The nonprofit sector has historically enjoyed tax exemptions for its role in providing public goods. However, scholars challenge this justification, noting that nonprofits do not always utilize tax benefits to enhance their services. This paper examines whether taxing nonprofits could benefit society more than granting exemptions by evaluating their responses to taxation. Focusing on the net investment income tax on nonprofit colleges, empirical findings reveal that taxed colleges shift the burden to students by raising tuition. This response, while not altering the overall service level, redistributes educational opportunities from historically underserved groups to international students who can afford higher tuition. Conversely, colleges with the niche to avoid the tax strategically increase student enrollment to circumvent the tax threshold related to student size. These findings highlight the potential of policy design to guide nonprofits’ responses to taxation in ways that benefit society.
Utilizing administrative data encompassing the entire population of Taiwan, this paper investigates the long-term effects of job displacement on earnings and mental health. Focusing on job loss resulting from mass layoffs and plant closures, our estimates suggest displaced workers experienced a 67–68% earning loss in the year following a layoff. Even after ten years, earnings do not fully recover. Displaced workers also experience long-term deterioration in mental health, particularly related to stress, with a 15–16% increase in cumulative outpatient visits for mental health issues and a 57–62% increase in cumulative medical costs for mental illness in the decade post-displacement. The negative impact on mental health is more pronounced among workers with lower earnings, men, and older individuals.
Government programs impose eligibility requirements to balance the goals of improving welfare while minimizing waste. We study the impact of eligibility monitoring in the context of Federal Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) submissions, where students may be subject to “verification” requirements that require them to confirm the accuracy of the data. Using a matching on observables design we do not find that students flagged for verification are less likely to enroll in college, which contrasts prior research. Verification reduces grant aid received but average changes are small, raising questions about the benefits of this administrative process.
This study investigates the impact of teacher favoritism (i.e., systematically favoring students of a specific gender, ethnicity, or high previous class ranking) on teacher treatment and student achievement. Based on the practice of random class grouping within schools, a school fixed effect model is used to estimate the causal effect of teacher favoritism. The results suggest that teacher favoritism toward students with a higher previous class rank increases the likelihood of these students consulting with their teacher on academic, emotional, and friendship issues. Also, female students are more likely to discuss friendships and emotional matters with pro-female teachers. However, the evidence of teacher favoritism’s impact on student achievement is relatively weak.
Healthcare has been one of the most affected sectors during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The utilization of related services for non-COVID-19 diseases fell dramatically following the point at which the virus broke out; however, little is known about whether this observed decline in healthcare use was due to voluntary behaviors or enforced measures. This paper quantifies the spontaneous change in healthcare utilization during the pandemic. We utilize a county-by-week-level dataset from Taiwan’s National Health Insurance (NHI) record, covering the entire Taiwanese population, and a difference-in-differences design. Our results indicate that even if there were no human mobility restrictions or supply-side constraints, people voluntarily reduced their demand for healthcare, due to fears of contagion, or COVID-related precautionary behaviors. We find that the number of outpatient visits (inpatient admissions) decreased by 19% (10%) during the pandemic period (February to May 2020). Furthermore, the demand response of healthcare for Influenza-like illness (ILI) was much greater and more persistent than for non-ILI, thereby suggesting that the substantial decline in accessing healthcare was induced by positive public health externality of prevention measures for COVID-19. Finally, we find that the demand for healthcare services did not get back to the pre-pandemic baseline, even when there were no local coronavirus cases for 253 consecutive days (mid-April to December 2020) in Taiwan.
The arm’s length principle implies that intermediary cultural organization performs better on art funding allocation than the government or politicians. This paper uses data from the art funding list from 2015 to 2017 in Taiwan to examine whether The National Culture and Arts Foundation (NCAF, an intermediary cultural organization) distributes funding fairer than The Ministry of Culture (MOC). There are three different concepts of fairness: equity, equality, and need (distributing funding to those who need it). The result of this paper shows MOC and NCAF have no significant difference in equity, but NCAF indeed performs better on equality and need than MOC, although the effect isn’t as strong as we thought. Based on these findings, this paper suggests that the arm’s length principle really works, and it’s necessary for MOC to collaborate with NCAF. However, it’s also important to improve the fairness of art funding allocation in the future.
This paper utilizes wealth shocks from winning lottery prizes to examine the causal effect of financial resources on fertility. We employ extensive panels of administrative data encompassing over 0.4 million lottery winners in Taiwan and implement a triple-differences design. Our analyses reveal that a substantial lottery win can significantly increase fertility, the implied wealth elasticity of which is around 0.06. Moreover, the primary channel through which fertility increases is by prompting first births among previously childless individuals. Finally, our analysis reveals that approximately 25% of the total fertility effect stems from increased marriage rates following a lottery win.
