Like most states, Massachusetts underwent a large shift in public school enrollment between the 1980s and 1990s, requiring a number of sizable fiscal and educational adjustments by individual school districts. Between 1980 and 1989, the number of students in kindergarten through grade 12 fell 21...

The 1980s and 1990s have been turbulent times in the U.S. market for single-family homes. For most of the previous two decades, housing prices across states and metropolitan areas moved together and increased slowly in real terms while regional differences generally remained small. The 1980s and...

Numerous studies over the years have attempted to identify the impact of amenities on housing price levels within specific metropolitan areas. It is well know, for example, that local public goods, tax burdens, school quality, crime rates, and the like are capitalized into land values. This...

The economy of Massachusetts is in a deep recession. What makes the downturn all the more painful is that it comes on the heels of a period of unprecedented prosperity. What happened? How could a state go from having the lowest unemployment rate in the United States to having the second highest...