|
on Urban and Real Estate Economics |
| By: | Margo Bergman; G. Dirk Mateer; Michael Reksulak; Jonathan C. Rork; Rick K. Wilson; David Zirkle |
| Abstract: | The authors detail an urban economics experiment that is easily run in the classroom. The experiment has a flexible design that allows the instructor to explore how congestion, zoning, public transportation, and taxation levels determine the bid-rent function. Heterogeneous agents in the experiment compete for land use utilizing a simple auction mechanism. Using the data that is collected, a bid-rent function is derived, and the experimental treatment is altered over the course of three sessions to uncover core concepts in urban economics. Moreover, this provides a tangible experience that can be used to help undergraduates relate to urban issues such as the steep rent gradient found around many larger colleges and universities. |
| JEL: | A22 R1 C9 |
| Date: | 2008–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:exc:wpaper:2008-09&r=ure |
| By: | Evers, Hans-Dieter |
| Abstract: | With globalisation and knowledge-based production, firms may cooperate on a global scale, outsource parts of their administrative or productive units and negate location altogether. The extremely low transaction costs of data, information and knowledge seem to invalidate the theory of agglomeration and the spatial clustering of firms, going back to the classical work by Alfred Weber (1868-1958) and Alfred Marshall (1842-1924), who emphasized the microeconomic benefits of industrial collocation. This paper will argue against this view and show why the growth of knowledge societies will rather increase than decrease the relevance of location by creating knowledge clusters and knowledge hubs. A knowledge cluster is a local innovation system organized around universities, research institutions and firms which successfully drive innovations and create new industries. Knowledge hubs are localities with high internal and external networking and knowledge sharing capabilities. Both form a new knowledge architecture within an epistemic landscape of knowledge creation and dissemination, structured by knowledge gaps and areas of low knowledge intensity. The paper will focus on the internal dynamics of knowledge clusters and knowledge hubs and show why clustering takes place despite globalisation and the rapid growth of ICT. The basic argument that firms and their delivery chains attempt to reduce transport (transaction) costs by choosing the same location is still valid for most industrial economies, but knowledge hubs have different dynamics relating to externalities produced from knowledge sharing and research and development outputs. The paper draws on empirical data derived from ongoing research in the Lee Kong Chian School of Business, Singapore Management University and in the Center for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn, supported by the German Aeronautics and Space Agency (DLR). |
| Keywords: | knowledge; knowledge and development; industrial agglomeration; knowledge hub; cluster; space |
| JEL: | D21 D23 D8 |
| Date: | 2008 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:8778&r=ure |
| By: | Ron Boschma; Rikard Eriksson; Urban Lindgren |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses the impact of skill portfolios and labour mobility on plant performance by means of a unique database that connects attributes of individuals to features of plants for the whole Swedish economy. We found that a portfolio of related competences at the plant level increases significantly productivity growth of plants, in contrast to plant portfolios consisting of either similar or unrelated competences. Based on the analysis of 101,093 job moves, we found that inflows of skills that are related to the existing knowledge base of the plant had a positive effect on plant performance, while the inflow of new employees with skills that are already present in the plant had a negative impact. Our analyses show that inflows of unrelated skills only contribute positively to plant performance when these are recruited in the same region. Labour mobility across regions only has a positive effect on productivity growth of plants when this concerns new employees with related skills. |
| Keywords: | labour mobility, related variety, skill portfolio, plant performance, geographical proximity |
| JEL: | R11 R12 O18 |
| Date: | 2008–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:egu:wpaper:0809&r=ure |
| By: | David Hargreaves (Reserve Bank of New Zealand) |
| Abstract: | This paper characterises the relationship between wealth and consumption in New Zealand. We find that there exists a long-run cointegration relation between household consumption, income, housing wealth and net financial wealth. Permanent shocks account for most of the variation in wealth. This implies that our cointegration estimates accurately capture the effect of most wealth changes, in contrast with the findings of Lettau and Ludvigson (2004) for the United States. Our estimates suggest that consumption has adjusted sluggishly to restore longrun equilibrium, but also that consumption booms have anticipated equilibrium-restoring increases in housing wealth. Furthermore, we estimate two alternative econometric models which are more robust to instability in the long-run relationship. All three of our models suggest that permanent changes in wealth have economically important effects on consumption. The dollar-for dollar-effect of financial wealth exceeds that of housing wealth. |
