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on Economic Geography |
| By: | Charles Himmelberg; Christopher Mayer; Todd Sinai |
| Abstract: | We construct measures of the annual cost of single-family housing for 46 metropolitan areas in the United States over the last 25 years and compare them with local rents and incomes as a way of judging the level of housing prices. Conventional metrics like the growth rate of house prices, the price-to-rent ratio, and the price-to-income ratio can be misleading because they fail to account both for the time series pattern of real long-term interest rates and predictable differences in the long-run growth rates of house prices across local markets. These factors are especially important in recent years because house prices are theoretically more sensitive to interest rates when rates are already low, and more sensitive still in those cities where the long-run rate of house price growth is high. During the 1980s, our measures show that houses looked most overvalued in many of the same cities that subsequently experienced the largest house price declines. We find that from the trough of 1995 to 2004, the cost of owning rose somewhat relative to the cost of renting, but not, in most cities, to levels that made houses look overvalued. |
| Keywords: | Housing - Prices ; Interest rates ; Metropolitan areas - Statistics ; Rental housing ; Regional economics |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednsr:218&r=geo |
| By: | Harvey Schwartz (Department of Economics, York University) |
| Date: | 2005–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:yca:wpaper:2005_03&r=geo |
| By: | Carlo Dell’Aringa (Catholic University of Milan); Claudio Lucifora (Catholic University of Milan, ERMES, CEPR and IZA Bonn); Federica Origo (University of Bergamo) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates regional public-private wage differentials in Italy. Following the recent wave of reforms that significantly changed wage setting and employment relations in both sectors - increasing decentralisation in collective bargaining and enforcing a "privatisation" of public sector employment contracts - we present new estimates of the public-private wage gap by geographical location. We report both 'standardised' public-private wage differentials, as well as estimates obtained using Geographically Weighted Regressions methods. We show that significant differences exist in public-private wage differentials across Italian regions, and that the latter can be partly explained by local labour market conditions affecting the private sector and only marginally the public sector. Differences in public-private wage differentials across regions are expected to determine several imbalances in terms of ‘wait’ unemployment and recruitment problems in the different areas. |
| Keywords: | public-private wage differentials, regional labour market, geographically weighted regressions |
| JEL: | J31 J45 |
| Date: | 2005–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp1828&r=geo |
| By: | Christopher H. Wheeler |
| Abstract: | Human capital is typically viewed as generating a number of desirable outcomes, including economic growth. Yet, in spite of its importance, few empirical studies have explored why some economies accumulate more human capital than others. This paper attempts to do so using a sample of more than 200 metropolitan areas in the United States over the years 1980, 1990, and 2000. The results reveal two consistently significant correlates of human capital growth, defined as the change in a city*s rate of college completion: population and the existing stock of college-educated labor. Given that population growth and human capital accumulation are both positively associated with education, these results suggest that the geographic distributions of population and human capital should have become more concentrated in recent decades. That is, larger, more educated metropolitan areas should have exhibited the fastest rates of increase in both population and education and thus #pulled away* from smaller, less-educated metropolitan areas. The evidence largely supports this conclusion. |
| Keywords: | Human capital |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedlwp:2005-065&r=geo |
| By: | Patrick Bayer (Economic Growth Center, Yale University); Robert McMillan; Kim Rueben |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the causes and consequences of racial segregation using a new general equilibrium model that treats neighborhood compositions as endogenous. The model is estimated using unusually detailed restricted Census microdata covering the entire San Francisco Bay Area, and in combination with a rich array of econometric estimates, serves as a powerful tool for carrying out counterfactual simulations that shed light on the causes and consequences of segregation. In terms of causes, and contrasting with prior research, our GE simulations indicate that equalizing income and education across race would be unlikely to result in significant reductions in racial segregation, as minority households would sort into newly formed minority neighborhoods. Indeed, among Asian and Hispanic households, segregation increases. In terms of consequences, this paper provides the first evidence that sorting on the basis of race gives rise to significant reductions in the consumption of local public goods by minority households and upper-income minority households in particular. These consumption effects are likely to have important intergenerational implications. |
