The Florida Price Level Index (FPLI), established by the Legislature as the basis for the District Cost Differential (DCD) in the Florida Education Finance Program, is used to represent the costs of hiring equally qualified personnel across school districts.

This brief includes a county FPLI comparison table of past years and a review of the FPLI methodology.

On January 29 of this year, Floridians will vote on a proposed constitutional amendment to reform the state’s property tax system. This proposal arose in response to widespread and growing dissatisfaction with the state’s current system of property taxation. Residents’ complaints about the tax system may be that total taxes are too high, that the distribution of taxes is inequitable, that high taxes on business make Florida uncompetitive, or that the current system “locks” owners in their present homestead properties.

In “Economic Implications of Florida’s Proposed Property Tax Amendment,” the Economic Analysis Program at the University of Florida’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research takes a look at the effects of the proposed reform on each of these complaints. They find that the proposed reform will generally have no impact on the first, will seriously exacerbate the second and third, and improve only the fourth.

This report presents and discusses the 2006 editions of the Florida County Retail Price Index (FCRPI) and the Florida County Wage Index (FCWI), produced by the Bureau of Economic and Business Research (BEBR) at the University of Florida. In the narrowest sense, the FCRPI measures the relative expenditure required to purchase the same basket of goods and services purchased by the average Floridian in each of Florida’s counties at a particular point in time, in this case August 2006.

This report presents and discusses the 2007 editions of the Florida County Retail Price Index (FCRPI) and the Florida County Wage Index (FCWI), produced by the Bureau of Economic and Business Research (BEBR) at the University of Florida.

The Florida Price Level Index (FPLI), established by the Legislature as the basis for the District Cost Differential (DCD) in the Florida Education Finance Program, is used to represent the costs of hiring equally qualified personnel across school districts.

This brief includes a county FPLI comparison table of past years and a review of the FPLI methodology.

The interaction between the Save Our Homes assessment limit and Florida’s housing boom created a property tax system riddled with inequities and inefficiencies. The inequities are obvious, and the newspapers are filled with examples: neighbors with similar houses but one paying twice the property tax of the other. A more subtle inequity is that Save Our Homes favors homesteaders over renters, who on average are less affluent. The inefficiencies are both economic and political.

Local governments in Florida are concerned that the same soaring house prices that have boosted their revenue base have also increased the wages they have to pay to attract a qualified work force, especially relative to similar local governments in many other states where the housing boom has been less remarkable. The doubling of Florida house prices over the past six years that increased local property tax revenue raises concerns that a shortage of affordable housing will undermine their efforts to recruit and retain employees.

In this article, we note that the relevant determinant of how wages will change in the long run is the implicit rent of owner‐occupied housing—which is theoretically equivalent to user cost of housing—and the actual rent of apartments and rented houses in an area.

The Florida Price Level Index (FPLI) was established by the Legislature as the basis for the District Cost Differential (DCD) in the Florida Education Finance Program. In this role, the FPLI is used to represent the costs of hiring equally qualified personnel across school districts.

This report presents and discusses the 2005 editions of the Florida County Retail Price Index (FCRPI) and the Florida County Wage Index (FCWI), produced by the Bureau of Economic and Business Research (BEBR) at the University of Florida.

The Florida Price Level Index (FPLI) was established by the Legislature as the basis for the District Cost Differential (DCD) in the Florida Education Finance Program. In this role, the FPLI is used to represent the costs of hiring equally qualified personnel across school districts. Since 1995, and at the request of the Legislature, the Bureau of Economic and Business Research (BEBR) at the University of Florida has performed an ongoing review of the methodology of the FPLI and has made appropriate recommendations to improve it.

In recent years, numerous reports have analyzed Florida’s tax system and argued for change. Although these reports are useful in documenting the current situation, they tend to be one-dimensional—focusing only on the revenue side. In fact, state budgets reflect both revenues and services those revenues support, and thus analysis should take into account both elements—and the tradeoff between them. This analysis does just that, taking into account both taxes and the level of services they support. It examines the history of spending and taxing in Florida and projects spending and taxing over the next five years.

This report presents and discusses the 2004 Florida County Retail Price Index, the FCRPI, and the 2004 Florida County Wage Index, the FCWI, produced by the Bureau of Economic and Business Research, BEBR, at the University of Florida.

In this report, we consider the accuracy and appropriateness of several aspects of the Florida Education Finance Program (FEFP) – the Florida Price Level Index (FPLI), the Sparsity Adjustment, and Discretionary Millage.

The Florida Price Level Index (FPLI) was established by the Legislature as the basis for the District Cost Differential (DCD) in the Florida Education Finance Program (FEFP). In this role, the FPLI is used to represent the costs of hiring equally qualified personnel across school districts.

This report uses economic analyses and presents relevant information to help policymakers determine why pedestrian fatality rates in Florida exceed those in the rest of the country.

Established by the Legislature as the basis for the District Cost Differential (DCD) in the Florida Education Finance Program, the Florida Price Level Index (FPLI) is used to represent the costs of hiring equally qualified personnel across school districts.

Florida’s public highways are congested. At the same time there is excess capacity on private railroads. Further, the social costs of moving a ton-mile of freight—including costs from air pollution, accidents, congestion, and wear on the nation’s transportation system—are lower by rail than by truck for many types of freight movements. Given this situation, should the state design policies to increase utilization of the state’s railroads? Would a policy that subsidizes freight shipment by railroad, and taxes the generation of harmful externalities, be beneficial to residents of the state? This report examines whether such policies can be economically justified.

The purpose of this paper is to survey current literature on the economic impact of the Internet on transportation. To that end we have searched literature across disciplines including sociology, geography, business, and economics that offers potential answers to the following questions: How are companies incorporating Internet technology into their products and business models? How will the Internet change commuter and shipping traffic? By how much? What models are available to predict the impact of the Internet on future transportation patterns? How does the Internet compare to previous innovations? How will national technological, transportation, and commuting trends affect Florida’s economy and infrastructure?

Among the various uses of history, one is to tell a story. Telling a story involves picking out main themes, weighing competing interpretations of events, and relating what happened, usually in something close to chronological order. That is not what we do here. Another role for history is to provide background on current issues, how we got to where we are, with the belief that understanding how conditions that are of concern developed is a source of insight into creating ways to improve them. That is the purpose of this part of our report: to use history to improve our grasp of current transportation issues by indicating their origins. We make no claim that history, and much less our interpretation of it, provides definitive lessons. We do think, however, that an historical perspective complements other approaches.

We have selected five issues that pervade current discussions of transportation in Florida. The five are: (1) highway congestion or the adequacy of transportation infrastructure; (2) related to that, whether there is a need for increased funding, especially through raising gasoline taxes; (3) the failure to protect major highways and roads from excessive local access; (4) related to that, avoiding sprawl through “smart communities;” and (5) intermodal transportation.