| JEL: | C22 C32 E21 |
| Date: | 2008–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nzb:nzbdps:2008/06&r=ure |
| By: | Emmanuel De Veirman; Ashley Dunstan (Reserve Bank of New Zealand) |
| Abstract: | This paper characterises the relationship between wealth and consumption in New Zealand. We find that there exists a long-run cointegration relation between household consumption, income, housing wealth and net financial wealth. Permanent shocks account for most of the variation in wealth. This implies that our cointegration estimates accurately capture the effect of most wealth changes, in contrast with the findings of Lettau and Ludvigson (2004) for the United States. Our estimates suggest that consumption has adjusted sluggishly to restore longrun equilibrium, but also that consumption booms have anticipated equilibrium-restoring increases in housing wealth. Furthermore, we estimate two alternative econometric models which are more robust to instability in the long-run relationship. All three of our models suggest that permanent changes in wealth have economically important effects on consumption. The dollar-for dollar-effect of financial wealth exceeds that of housing wealth. |
| JEL: | C22 C32 E21 |
| Date: | 2008–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nzb:nzbdps:2008/05&r=ure |
| By: | Bøg, Martin |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the question of how well we understand segregation. The point of departure is Schelling’s spatial proximity model in one dimension. By introducing noise I show that segregation emerges as the long run prediction of neighborhood evolution, both when residents have Schelling-type threshold preferences and strict preferences for diversity. Analytical result are complemented with numerical simulations which show that within a reasonable time frame full segregation does not occur. When residents have a preference for diversity, I show that a natural perturbation away from the diversity monomorphism dramatically alters the long run prediction: integration is the unique long run prediction, even in the absence of noise. |
| Keywords: | segregation; Markov Process; Stochastic Stability; simulations |
| JEL: | D62 C73 C72 |
| Date: | 2007–01–25 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:8774&r=ure |
| By: | Paul Bingley (Department of Economics, Aarhus School of Business, 8000 Aarhus, Denmark); Vibeke Myrup Jensen (Department of Economics, Aarhus School of Business, 8000 Aarhus, Denmark); Ian Walker (Department of Economics) |
| Abstract: | This paper is concerned with the relationship between class size and the student outcome – length of time in post-compulsory schooling. Research on this topic has been problematic partly because omitted unobservables, like parents’ incomes and education levels, are likely to be correlated with class size. Two potential ways to resolve this problem are to exploit either experimental or instrumental variation. In both cases, the methods require that the variation in both class size and the outcome should not be contaminated by other unobservable factors that affect the outcome – like family background. An alternative approach, which we pursue here, is to take advantage of variation in class size between siblings which allows unobservable family effects to be differenced out. Our aim is to combine sibling differences with a fuzzy rule that determines class size to provide estimates of the effect of class size and use these to conduct an evaluation of the costs and benefits of a reduction in class sizes. |
| Keywords: | class size, regression discontinuity, sibling differences |
| JEL: | I22 C23 |
| Date: | 2007–06–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucd:wpaper:200717&r=ure |
| By: | Kerman Calvo (University of Essex); Lucinda Platt (Institute for Social and Economic Research); Maurice Sunkin (University of Essex) |
| Abstract: | This paper raises some of the key issues that have emerged from our study of the impact of judicial review litigation on the quality of local government services in England and Wales. Judicial Review is the High Court procedure by which those with a ‘sufficient interest’ can challenge decisions of public authorities on the grounds that authorities have failed to meet their legal obligations, including human rights obligations; or have acted unfairly or exceeded or abused their legal powers (or threatened to do these things). The paper discusses whether or not a greater engagement with public law litigation, as experienced in the UK in recent times, may be leading to improvements or declines – in access to services and in service delivery for individuals and classes of services user, to improvements in the clarity and accountability of processes within local authorities, and to greater levels of legal awareness, including the furtherance of the practical application