U.S. higher education institutions are hiring more minoritized faculty into their teaching workforce to satisfy the demand of an increasingly diverse racial and ethnic student population. However, it is not always clear whether specific hiring policies and plans are intended to address the matter of diversity or representation—two similar but qualitatively different concepts. The policy choices that institutions make result in different implementation approaches and long-term outcomes. Using data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) from 2001 to 2021, this study measures and compares the changes in faculty diversity and student–faculty representation in U.S. higher education institutions over the past two decades. It then develops several simulated scenarios to project the future racial and ethnic landscape of American campuses, depending on the different policy choices that institutions make through their hiring and retention policies. Our recommendation calls for balanced efforts in the retention and hiring of minoritized and underrepresented faculty that are adapted to the individual circumstances of institutions.
The nonprofit sector has historically enjoyed tax exemptions for its role in providing public goods. However, scholars challenge this justification, noting that nonprofits do not always utilize tax benefits to enhance their services. This paper examines whether taxing nonprofits could benefit society more than granting exemptions by evaluating their responses to taxation. Focusing on the net investment income tax on nonprofit colleges, empirical findings reveal that taxed colleges shift the burden to students by raising tuition. This response, while not altering the overall service level, redistributes educational opportunities from historically underserved groups to international students who can afford higher tuition. Conversely, colleges with the niche to avoid the tax strategically increase student enrollment to circumvent the tax threshold related to student size. These findings highlight the potential of policy design to guide nonprofits’ responses to taxation in ways that benefit society.
Property reassessments aim to align property’s assessed values with market prices, serving as an essential tool to ensure tax fairness. However, reassessments can unintentionally impact housing values and, therefore, affect wealth distribution. Based on data from 19 Pennsylvania counties, this study examines property reassessment’s impact on housing values. The paper explores two contrasting theories: the capitalization effect, which predicts reduced housing values in wealthy regions and increased prices in less developed areas, and the anchoring effect, anticipating more pronounced price increases in affluent regions and wider disparities in housing prices. Using a difference-in-differences approach and instrumental variable analysis, the study finds the anchoring effect dominates. On average, property reassessment raises housing values by 9% in counties, with a pronounced positive effect in high-priced regions and a negative impact in non-affluent regions. This highlights that while reassessment enhances tax fairness, it also disproportionately benefits wealthier individuals and widens geographical disparity in housing prices, contradicting wealth equality goals.
This study investigates the influence of residing in student dormitories on short and long-term student outcomes within the context of Taiwan. This research examines the causal effects of on-campus residency by utilizing colleges’ dormitory assignment policy based on students’ residential locations and employing a boundary-based regression discontinuity design. The study incorporates a two-way fixed effect model, including both college and village fixed effects, to account for potential geographical self-selection biases. The findings reveal that on-campus living doesn’t significantly impact persistence, but it does enhance the likelihood of pursuing graduate education, primarily influenced by enrolling in the same college for undergraduate studies. This positive effect can be attributed to two intermediate outcomes: an increase in on-campus employment, indicative of greater on-campus engagement, and a higher likelihood of receiving awards from contests or competitions, suggesting increased participation in extracurricular activities. The impact is more pronounced among students from low-income families, those without siblings, and those attending more prestigious colleges.
This study examines the impact of a Taiwanese upper secondary admission reform, which reduces the level of tracking without abandoning the general/vocational dual-track system. I utilize a difference-in-differences framework, comparing the difference of high school (exposed to the reform) and middle school (non-exposed to the reform) students before and after the reform. The results suggest that the reform raises the within-school student heterogeneity by around half the gap between full tracking and non-tracking system. Furthermore, the de-tracking reform leads to a 0.148 standard deviation drop in average student performance. The de-tracking policy yields an evenly negative impact throughout the whole distribution, implying that the efficiency gained from the tracking does not at the cost of equity.
Racial composition and diversity management in public sectors has long been an important topic in public management literature. Past research has confirmed that supervisor representativeness can benefit government employees, yet little attention has been paid to the well-being of supervisors and the consequences that neglecting that well-being may cause. Utilizing the federal employee surveys and the Federal Government’s human resources data, we apply the multilevel modeling (MLM) approach to examine the impact of management racial representativeness and colleague racial demographic similarities on public employees’ job satisfaction and turnover intention. We find that the impact of management representativeness is exerted primarily through the perceived diversity climate. A higher proportion of same-race colleagues also leads to better work-related attitudes. Co-worker relationships and perceived diversity climate both mediate the impacts. However, we find that while a higher proportion of same-race subordinates improves the satisfaction of supervisors who are the dominant racial group in their work unit, it negatively affects the supervisors who are not the dominant racial group in their work unit. Studies need to focus not only on how the representation of supervisors benefits subordinates but also, and indeed more so, on supervisor well-being. Based on these findings, we make recommendations for diversity management strategies in the public sector.