Papers by Douglas S Noonan
Journal of Cultural Economics, Feb 8, 2022
Journal of Cultural Economics is getting close to half a century of life. It was founded in the 1... more Journal of Cultural Economics is getting close to half a century of life. It was founded in the 1970s, as were other top field journals in economics, and has contributed to shape theoretical and empirical research in cultural economics thanks to the precious contributions of an outstanding group of Associate Editors over many years. It is now time to renew the Editorial Board to face future challenges and developments in the field.
Research Square (Research Square), Aug 31, 2022
Hospitals play a critical role during disasters where they provide critical medical care to disas... more Hospitals play a critical role during disasters where they provide critical medical care to disaster victims and help the community to respond more effectively and recover quicker. However, hospitals face risks from the natural environment, such as floor risks. Amid the increasing flood risks due to climate change, it is essential to examine hospitals' risk exposure. Motivated by this, this paper aims to answer four specific questions related to hospitals in Florida: 1) Are hospitals located in flood zones? 2) What is the relationship between hospital network size and flood risk? 3) To what extent does hospital flood risk vary by hospital attributes? 4) How do hospitals' flood risks differ from other public structures' flood risks? By leveraging two micro-level datasets, we found that approximately 12% of Florida hospitals are in flood zones, and that hospitals' flood risk is not influenced by hospital network size or hospital attributes. We also find that hospitals are one of the most flood-prone public structures in our sample, raising questions about public infrastructure in flood management. We conclude by offering recommendations for improving hospital resilience to future disasters.
Most earlier models of residential sorting employ a 'featureless plain', paying little at... more Most earlier models of residential sorting employ a 'featureless plain', paying little attention to cities' physical environments. The empirical question of physical features mitigating neighbour externalities remains largely unexplored. This article adds to the literature by considering the environmental aspects of group boundaries. Physical barriers that mitigate the externality of neighbours' characteristics should be expected to have important differential effects on urban land use patterns. This hypothesis is tested for the percentage of Black people in Chicago in 2000. Some features (such as, parks, railroads, major roads) have strong barrier effects. Despite the limitations of this approach, the findings appear robust to spatial dependence in the data. The findings hold important implications for future research into residential location decisions and the planning of public amenities and infrastructure
Hospitals play a critical role during disasters where they provide critical medical care to disas... more Hospitals play a critical role during disasters where they provide critical medical care to disaster victims and help the community to respond more effectively and recover quicker. However, hospitals face risks from the natural environment, such as floor risks. Amid the increasing flood risks due to climate change, it is essential to examine hospitals’ risk exposure. Motivated by this, this paper aims to answer four specific questions related to hospitals in Florida: 1) Are hospitals located in flood zones? 2) What is the relationship between hospital network size and flood risk? 3) To what extent does hospital flood risk vary by hospital attributes? 4) How do hospitals' flood risks differ from other public structures' flood risks? By leveraging two micro-level datasets, we found that approximately 12% of Florida hospitals are in flood zones, and that hospitals’ flood risk is not influenced by hospital network size or hospital attributes. We also find that hospitals are one ...
Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management
Flooding causes more financial and physical destruction in the United States than any other natur... more Flooding causes more financial and physical destruction in the United States than any other natural hazard. To stem flood losses, local floodplain managers make decisions on how best to mitigate, prepare, and respond to flood hazards. Using quantitative and qualitative data gathered from interviews with 200 floodplain managers in the United States, this study explores the extent to which local communities are concerned about floods, perceptions of communities' ability to mitigate, prepare, and respond to floods, as well as the factors contributing to communities' perceptions of their ability to mitigate, prepare, and respond to floods. Findings indicate that floodplain managers generally perceived their communities to be very or somewhat concerned and prepared for floods. Floodplain managers also perceived their communities' ability to mitigate and respond to floods as being good. Lastly, the findings show that participation in the Federal Emergency Management Agency'...
Covid-19 pandemic was a challenge for the health systems of many countries. It altered people'... more Covid-19 pandemic was a challenge for the health systems of many countries. It altered people's way of life and shocked the world economy. In the United States, political ideology has clashed with the fight against the pandemic. President Trump's denial prevailed despite the warnings from the WHO and scientists who alerted of the seriousness of the situation. Despite this, some state governments did not remain passive in the absence of federal government measures, and passed laws restricting mobility (lockdowns). Consequently, the political polarity was accentuated. On the one hand, the defenders of more severe public health measures and, on the other, the advocates of individual rights and freedom above any other consideration. In this study, we analyze whether political partisanship and the political ideology has influenced the way Covid-19 was handled at the outbreak. Specifically, we analyze by using a Diff-in-Diff model, whether the ideology of each state, measure at th...
