|
on Urban and Real Estate Economics |
| By: | Gabrielle Fack; Julien Grenet |
| Abstract: | It is now widely understood that the quality of state schools in a neighbourhood has an impact on local house prices. Analysing data for Paris, Gabrielle Fack and Julien Grenet have looked deeper into this link by exploring how the presence of private schools influences parents' willingness to pay to live near good state schools. |
| Keywords: | School catchment areas, France, private education, public education, housing, house prices |
| Date: | 2011–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepcnp:350&r=ure |
| By: | Steve Gibbons; Henry Overman |
| Abstract: | Average earnings vary widely across the regions of Britain, a fact that has prompted many decades of policies aimed at reducing regional disparities. But as Henry Overman and Steve Gibbons demonstrate, such variation reveals little, especially if we ignore regional differences in the cost of living and availability of local amenities. |
| Keywords: | wage, disparities, labour,Britain, spatial equilibrium, amenity value, housing market |
| JEL: | J31 J60 R11 R23 R29 |
| Date: | 2011–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepcnp:353&r=ure |
| By: | Wouter Vermeulen |
| Abstract: | Should constraints on urban expansion be relaxed because of external agglomeration economies? In a system of heterogeneous cities, we demonstrate that second-best land use policy consists of a tax on city creation and a subsidy (tax) on urban development in cities in which the marginal-average productivity gap is above (below) average. However, the implementation of this policy requires coordination at the system level. A tax on city creation does not raise welfare if development taxes are set decentrally by competitive urban developers, nor does correction of these taxes raise welfare if a tax on city creation is unavailable. In the resulting constrained optimal allocation, urban development is subsidized in all cities. The quantitative significance of these findings is explored in an application of our model. |
| Keywords: | Agglomeration externalities, growth controls, second-best policy, systems ofcities |
| JEL: | R52 R12 R13 |
| Date: | 2011–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:sercdp:0093&r=ure |
| By: | Matthias Duschl (Department of Geography, Philipps University Marburg); Antje Schimke (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)); Thomas Brenner (Department of Geography, Philipps University Marburg); Dennis Luxen (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)) |
| Abstract: | In this paper the relationship between firm growth and external knowledge sources, such as related firms and universities, is studied. The spatial characteristics of these relationships are examined by geolocating firms into a more realistic relational space using travel time distances and using flexible distance decay function specifications. This approach properly accounts for growth relevant knowledge spillovers and allows for estimating their spatial range and functional form. Applying quantile regression techniques on a large sample of German manufacturing firms, we show that the impact of external factors substantially differ along firms’ size, type of knowledge source and growth level. |
| Keywords: | Firm growth, external factors, universities, agglomeration, space, spatial range, distance decay functions, knowledge spillovers, high growth firms, quantile regression |
| JEL: | C31 D92 L25 R11 |
| Date: | 2011–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pum:wpaper:2011-03&r=ure |
| By: | De Witte, K.; Van Klaveren, C.; Smets, A. |
| Abstract: | In an attempt to stop the rampant suburbanization, which countries experienced after World War II, a 'new town' policy was enrolled. As a major objective, and related to its origins, new towns were effective in attracting low and medium income households. Nowadays, cities and municipalities experience an increased accountability in which incentives are provided by 'naming and shaming'. This paper focuses on an issue where both historical and local policy come together: early school leaving. Using an iterative matching analysis, it suggests how to account for differences in population and regional characteristics. In other words, how to compare and interpret early school leaving in new towns in a more `fair' way. The results point out that (statistically) mitigating historical differences is necessary, even though this does not necessarily means that 'naming' is replaced by 'shaming'. |
| Keywords: | Urban Economics; New Town; Early School Leaving; Naming and Shaming; Iterative Matching, Urban Planning |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tir:wpaper:39&r=ure |
| By: | Andrew C Worthington; Helen Higgs |
| Keywords: | Housing affordability, affordability drivers, housing policy |
| JEL: | C22 R21 R31 G21 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gri:fpaper:finance:201116&r=ure |
| By: | Stephan Whitaker; Thomas J. Fitzpatrick IV |
| Abstract: | In this empirical analysis, we estimate the impact of vacancy, neglect associated with material property-tax delinquency, and foreclosures on the value of neighboring homes using parcel-level observations. To our knowledge, this is only the second study which estimates the impact of vacancy itself and the first to estimate the impact of tax-delinquent properties on neighboring home sales. |
| Keywords: | Foreclosure ; Housing - Prices |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedcwp:1123&r=ure |
| By: | Lööf , Hans (CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies, Royal Institute of Technology); Johansson, Börje (CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies, Royal Institute of Technology) |
