Using recently released data on public mental health expenditures by U.S. states from 1997 to 2005, this study is the first to examine the effect of state mental health spending on suicide rates. We find the effect of per capita public mental health expenditures on the suicide rate to be...

Despite the trend toward fewer armed conflicts and war deaths, dramatic variations in conflict casualties exist across countries. This article examines what factors affect casualties in civil as well as interstate wars and finds that conflict casualties are directly influenced by geography and...

While typically not a formulator of policy, property assessors are likely sensitive to political incentives as they are either directly elected to their office or appointed by another elected official. This paper estimates a model that is motivated by the assumption that assessors seek to...

In hedonic analysis, a common approach for eliciting information regarding the welfare significance of some landmark or (dis)amenity is to control for its distance from each observation. Unfortunately, the effects of distances to amenities on housing prices are generally not consistent...

This paper investigates the value individuals place on their relative status in consumption, as opposed to absolute status. Using observed housing sales from three Ohio MSAs in 2000, we employ a spatial hedonic price model to estimate the total marginal willingness-to-pay for both relative and...

Previous research has shown that Tiebout-style fiscal competition among local governments reduces the likelihood of adopting income taxes. This literature has not yet considered the impact of yardstick competition on tax instrument choice. This article uses spatial econometrics to test for...

The previous literature on vertical equity in property assessment has focused on parcel-level data within a single area and has produced mixed conclusions on whether the process is progressive or regressive. This paper advances the discussion to identifying what differences between jurisdictions...

While typically not a formulator of policy, property assessors are likely sensitive to political incentives, since they are either directly elected to their office or appointed by another elected official. This article estimates a model that is motivated by the assumption that assessors seek to...