Carl Bonham
A Policy Analysis of Hawaii’s Solar Tax Credit Incentive
This study uses Hawaii as an illustrative case study in state level tax credits for PV. We examine the role of Hawaii’s tax credit policy in PV deployment, including distributional and tax payer impacts. Hawaii is interesting because its electricity rates are nearly four times the national average as well as has a 35% tax […]
Read MoreUHERO 101.9: Who’s hiring? Who knows!
By Carl Bonham and James Jones Beginning in July 2013, the Hawaii Department of Labor and Industrial Relations (DLIR) discontinued the regular monthly publication of industry payroll job counts for Kauai County, Maui County, and Hawaii County citing budgetary constraints. These statistics provided the most comprehensive and timely assessment of labor market conditions and served […]
Read MoreThe Unintended Consequences of Affordable Housing Policy
By Carl Bonham Honolulu City Council Resolution 13-168 would amend the percentages of affordable housing units that developers must provide to receive authorization for housing projects. Current city policy requires that 10% of a development’s units must be affordable for households earning no more than 80% of the HUD median income for Honolulu. Another 10% of units in […]
Read MoreEstimating Demand Elasticities in Non-Stationary Panels: The Case of Hawai‘i Tourism
It is natural to turn to the richness of panel data to improve the precision of estimated tourism demand elasticities. However, the likely presence of common shocks shared across the underlying macroeconomic variables and across regions in the panel has so far been neglected in the tourism literature. We deal with the e ffects of cross-sectional […]
Read MoreForecasting with Mixed Frequency Factor Models in the Presence of Common Trends
We analyze the forecasting performance of small mixed frequency factor models when the observed variables share stochastic trends. The indicators are observed at various frequencies and are tied together by cointegration so that valuable high frequency information is passed to low frequency series through the common factors. Diff erencing the data breaks the cointegrating link among […]
Read MoreThe Economic Impact of the University of Hawai‘i System
The University of Hawai‘i (UH) generates economic activity through its purchases from local businesses, its payment to its employees, and spending by students and visitors. This report estimates UH’s total economic activity in the state of Hawai‘i in fiscal year 2012. Following a standard approach, we define economic impact to be the direct, indirect, and […]
Read MoreShould we increase Hawaii’s minimum wage?
The following post is excerpted from UHERO’s Brief “Should we increase Hawaii’s minimum wage?” Raising the minimum wage may be one of the hottest issues of this years’ legislative session. Two bills have been introduced to increase the minimum wage and both bills also propose indexing the minimum wage so that it is adjusted for future inflation. President […]
Read MoreBrief: Should we increase Hawaii’s minimum wage?
A higher minimum wage is unlikely to accomplish the stated goal of raising the living standards of the working poor. And given Hawaii’s highly service oriented economy, the negative impact of an increased minimum wage may have a larger impact than in other states.
Read MoreTax Credit Incentives for Residential Solar Photovoltaic in Hawai‘i
Solar photovoltaic (PV) tax credits are at the center of a public debate in Hawai‘i. The controversy stems largely from unforeseen budgetary impacts, driven in part by the difference between the legislative intent and implementation of the PV tax credits. HRS 235-12.5 allows individual and corporate taxpayers to claim a 35% tax credit against Hawaii […]
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