Jennifer
Milosch
About Me:
I am a
fifth year Ph.D. student in Economics at the University of California, Santa
Barbara. My research interests include
family economics, marital formation, and marital dissolution. My dissertation committee includes Shelly
Lundberg (chair), Peter Kuhn, and Olivier Deschênes.
Teaching:
Econ 101 – Summer Session
B 2011
Research:
“The Effects of Unexpected Changes in Income
on the Probability of Divorce” (working
paper)
Abstract:
This paper contributes to the
literature on the economic determinants of marital stability. Surprises that
reduce expected marital surplus, such as shocks to permanent income, are among
the possible causes of divorce (Becker, Landes, and Michael, 1977; Weiss and
Willis, 1997). In this paper, measures of predicted permanent income are
constructed for NLSY79 respondents and their spouses for each year of the
marriage, and the effects of cumulative deviations from expected permanent
income at the time of marriage on divorce are estimated. I find that unexpected
increases in predicted permanent income of either husbands or wives, holding
the spouse's income constant, decrease the probability of divorce. In
addition, unexpected decreases in predicted permanent income of the husband
increase the probability of divorce. A negative income shock for the wife
has no direct effect on divorce, but does interact with negative shocks for the
husband, intensifying their effect on divorce. The results are robust to
a number of methods and sub-samples, however some interesting patterns emerge
across ethnic groups and education levels. The empirical findings are then
compared to predictions of several types of marriage models.
Conroy,
Stephen and Jennifer Milosch. “An Estimation of the Coastal Premium for
Residential Housing Prices in San Diego County.” Journal of Real Estate Finance & Economics; Feb 2011, Vol. 42, Issue
2, p211-228.
Abstract: The
authors attempt to estimate the “coastal premium”—additional value conferred on
a residence from being located near the coast—of single family homes in San
Diego County, while controlling for other locational and structural
characteristics. A previous investigation published in 2001 for south Orange
County found that moving away from the coast by one mile was associated with a
$42,000 lower housing price. Intrigued by this finding, we investigate whether
(a) a similar coastal premium exists for all of San Diego County and (b) the
premium varies by incremental distance from the coast (e.g., for 500-feet
increments). Using data from 9,755 San Diego County home sales in 2006, results
presented here suggest that for a median-priced home ($540,000) at the mean
distance from the coast (approximately 9 miles—and considerably farther than
the Orange County estimate) a onemile increase in distance from the coast would
reduce the sale price by approximately $8,680. Specifying by specific distance
increments, we find that the coastal premium is approximately 101.9% for houses
within 500 feet of the coast (i.e., their value is 101.9% higher than similar
homes located beyond six miles of the coast), falling to 62.8% for homes
between 500 and 1,000 feet, declining to approximately 3.3% for homes located
between five and six miles of the coast, disappearing entirely beyond around
six miles. Since average comparisons of the sort initially considered in this
analysis can be very misleading, researchers should consider the nonlinear
incremental distance effects in model specifications.
Ph.D. Candidate
Department
of Economics
University
of California-Santa Barbara
North
Hall 2047