| Keywords: | Segregation, General Equilibrium, Endogenous Sorting, Urban Housing Market, Locational Equilibrium, Counterfactual Simulation, Discrete Choice |
| JEL: | H0 J7 R0 R2 |
| Date: | 2004–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:egc:wpaper:885&r=geo |
| By: | Danilo Camargo Igliori (Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge, UK) |
| Abstract: | The determinants of technical efficiency in agriculture and cattle ranching are closely related with the debate involving the conservation-development trade-off in the Brazilian Amazon. Concerned with balancing development and environmental conservation, policy makers and academics have emphasized the importance of choosing ways of selecting areas where land use restrictions would be established. In order to understand the relationship between spatial patterns of deforestation and the associated distribution and characteristics of economic activity, issues regarding technical efficiency are clearly important. This paper aims to identify the socio-economic and environmental determinants of technical efficiency in agriculture and cattle ranching in the Brazilian Amazon emphasizing their relationship with spatial processes of deforestation and development. The study is structured in two parts. The first part is concerned with measuring technical efficiency for agriculture and cattle ranching in each geographical unit focusing on the production relationship between inputs and outputs. The second one focuses on the variation in the efficiency measure explained by exogenous factors and includes the spatial analysis. We adopt the model proposed by Battese and Coelli (1995) where the production function and the exogenous effects influencing technical efficiency are estimated simultaneously. |
| Keywords: | stochastic frontier, technical efficiency, spatial analysis, Brazilian Amazon |
| Date: | 2005–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lnd:wpaper:200509&r=geo |
| By: | Edgardo Sica |
| Abstract: | The purpose of this study consists in verifying if climatic differences can help to explain the different economic growth’s path across Italian provinces. Focusing on literature on economic convergence on one hand, and that on economics of climate on the other, the work depicts how climatic variables can enter into the traditional Solow’s neoclassical growth model developing two alternative models. Afterwards, it tests whether climatic characteristics actually exert an influence on economic convergence using an original climate dataset composed by average yearly min and max temperatures (C°), humidity grade (%), number of frost-days and annual precipitations (mm) for 58 Italian Provinces uniformly distributed over the Peninsula. The results, obtained through the Arellano-Bond GMM estimator, show how some of climatic variables employed in this study actually affect the level of Provincial income. |
| Keywords: | Climate; Economic growth; Convergence; Italian Provinces |
| Date: | 2005–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ufg:qdsems:20-2005&r=geo |
| By: | Stephen Calabrese; Dennis Epple; Thomas Romer; Holger Sieg |
| Abstract: | Few empirical strategies have been developed that investigate public provision under majority rule while taking explicit account of the constraints implied by mobility of households. The goal of this paper is to improve our understanding of voting in local communities when neighborhood quality depends on peer or neighborhood effects. We develop a new empirical approach which allows us to impose all restrictions that arise from locational equilibrium models with myopic voting simultaneously on the data generating process. We can then analyze how close myopic models come in replicating the main regularities about expenditures, taxes, sorting by income and housing observed in the data. We find that a myopic voting model that incorporates peer effects fits all dimensions of the data reasonably well. |
| JEL: | H4 H7 H1 R5 |
| Date: | 2005–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11720&r=geo |
| By: | Cuauhtemoc CALDERON VILLARREAL (EL Colegio de la Frontera Norte); Eduardo Mendoza (EL Colegio de la Frontera Norte) |
| Abstract: | En este trabajo se estudian los factores que determinan el comportamiento de la fuerza de trabajo de la industria maquiladora de exportacion de los estados fronterizo que colindan con los estados del sur de los Estados Unidos. |
| Keywords: | MAQUILADORA, REGIONAL GROWTH, DEMAMD OF LABOR |
| JEL: | R |
| Date: | 2005–11–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wpa:wuwpur:0511001&r=geo |
| By: | Cuauhtemoc CALDERON VILLARREAL (El Colegio de la Frontera Norte); R. Ponce |
| Abstract: | THIS WORK EXPOSE THE DETERMINAT'S FACTORS OF THE CIUDAD JUAREZ LABOR'S DEMAND OF THE MAQUILADORA INDUSTRY. ESTE TRABAJO DESARROLLA UN MODELO TEORICO DE COMPORTAMIENTO DE LA DEMANDA DE TRABAJO, APLICADO A LA INDUSTRIA MAQUILADORA SITUADA EN LA CIUDAD FRONTERIZA DE CD. JUAREZ MEXICO. |
| Keywords: | MAQUILADORA, REGIONAL GROWTH |
| JEL: | R |
| Date: | 2005–11–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wpa:wuwpur:0511002&r=geo |