The New Dynamics of Fiscal Federalism
Revisiting Oates After Five Decades
Writing
2024 in Books
We welcomed our first child to the world last December. Consequently, I spent more time at home this year than I have since the pandemic, especially during my paternity leave and over the Summer. Only in the last few months...
Rent-Seeking and Public Sector Unions
What role do public sector unions play in determining the local government spending priorities? I discuss a trio of recent papers that shed light on this question. Each explores a different source of monopoly power that allows organized public employees...
2023 in Books
In light of recent advances in AI, I spent this year thinking about the future of work and education. These books offer useful perspectives:
2022 in Books
It was a good year for reading: I have not read so many pages since my first semesters of college in 2015.
The Rise of Agency Nursing
Many workers’ jobs become somewhat more pleasant during the pandemic. Those who could work from home enjoyed instantaneous commutes, less supervision from their managers, and more flexibility in when and how they worked. While these changes certainly did not fully...
Mapping Roadways with R
My pre-calculus teacher was fond of pointing out that there are many ways to get to the local Dairy Queen. This fact of geography might easily be verified by inspecting a map, but of course there are also many, many...
Build More by Compensating Current Residents
Current residents bear the costs of new development. Those costs take many forms – crowded schools, congested freeways, crime, ugly high-rises, spillover parking on residential streets – but they all decrease property values. Accordingly, homeowners and landlords are often vocal...
Translating Stata to R
I’m learning to work with data.tables in R. This reference provides a translation between data.table and Stata commands and should be helpful for any moving between the two languages.
Book Roundup, DC Edition
Shortly after arriving in DC, I asked a retired bookseller to recommend books about the city, in any genre. I’ve since added a number of my own finds to this list, which I present in the hopes that other residents...
Lakota Hunting Dynamics
When does violence end quickly, and when does it escalate into broader conflict? The competition between Native American tribes over bison hunting grounds during the mid-1800s provides an illustrative example. Lakotas, Crows, Omahas, Poncas, and other groups roamed the plains...
The Conductor Came to see ME?
There’s an old joke about a violist who suffers weekly at the hands of his conductor during rehearsals. The conductor humiliates him by pointing out his every mistake to the rest of the orchestra, and the violist starts to think...
Trends in Roman Epigraphy
The demand for epitaphs ought to depend on several conditions: the number of Romans who died, their wealth, and the popularity of inscribed epitaphs relative to other forms of commemoration for the dead. It follows that periods of high mortality...
Shooting the Daylight
33rd Symposium on Time Organization Among Earth-Dwellers (Agna, Galactic Year 917)
The Geography and Evolution of Roman Public Writing
What Deserves to be Written?
The Great Recession, Cereal Edition
The financial crisis was a difficult time for cereal fans. The number of new products introduced in the breakfast cereal market fell from 60 to 20 in the three years after 2008.
Price Bunching in DC
A first look at property transactions in DC suggests that something unusual is happening at $400,000.