, I find that out-migrating for a new job significantly reduces the time to re-employment. These results stand in contrast to OLS estimates, which suggest that those who move have longer unemployment durations. This implies that those who migrate for jobs in the data may be particularly disadvantaged in their ability to find employment, and thus have strong short-term incentives to relocate.Item Essays on Firm Dynamics and Macroeconomics(2015) Decker, Ryan Allen; Haltiwanger, John C; Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)I describe two studies in firm dynamics and macroeconomics. Chapter 1 reports on the large decline in entrepreneurial activity that preceded and accompanied the Great Recession and proposes a model relating this decline to the housing collapse. The collapse in entrepreneurial activity coincided with a historic decline in home values that preceded the onset of the broad recession by at least nine months. I describe a heterogeneous agent general equilibrium model with both housing and entrepreneurship. The model is characterized by financial frictions that affect both credit supply and credit demand. I consider the consequences of a “housing crisis” as compared to a “financial crisis.” The model produces a negative response of entrepreneurship to a housing crisis via a housing collateral channel; this mechanism can account for at least a quarter of the empirical decline in entrepreneurs’ share of activity. A financial crisis (which works through credit supply) has more nuanced effects, causing economic disruption that entices new low-productivity entrepreneurs into production. Chapter 2 describes a theory of endogenous firm-level risk over the business cycle based on endogenous firm market exposure. Firms that reach a larger number of markets diversify market-specific demand shocks at a cost. The model is driven only by total factor productivity shocks and captures the observed countercyclicality of firm-level risk. Consistent with the model, data from Compustat and the Longitudinal Business Database show that market reach is procyclical and that the countercyclicality of firm-level risk is driven mostly by those firms that adjust their market reach. This finding is explained by a negative elasticity between firm-level volatility and various measures of market exposure.Item A Case Study of Anacostia: The Role of Housing Vouchers on the Local Housing Market(2012) Scott, Derrick A; Geores, Martha; Geography; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)From the time of the New Deal legislation in the 1930s, the Federal government has provided some form of housing relief for people with low income. Today, the primary demand side subsidy program is the Housing Choice Voucher Program (HCVP), which subsidizes rents for low-income people and households to live in places where market-rate rents are beyond their economic means. During the last two decades many Americans cities have been transitioning and affordable housing is becoming scarce even in formerly low-income neighborhoods. In these transitioning neighborhoods current rents are prohibitive for low-income residents. However, with a subsidy through HCVP, this population can remain in its original neighborhood. Landlords are assured full market value rents, while renting to low-income tenants. The residents of the Anacostia neighborhood in Washington, D.C. are predominately low-income and African-American. Using Anacostia as a case study, this paper shows how HCVP has increased in volume and, in the face of diminishing affordable housing, recipients of this subsidy are concentrating in this low rent neighborhood rather than dispersing throughout Washington DC. This is a mixed methods study using data gathered from the Washington D.C. Housing Authority, home sales, home rental prices, census, and interviews with participants in HCVP. The findings of this study reveal that HCVP has been successful in improving the lives and residences of low-income people but that vouchers are geographically concentrated to the lowest income neighborhoods of Washington D.C.