| Abstract: | This paper assesses the contribution to productivity of firms’ internal innovation efforts and spatially-specific factors. A dynamic GMM-estimator is applied to a panel of close to 3,000 firms located in 81 Swedish regions and observed over a 10-year period. The magnitude of benefits from the knowledge milieu of an agglomeration is sizeable, but varies between firms depending on their particular R&D-strategy and location within a metropolitan region. |
| Keywords: | R&D; innovation-strategy; productivity; metropolitan; externalities |
| JEL: | C23 O31 O32 |
| Date: | 2011–10–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:cesisp:0260&r=ure |
| By: | Algan, Yann (Sciences Po, Paris); Hémet, Camille (Sciences Po, Paris); Laitin, David D. (Stanford University) |
| Abstract: | This paper demonstrates the effects of ethnic and religious diversity on the quality of public spaces. Its identification strategy relies on the exogeneity of public housing allocations in France, and thereby eliminates the bias from endogenous sorting. The paper uses micro evidence of social interactions within housing blocks from the representative French Housing survey, which allows for a detailed identification of the channels through which diversity operates. Differentiating among three channels of public goods provision, the paper finds that heterogeneity in the housing block leads to low levels of sanctions for anti-social behavior and low levels of collective action to improve housing conditions, but no losses in public safety. |
| Keywords: | fractionalization, public goods, collective action, discrimination |
| JEL: | H10 H41 |
| Date: | 2011–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6053&r=ure |
| By: | John William Hatfield (Graduate School of Business, Stanford University); Fuhito Kojima (Department of Economics, Stanford University); Yusuke Narita (Department of Economics, MIT) |
| Abstract: | We study the effect of different school choice mechanisms on schools' incentives for quality improvement. To do so, we introduce the following criterion: A mechanism respects improvements of school quality if each school becomes weakly better off whenever that school becomes more preferred by students. We first show that no stable mechanism, or mechanism that is Pareto efficient for students (such as the Boston and top trading cycles mechanisms), respects improvements of school quality. Nevertheless, for large school districts, we demonstrate that any stable mechanism approximately respects improvements of school quality; by contrast, the Boston and top trading cycles mechanisms fail to do so. Thus a stable mechanism may provide better incentives for schools to improve themselves than the Boston and top trading cycles mechanisms. |
| Keywords: | Matching; School Choice; School Competition; Stability; Efficiency |
| JEL: | C78 D78 H75 I21 |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hka:wpaper:2011-018&r=ure |
| By: | Dionissi Aliprantis |
| Abstract: | This paper presents a new perspective on results from the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) housing mobility program. Building on recent developments in the program evaluation literature, this paper defines several treatment effect parameters and then estimates and interprets these parameters using data from MTO. The evaluation framework is used to make a clear distinction between the interpretation of Intent to Treat (ITT) and Treatment on the Treated (TOT) parameters as program effects and Local Average Treatment Effect (LATE) parameters as neighborhood effects. This distinction helps to clarify that results from MTO are only informative about a small subset of neighborhood effects of interest. Tests for instrument strength show that MTO induced large changes in neighborhood poverty rates. However, it is also shown that MTO induced remarkably little variation in many of the other neighborhood and school characteristics believed to influence outcomes and that much of this variation was confined to the tails of these characteristics' national distributions. Consistent with prevailing theories of neighborhood effects, labor market and health outcomes improved when households moved to neighborhoods with characteristics at or above the national median. The evidence suggests housing mobility programs designed to induce moves to neighborhoods with characteristics in addition to or in lieu of low poverty might induce larger effects than MTO, and results point to the investigation of heterogeneity in program effects from MTO as a fruitful direction for future research. |
| Keywords: | Housing policy ; Poverty |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedcwp:1122&r=ure |
| By: | Karsten Jeske; Dirk Krueger; Kurt Mitman |
| Abstract: | This paper evaluates the macroeconomic and distributional effects of government bailout guarantees for Government Sponsored Enterprises (such as Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac) in the mortgage market. In order to do so we construct a model with heterogeneous, infinitely lived households and competitive housing and mortgage markets. Households have the option to default on their mortgages, with the consequence of having their homes foreclosed. We model the bailout guarantee as a government provided and tax-financed mortgage interest rate subsidy. We find that eliminating this subsidy leads to substantially lower equilibrium mortgage origination and increases aggregate welfare, but has little effect on foreclosure rates and housing investment. The interest rate subsidy is a regressive policy: eliminating it benefits low-income and low-asset households who did not own homes or had small mortgages, while lowering the welfare of high-income, high-asset households. |
| JEL: | E21 G11 R21 |
| Date: | 2011–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17537&r=ure |
| By: | Andrew C Worthington |
| Keywords: | Housing affordability, affordability drivers, tax and regulatory policy |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gri:fpaper:finance:201114&r=ure |
| By: | Simone Miyuki Hirakawa; Rodrigo De Losso da Silveira Bueno |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anp:en2009:127&r=ure |
