Resource booms can affect student achievement through greater labor demand, where rising wages pull students or teachers out of schools, and through an expanded tax base, where increased school spending alters teacher quality or student productivity. Using shale depth variation across Texas school districts with annual oil and gas price variation, this study finds that resource development slig...

We study the opportunistic political budget cycle in the London Metropolitan Boroughs between 1902 and 1937 under two different suffrage regimes: taxpayer suffrage (1902-1914) and universal suffrage (1921-1937). We argue and find supporting evidence that the political budget cycle operates differently under the two types of suffrage. Taxpayer suffrage, where the right to vote and the obligation...

We examine the impact of wind energy installation on school district finances and student achievement using data timing, location, capacity universe U.S. installations from 1995 through 2016. Wind substantially increased revenues, causing large increases in capital outlays, but only modest current spending, little to no change class sizes or teacher salaries. find zero test scores. Using admini...

Investing in research and development spending (R&D) affects total factor productivity (TFP).Recently new theories of economic growth have emphasized the relationship between R&D and TFPand also identified a number of channels through which a country’s R&D affects TFP of its tradepartner. This study seeks to estimate the effect of agricultural R&D and education spending and someother factors on...

This paper reviews the recent empirical literature on long-run growth to determine what factors influence growth in total factor productivity (TFP) and whether there are any channels of influence that should be added to standard models of long-run growth. Factors affecting productivity fall into three general categories: physical capital, human capital, and innovation (including other factors t...