of the rule of law. We focus on two areas of local authority activity: housing and homelessness and children’s services; and we distinguish in the paper between the impact of challenges, and the impact of judicial decisions. The paper draws on a series of qualitative interviews with ‘key informants’ in local authorities; and presents analyses of judicial review decisions of national significance in the area of children’s services. Our conclusions at this stage are tentative and indicate areas that we intend to pursue further. Our most general observation is that judicial review is a significant aspect of an environment that over the past two decades has subjected local authorities to an increasing range of external regulatory and controlling mechanisms. Against this background, we observe that judicial review is distinctive in various ways. We identify several potentially distinctive features of judicial review from a quality perspective, including its focus on individual problems, its ability to subject decisions to close scrutiny and its ability to provide authoritative statements as to local authorities’ duties. We also consider the circumstances under which decisions are likely to have most (or least) impact on the working and quality of local authority services. |
| Keywords: | public law, public services |
| Date: | 2007–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ese:iserwp:2007-34&r=ure |
| By: | Ian Walker (University of Warwick and Institute for Fiscal Studies); Yu Zhu (University of Kent and Centre for the Economics of Education) |
| Abstract: | The widely held view that separation has adverse effects on children has been the basis of important policy interventions. While a small number of analyses have been concerned with selection into divorce, no studies have attempted to separate out the effects of one parent (mostly the father) leaving, from the effects of that parent's money leaving, on the outcomes for the child. This paper is concerned with early school leaving and educational attainment and their relationship to parental separation, and parental incomes. While we find that parental separation has strong effects on these outcomes this result seems not to be robust to adding additional control variables. In particular, we find that when we include income our results then indicate that father’s departure appears to be unimportant for early school leaving and academic achievement, while income is significant. This suggests that income may have been an important unobservable, that is correlated with separation and the outcome variables, in earlier research. Indeed, this finding also seems to be true in our instrumental variables analysis – although the effect of income is slightly weakened. |
| Keywords: | parental separation, parental incomes, early school leaving, educational attainment |
| JEL: | D13 D31 J12 J13 J16 J22 |
| Date: | 2007–06–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucd:wpaper:200722&r=ure |
| By: | Simon Appleton; Paul Atherton; Michael Bleaney |
| Abstract: | We expand Hanushek and Kimko’s (2000) analysis of the relationship between schooling quality, as measured by scores in international tests, and growth. We take account of another fifteen years of growth and approximately twice as many test score results. We treat the data first as a panel, relating growth only to test scores at earlier dates, and then as a cross-section. In both cases we find the effect of schooling quality on growth to be statistically significant but substantially smaller than that reported by Hanushek and Kimko (2000) and Hanushek and Woessmann (2007). |
| Keywords: | Growth, human capital, education |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:not:notcre:08/04&r=ure |
| By: | Andrea Vaona (Facoltà di Economia, Università di Lugano, Svizzera; Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Kiel, Germany; University of Verona, Department of Economic Sciences, Verona, Italy); Roberto Patuelli (Facoltà di Economia, Università di Lugano, Svizzera) |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we show that the regional finance-growth nexus in Italy is robust to a series of innovations with respect to the existing literature on the topic. We use finer measures of economic and financial development, as well as instruments with a deeper economic content. We rely on state-of-the-art cross-sectional and panel estimation methods, and we offer a thorough investigation of the nonlinearities in the relation between finance and growth. Our results show that, while local financial development is a key factor for economic growth, in regions with inefficient courts more credit might translate into reduced growth due to opportunistic behaviour and the consequent misallocation of funds. |
| Keywords: | Finance, Growth, Regions, Italy, Cross-Section Analysis, Panel Data Analysis |
| JEL: | O18 O16 C31 |
| Date: | 2008–05–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lug:wpaper:0805&r=ure |
