文摘
These essays explore the microeconomic impact of federal,state and local public policies on individual behavior in three distinct settings. Chapter 1 examines the impact of municipal policies affecting retail liquor availability on the incidence of urban crime,based on a rapid 2012 expansion of liquor retailing in the City of Seattle. Chapter 2 examines whether state-level public sector employees are paid "wage rents" in excess of their outside options,based on an original survey of roughly 900 exogenously laid-off of government workers as part of a liquor privatization initiative in Washington State. Finally,Chapter 3 examines whether federal intergovernmental grants have a persistent long-term effect on state government tax policy,based on a 30-year panel of federal grants and tax revenue for the U.S. states. In all three cases I emphasize the identification of causal effects of policy characteristics on behavior,highlighting the importance of econometric program evaluation as a tool for understanding and developing well-designed public policy.
