For Immediate Release
Contact: Anthony Flint 617-503-2116
CAMBRIDGE, Mass (May 10, 2011) – The C. Lowell Harriss Dissertation Fellowship recipients for 2011-2012 have been named, continuing to honor the late Columbia University economist who served for decades on the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy’s board of directors.
Through its longstanding graduate student dissertation fellowships, the Lincoln Institute assists Ph.D students, primarily at U.S. universities, whose research complements the Institute’s interests in land and tax policy. The program is important for both education and research, by supporting scholars early in their careers.
The C. Lowell Harriss Dissertation Fellowship Program supports students through the Department of Taxation and Valuation and the Department of Planning and Urban Form. The dissertation fellows for 2011-2012 are: William M. Doerner, Florida State University, “The Effects of House Prices on Taxation and Property Valuation”; Olha Krupa, Indiana University, “An Analysis of Indiana Property Tax Reform: Equity and Cost Considerations”; Lauren Lambie-Hanson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “Foreclosure Resolution: Efficiency and Impacts of Asset Disposition”; Christopher Palmer, Massachusetts institute of Technology, “What’s in a Neighborhood? The Local Effects of Housing Policy”; Il Hwan Chung, Maxwell School of Syracuse University, “School Finance Reform, School Choice, and Residential Sorting”; Caroline Weber, University of Michigan, “Three Essays in Taxation”; Lauren Coyle, University of Chicago, “Dual Sovereignties in the Golden Twilight: Law, Land and Labor in Ghana”; Amy Lynch, University of Pennsylvania, “Is it Good to be Green?: An Assessment of County Green Infrastructure Planning In Colorado, Florida, and Maryland”; and George Homsy, Cornell University, “Sustainability in the Small City: Exploring Climate Change Innovation in Local Land Use Policy.”
The dissertation fellows for 2010-2011 were: Spencer Brien, Georgia State University, “Three Essays on the Formation and Finance of Local Governments” ; Herman Li, Pennsylvania State University, “Housing Prices and Neighborhood Homeownership and Vacancy”; Joshua Miller, University of Illinois at Chicago, “Who Cares Who Collects? An Economic Analysis of Tax Lien Sales as a Method of Delinquent Property Tax Collection” ‘Michael Gedal, New York University, “Land Values in the City: Essays on Regulation and Redevelopment”; Shawn Johnson, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, “ Building Knowledge at the Landscape Scale: The Role of Bridging Organizations”; Rebecca Lewis, University of Maryland-College Park, “Do Smart Growth Instruments in Maryland make a Difference?”; and Nicole Miller, University of British Columbia, “Urban Form and Climate Change: Linking Land Use Planning and Urban Decisions to Greenhouses Gas Mitigation Opportunities.”
The dissertation fellows from 2009-2010 were: Adam Isen, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, "Return to Local Public Finance"; Sarah Di Vittorio, Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California at Berkeley, "Upstream Forests, Downstream Communities: Emerging Partnerships for Water Security in California"; and Constantine E. Kontokosta, Department of Urban Planning, Columbia University, New York, "The Political Economy of Inclusionary Zoning: Adoption, Implementation, and Neighborhood Effects."
Harriss, who died in 2010 at 97, authored a dozen books and several hundred articles on land and tax policy. A native of Nebraska, he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Harvard in 1934, and joined the economics faculty at Columbia University four years later. He simultaneously worked on his doctorate in the discipline, which he earned from Columbia in 1940.
In this obituary appearing in The Boston Globe, the economist Ben Stein is quoted on how Harriss was well known for his “total availability to students in his office, at dinner, for a hamburger after class, to explain and comment on the economic events of the day. I never had a better teacher in any school.’’
He was a visiting professor at Stanford, Yale, Princeton, the University of California at Berkeley, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and Peterhouse College at Cambridge University. He won Fulbright professorships at the Netherlands School of Economics and the University of Strasbourg in France.
Well regarded by colleagues and fellow board members, Harriss provided a fresh perspective on such topics as land value taxation, and was well-known for mailing around clipped New Yorker cartoons on a range of subjects. He was a board member of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy from 1974 until 2009.
The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy is a leading resource for key issues concerning the use, regulation, and taxation of land. Providing high-quality education and research, the Institute strives to improve public dialogue and decisions about land policy.
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