Small Business Economics, 2020
The topic of arts and culture in entrepreneurship holds great interest to scholars from many disc... more The topic of arts and culture in entrepreneurship holds great interest to scholars from many disciplines and to policymakers keen on "Creative Class" development and revitalizing local communities. Much research has explored the role of cultural amenities and milieu in fostering entrepreneurial activity. Having artists and cultural sector workers around provides fertile ground for entrepreneurship. Yet when one looks beyond the highly aggregated correlations and case studies of entrepreneurial artists, research on the roles played by arts workers and the creative sector as entrepreneurial agents remains underdeveloped. This special issue advances the entrepreneurship literature through a collection of articles that explore the entrepreneurial roles, natures, and practices of artists. These articles address fundamental questions about the roles of creativity, entrepreneurship, and psychology as well as more applied questions about the use and implications of online crowd funding platforms and how arts entrepreneurs adapt to their experiences and environments. The excellent work by the contributors to this special issue contributes to the literature with rigorous scholarship and set the stage for more to come.
International Journal of Cultural Policy, 2020
In the face of the dramatic shrinking of public and private funding, the arts, culture and creati... more In the face of the dramatic shrinking of public and private funding, the arts, culture and creative industries are increasingly relying on crowdfunding (CCCF). Furthermore, crowdfunding is relevant for its informative, promotional, co-creative and democratizing features. Yet CCCF is still a fragmented and below-potential market. Main reasons for this untapped potential include a lack of transparency and trust affected by national regulatory frameworks. We first assess the series of benefits and barriers of CCCF, and we propose and estimate a simple model of startup firms raising capital, pointing to the importance of how CCCF is regulated. We then critically analyze and compare the regulatory frameworks that may enhance CCCF benefits and limit its barriers and risks in both the United States and the European Union. We finally suggest some policy recommendations and future research in this field.
Business Strategy and the Environment, 2020
Does voluntary participation in eco‐certification become more substantive over time, or less? Alt... more Does voluntary participation in eco‐certification become more substantive over time, or less? Although past research on voluntary programs suggests that later participants are more likely to greenwash by only symbolically adopting voluntary standards, theories of regulatory competition suggest a possible “race to the top.” We argue that participation in voluntary programs can facilitate competition that enables a race, and we advance a theory of self‐regulatory competition to explain dynamics of participation in voluntary environmental programs. Under this perspective, environmental self‐regulation may facilitate a race to the top, despite possibilities for purely symbolic adoption. Analyzing data from a voluntary green building certification program in the United States, we introduce a methodology to distinguish propensities for symbolic certification from more substantive environmental performance. Data demonstrate that later adopters invest additional resources to attain higher c...
International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 2020
Given that floods cause the greatest economic impact and affect more communities annually than an... more Given that floods cause the greatest economic impact and affect more communities annually than any other natural hazard, there is a compelling need to better understand how communities can enhance their resilience to future flood disasters. One mechanism for enhancing communities' resilience to future flood disasters is through participation in the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) Community Rating System (CRS). The CRS is a federal voluntary program that incentivizes communities in the United States to implement floodplain management activities that exceed those required under the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). In exchange for engaging in additional floodplain management activities, policyholders residing in CRS-participating communities receive discounts in their flood insurance premiums. To better understand the factors driving CRS participation, this study uses propensity score matching to match 100 randomly selected CRS participating communities with 100 non-CRS participating communities. Data gathered from CRS coordinators and floodplain managers indicate several factors are responsible for why communities participate, continue to participate, or do not participate the CRS. The main reason for participating in the CRS and continuing to participate is the reduction in flood insurance premiums, while the main reason for not joining the CRS is lack of resources (staff, funding, and time).
International Small Business Journal: Researching Entrepreneurship, 2019
Building on the theories of social capital and social obligation, we study how the attraction of ... more Building on the theories of social capital and social obligation, we study how the attraction of active backers, that is, backers who participate in the co-design of the product is associated with product commercialisation and product quality after a reward-based crowdfunding campaign. We argue theoretically and show empirically that this association varies when the entrepreneur’s experience in conducting crowdfunding campaign is taken into account. Through a quantitative analysis of 1406 board games campaigns posted on Kickstarter, we show that for entrepreneurs who are novice to crowdfunding, attracting a large crowd of active backers increases the chances to commercialise the product after the campaign, while it reduces its final quality. On the contrary, for entrepreneurs who already relied on crowdfunding in the past, the attraction of a large crowd of active backers is associated with increasing product quality.
