Our next speaker for the Stone Inequality seminar series is David Schönholzer, an Assistant Professor of Economics at UC Santa Cruz. Schönholzer will be presenting his research on “How Political Institutions Shape Education Spending: Supermajority Requirements in U.S. School Capital Investments,” a study that explores the impact of political institutions on educational funding in the United States, particularly focusing on supermajority voting requirements for school district bonds.
Abstract
This paper examines how political institutions shape the size and composition of educational spending in the U.S. We study the case of school capital investments, which are funded by bonds issued by school districts. These bonds are subject to voter approval in local referenda for which ten states require a supermajority. To study the equilibrium impacts of supermajority requirements on the size and composition of school capital investments, we build and estimate a structural model of bond proposal, design, and voting. In the model, school districts consider when to propose a bond, design the size and composition of capital investments, and submit them to voters for approval in local elections. Using a newly assembled dataset of more than 7,000 bond referenda, we estimate heterogeneous preferences of school districts and voters across eight U.S. states. With these estimates, we then examine the impact of changes in majority requirements. We find that voter and district preferences differ substantially from each other. Policy simulations show that an increase in the required supermajority leads districts to push for projects that are smaller and more aligned with voter preferences, with important implications for student outcomes.
Click here to access the paper
Event Details
Date: October 23, 2024
Time: 3:30 – 5:00 PM
Location: Iona 533, 6000 Iona Dr, Vancouver, BC
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David Schönholzer is an Assistant Professor of Economics at UC Santa Cruz. He completed his PhD in economics at UC Berkeley in 2018, after which he was a Postdoctoral Associate at Yale University in 2019 and a Visiting Assistant Professor at Stanford University in 2022. He studies the efficient provision of public goods, primarily by local governments in the U.S., with further interests in the historical and comparative roots of state capacity. His research frequently combines big spatial data with both reduced-form and structural microeconomic methods. He is originally from Switzerland where he completed undergraduate studies in political science, economics, and statistics.