Friedson awarded prize for tax journal publication
Andrew Friedson, assistant professor of economics in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at CU Denver, was awarded the prestigious Richard Musgrave Prize by the National Tax Association at their annual meeting in November. The Musgrave prize is awarded to the most outstanding paper published in the National Tax Journal each year. Friedson’s winning paper, “Ranking Up by Moving Out: The Effect of the Texas Top 10% Plan on Property Values,” is a joint work with Kalena Cortes at Texas A&M.
The paper shows how students reacted strategically to a school incentive program that offers automatic admission to University of Texas schools to students in the top 10 percent of their high school graduating class. Friedson and his co-author found that students were moving to districts with historically poor test scores to take advantage of lower-performing peers. This movement created noticeable distortions to property values in these low-performing districts, which had important property tax and school finance implications.