Public Finance
CPR continues its longstanding focus on the evaluation of city and state government fiscal management and performance. An early research project was among the first to identify New York City's coming fiscal crisis in the 1970s. More recent efforts have analyzed state tax structures and guided tax reforms. Other projects have addressed intergovernmental grants, municipal bond rating and credit analysis, measures of city fiscal conditions, property tax reform, and education finance. Funding for this research has come from the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Education, the KMPG Peat Marwick Foundation, state government agencies, and other sources.
Len Burman, Daniel P. Moynihan Professor of Public Affairs, was recently appointed a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in the Public Economics Program. Before he came to Syracuse University, Professor Burman was director of the Tax Policy Center, a Senior Fellow of the Urban Institute, and Deputy Assistant Secretary (Tax Analysis), U.S. Department of the Treasury. The NBER Public Economics Program studies the effects of taxation and government expenditure programs at the federal, state, and local levels. One ongoing activity of this program is the development of the NBER TAXSIM model, a computer simulation model that uses annual data on 100,000 individual taxpayers to project the effects of alternative tax rules.
Gary Engelhardt conducts research on the economics of aging, household saving, employer-provided pensions, Social Security, taxation, and housing markets. He is currently studying the impact of pensions, Social Security, and Medicare on the retirement saving and income security of older Americans. In addition to this work, he is evaluating the impact of housing and saving policies targeted to low-income households and the impact of population aging on housing markets.
Sharon Kioko’s research focuses on the impact of fiscal institutions (such as tax and expenditure limits, debt and limits, balanced budget rules etc.) on structure and growth of state government expenditures. Her research focuses on whether constraints on government spending are effective, i.e. do tax and expenditure limits constrain growth in spending, do debt restrictions and limits constrain borrowing, etc. Using expanded datasets, her research will begin to reexamine the impact of these limits on borrowing costs. Her other work focuses on governmental accounting and state financial condition analysis using the comprehensive annual financial reports.
David Popp is an economist with research interests in environmental policy and the economics of technological change. Much of his research focuses on the links between environmental policy and innovation. He is particularly interested in how environmental and energy policies shape the development of new technologies that may be relevant for combating climate change. Since coming to CPR, his research includes projects studying the role of international technology transfer in the adoption of environmental technologies and on the sources of R&D funding for environmental technologies. He is also part of an NSF-funded research team studying how climate and R&D policy should account for uncertain returns to R&D investments. Recent papers include:
CPR Policy Brief No. 39/2009. International Technology Transfer for Climate Policy. October.
Christopher Rohlfs specializes in public sector applied microeconomics, especially related to national defense. His research interests include cost-benefit analyses of public policies and measuring the economic values of non-market amenities such as survival and freedom. In his dissertation, Rohlfs examined the cost of reducing fatalities in wartime, the economic cost of conscription, and the long-term effects of military service on violent and criminal behavior. He is currently involved in projects examining air bag usage in automobiles, the up-armoring of Humvees in Iraq, and the econometrics underlying hedonic estimation of the values of product attributes.
For more information about CPR programs and research projects, contact Peggy Austin. You may also obtain general information about CPR by calling +1 315-443-3114, or by sending an email to ctrpol@syr.edu.