Southern Economic Journal, 2019
The Community Rating System (CRS) program was implemented by the U.S. Federal Emergency Managemen... more The Community Rating System (CRS) program was implemented by the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in 1990 as an optional program to encourage communities to voluntarily engage in flood mitigation initiatives. This article uses national census tract-level data from 1980 to 2010 to estimate whether CRS participation and flood risk affect a community's local patterns of population change. We employ an instrumental-variables strategy to address the potential endogeneity of CRS participation, based on community-scale demographic factors that predict when a tract's host community joins the CRS. The results find significant effects of the CRS program and flood risk on population change. Taken together, the findings point to greater propensity for community-scale flood management in areas with more newcomers and programs such as CRS stabilizing population, though not especially in floodprone areas. We observe the CRS neither displacing population toward lower-risk areas nor attracting more people to flood-prone areas.
Journal of Urban Affairs, 2017
The Atlanta BeltLine (BeltLine) is a large urban redevelopment project that is transforming 22 mi... more The Atlanta BeltLine (BeltLine) is a large urban redevelopment project that is transforming 22 miles of historical railroad corridors into parks, trails, pedestrian-friendly transit, and affordable housing in the center of Atlanta, Georgia. This study examines how proximity to the BeltLine and other factors relate to public support for it, with data from a general public survey conducted in the summer of 2009. The result shows that support significantly declines as distance to the BeltLine increases. However, after controlling for expected use of the BeltLine parks and transit, the role of distance fades. Further, the results show that being a parent within the city limits is associated with the support for the BeltLine, which implies that the concern over Tax Increment Financing (TIF) affecting future school quality hampers the support of the project. The findings point to individual tastes and family circumstances as driving support for the redevelopment project, rather than strictly property-specific attributes (as the homevoter hypothesis would predict). Another contribution of this study is to address the technical problem of missing precise spatial location values. Several imputation techniques are used to demonstrate the risks and remedies to missing spatial data.
Academy of Management Proceedings, 2015
Firms have increasingly invested in green building certification to signal performance benefits a... more Firms have increasingly invested in green building certification to signal performance benefits and non-performance reputational benefits associated with green building. Using Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification data, we demonstrate that firms invest additional resources to attain a greater non-performance signal. Firms earn higher LEED scores to achieve a higher certification and provide a greener signal to stakeholders, indicating the presence of competition in green building. Over time, the market becomes more crowded and signaling becomes less pronounced, particularly at higher certification levels. Further, while buildings certified just above the highest thresholds cluster spatially, overall trends suggest decreased clustering of non-performance signaling in markets subject to crowding. Together, these findings provide a nuanced view of competitive pressures in green signaling.
Economic Development Quarterly, 2020
Policies affecting cultural assets are popular yet imperfectly understood tools to shape local ec... more Policies affecting cultural assets are popular yet imperfectly understood tools to shape local economic development. Historic preservation policies, for example, can have markedly different implications for original residents, prospective residents, and developers, even in the same city. Therefore, merely identifying its average effect can obscure important heterogeneity in its impact. This study examines the property value impacts of local and national historic districts across the distribution of property prices and how those differential impacts vary with the restrictiveness of the policy. A quantile regression model identifies the heterogeneity of effects among higher and lower end properties. The results reveal large differences between national and local districts, interior and buffer properties, and for different property values. These findings highlight the importance of and complexity in how housing markets react to attempts to guide local economic development.
RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, Jul 1, 2009
Neighborhood Dynamics and the Housing Price Effects of Spatially Targeted Economic Development Po... more Neighborhood Dynamics and the Housing Price Effects of Spatially Targeted Economic Development Policy * Neighborhoods are the result of a complicated interplay between residential choice, housing supply and the influences of the larger metropolitan system on its constituent parts. We model this interplay as a system of reduced-form equations in order to examine the effects of a generous spatially targeted economic development program (the federal Empowerment Zone program) on neighborhood characteristics, especially housing values. This system of equations approach allows us to compute direct effects of the policy intervention as well as the effects mediated through non-price channels such as changes in the housing stock or neighborhood demographics. In the process, we are able to shed light on the rich simultaneity among neighborhood characteristics, including housing prices.
Uploads
Papers by Douglas S Noonan