Much of the academic literature on urban economics and public finance focuses on growth - both population growth and budgetary growth. However, most cities do not grow continuously, and many cities face long periods of decline rather than expansion. The city of Detroit, for example, dropped in population from 1.8 million in 1950 to 713,777 in 2010. The city of Saginaw, which is examined in Chapter 1 of this dissertation, went from a peak population of 98,265 in the 1960s to 51,230 in 2013. It is difficult for city governments to maintain infrastructure and provide adequate public services to a city that has lost such a massive amount of population and with it, revenue streams. Little research exists on policies that can be used by such cities. In this dissertation, I analyze two such policies. In the first essay, I examine the effect of vacant building demolitions on crime using block face level monthly panel data from the city of Saginaw, Michigan. Although the United States Government spends millions of dollars a year on vacant building demolitions, no clear causal link has been established between demolitions and crime. Results from my analysis indicate that both demolitions and permits for demolitions actually increase crime rather than reduce it. These results imply that by the time a building reaches the point of demolition, it may be too late to reverse the crime trends incurred by neighborhood decline.In the second essay, I examine the motivations for why cities choose to implement public employee residency requirement laws, or laws that require employees to live within the city boundaries. Justifications for these laws range from public safety to public coffer arguments. However, little is known about the true motivations for why cities choose to implement residency laws. In this paper, I estimate a parametric duration model with a proportional hazard function to examine these motivations. In order to perform this analysis, I construct a unique data set on municipal residency laws for the largest 100 cities in the United States from 1970 through 2007. I also create a set of fiscal stress indicators for each of these cities over time. Results indicate that cities implement residency laws for economic and racial equity reasons and remove them when the city improves in comparison to the metropolitan area as a whole. Fiscal stress and service provision quality do not appear to be major contributing factors.In the third essay, I look once again municipal residency requirement laws and examine the impact that these laws have on cities. Despite the prevalence and extensive history of residency laws, little is known about their impact on city outcomes. In this paper, I provide the first causal estimates of the impact of municipal residency requirements on the quality of service provision, municipal fiscal health, and the size and composition of cities. My identification strategy exploits the timing of municipal law changes as well as the implementation of state bans on residency laws. Results provide little evidence that residency laws have an effect on fiscal health or city demographics when they are implemented, but they are correlated with a temporary increase then long term decrease in crime. The removal of a residency law is not associated with any significant change in fiscal health, city demographics, or crime. These three essays provide information that can be used to help declining cities avoid spending time and money on policies that do not work and remove laws that are harmful. More research is needed to determine what policies do work in declining cities and how they can best be implemented.
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