| By: | Arnaud Chevalier (Dept. of Economics, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, TW20 OEX + Geary Institute, University College Dublin); Steve Gibbons (Department of Geography, London School of Economics + Centre for Economics Performance, London School of Economics); Andy Thorpe (Department of Economics, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth); Sherria Hoskins (Department of Psychology, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth) |
| Abstract: | Participation rates in higher education differ persistently between some groups in society. Using two British datasets we investigate whether this gap is rooted in students’ misperception of their own and other’s ability, thereby increasing the expected costs to studying. Among high school pupils, we find that pupils with a more positive view of their academic abilities are more likely to expect to continue to higher education even after controlling for observable measures of ability and students’ characteristics. University students are also poor at estimating their own test-performance and over-estimate their predicted test score. However, females, white and working class students have less inflated view of themselves. Self-perception has limited impact on the expected probability of success and expected returns amongst these university students. |
| Keywords: | Test performance, self-assessment, higher education participation, academic selfperception |
| JEL: | I21 J16 Y80 |
| Date: | 2007–09–24 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucd:wpaper:200729&r=ure |
| By: | Albert Solé-Ollé (Universitat de Barcelona (UB); Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB); CESifo); Pilar Sorribas-Navarro (Universitat Barcelona (UB); Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB)) |
| Abstract: | In this paper we test the hypothesis that intergovernmental grants allocated to co-partisans buy more political support than grants allocated to local governments controlled by opposition parties. We use a rich Spanish database containing information about the grants received by 617 municipalities during the period 1993-2003 from two different upper-tier governments (Regional and Upper-local), as well as data of municipal voting behaviour at three electoral contests held at the different layers of government during this period. Therefore, we are able to estimate two different vote equations, analysing the effects of grants given to aligned and unaligned municipalities on the vote share of the incumbent party/parties at the regional and local elections. We account for the endogeneity of grants by instrumenting them with the average amount of grants distributed by upper-layer governments. The results suggest that grants given to co-partisans buy some political support, but that grants given to opposition parties do not bring any votes, suggesting that the grantee reaps as much political credit from intergovernmental grants as the grantor |
| Keywords: | Voting, parties, grants. |
| JEL: | C72 D72 |
| Date: | 2008 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ieb:wpaper:2008/5/doc2008-2&r=ure |
| By: | Lavinia Parisi (Institute for Social and Economic Research) |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses, for Southern European countries, the link between the poverty status of young people who leave home and the economic status of their family of origin. First we model the poverty status of those who leave home while also accounting for the fact that youths from better-off households are more likely to leave home (a sample selection model). Second we address the time at risk of leaving home using a competing risks duration model. Estimates from both approaches suggest that young people delay leaving home because it may increase their chances of being poor. Moreover both approaches indicate that young people who have left home are more likely to be poor if their family of origin is poor and that differences across countries are not statistically significant. |
| Keywords: | poverty persistence, young people, youth poverty |
| Date: | 2008–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ese:iserwp:2008-12&r=ure |
| By: | Maria Concetta Chiuri; Daniela Del Boca |
| Abstract: | While several social, economic and financial indicators point to a growing convergence among European countries, striking differences still emerge in the timing of leaving home for adult children. In Southern countries (as Spain, Italy or Portugal) in 2001 more than 70 percent of young adults between 18 and 34 years of age live with their parents, whereas the corresponding number for Northern countries (like Denmark or the UK) is well below 40 percent. Existing literature highlights several factors explaining the different patterns in Europe: preferences and culture, labor market conditions, housing market as well as differences across the welfare states. In our work, we consider living arrangements of people 18-34 years old from 14 European countries (ECHP). We augment the informational content with indicators of labor, housing and marriage markets characteristics as well as proxy for the welfare states and culture. We investigate how they are intertwined with gender differences |
| Keywords: | coups, Living arrangements,duration analysis, government expenditures. |
| JEL: | J13 C41 H53 |
| Date: | 2008 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cca:wpaper:75&r=ure |