| By: | Robert Clifford |
| Abstract: | Housing foreclosure activity in the United States and New England increased dramatically at the beginning of the housing crisis in 2006 and remains elevated. Given their economic and social costs, policymakers have developed a number of policies designed to prevent foreclosures. In recent years, state and local policymakers in New England have implemented two major foreclosure prevention policies: foreclosure mediation programs and financial assistance programs. This report reviews these two foreclosure prevention programs in the New England region. It explores how they are funded, weighs their benefits and challenges, and discusses their effectiveness at preventing foreclosures. The report concludes with policy recommendations for current and future foreclosure prevention programs. |
| Keywords: | Foreclosure - New England |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedbcr:11-3&r=ure |
| By: | Paul W. Glewwe; Eric A. Hanushek; Sarah D. Humpage; Renato Ravina |
| Abstract: | Developing countries spend hundreds of billions of dollars each year on schools, educational materials and teachers, but relatively little is known about how effective these expenditures are at increasing students’ years of completed schooling and, more importantly, the skills that they learn while in school. This paper examines studies published between 1990 and 2010, in both the education literature and the economics literature, to investigate which specific school and teacher characteristics, if any, appear to have strong positive impacts on learning and time in school. Starting with over 9,000 studies, 79 are selected as being of sufficient quality. Then an even higher bar is set in terms of econometric methods used, leaving 43 “high quality” studies. Finally, results are also shown separately for 13 randomized trials. The estimated impacts on time in school and learning of most school and teacher characteristics are statistically insignificant, especially when the evidence is limited to the “high quality” studies. The few variables that do have significant effects – e.g. availability of desks, teacher knowledge of the subjects they teach, and teacher absence – are not particularly surprising and thus provide little guidance for future policies and programs. |
| JEL: | H4 J24 O15 |
| Date: | 2011–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17554&r=ure |
| By: | Yasusada Murata (Advanced Research Institute for the Sciences and Humanities, Nihon University); Ryo Nakajima (Department of Economics, Yokohama National University); Ryosuke Okamoto (National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies); Ryuichi Tamura (Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tsukuba) |
| Abstract: | The existence of localized knowledge spillovers found by Jaffe, Trajtenberg and Henderson (1993) has recently been challenged by Thompson and Fox-Kean (2005). To settle this debate, we develop a new approach by incorporating their concepts of control patents into the distance-based test of localization (Duranton and Overman, 2005). Using microgeographic data, we identify localization distance for each technology class while allowing for cross-boundary spillovers, unlike the existing literature where localization is detected at the state or metropolitan statistical area level. We find solid evidence supporting localized knowledge spillovers even when finer controls are used. We further relax the commonly made assumption of perfect controls, and show that the majority of technology classes exhibit localization unless hidden biases induced by imperfect controls are extremely large. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ngi:dpaper:11-11&r=ure |
| By: | Arimoto, Yutaka; Nakajima, Kentaro; Okazaki, Tetsuji |
| Abstract: | We examine two sources of productivity improvement in the specialized industrial clusters of the early twentieth century Japanese silk-reeling industry. Agglomeration improves the productivity of each plant through positive externalities, shifting plant-level productivity distribution to the right. Selection expels less productive plants through competition, truncating distribution on the left. We find no evidence confirming a right shift in the distribution in clusters or that agglomeration promotes faster productivity growth. Rather, the distribution in clusters was severely left truncated, even for younger plants. These findings imply that the plant-selection effect was the source of higher productivity in the Japanese silk-reeling clusters. |
| Keywords: | Economic geography, Heterogenous firms, Industrial clusters, Productivity |
| JEL: | R12 O18 L10 |
| Date: | 2011–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hit:primdp:7&r=ure |
| By: | Lu, Zheng; Flegg, A.Tony; Deng, Xiang |
| Abstract: | This paper elaborates on a method of measuring regional specialization and examines the trend of regional specialization in China, 1987 - 2007. It constructs a simple coefficient incorporating the effect of regional industrial scale, based on location quotients, and then measures the regional specialization of China using official statistical data. The results indicate a remarkable increase in China’s overall regional specialization during this time, as well as obvious regional and industrial differences, i.e., that the regional specialization of eastern coastal China is relatively less than that of the inland. Findings further demonstrate that special-resource-dependent industries are concentrated in regions with resource endowment, whereas industries with strong technical barriers are mainly located in regions with strong research and innovation ability. |
| Keywords: | Regional Specialization; Location Quotients; China |
| JEL: | C69 P25 R12 R11 |
| Date: | 2011–10–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:33867&r=ure |
| By: | Shonchoy, Abu S; Ito, Seiro |
| Abstract: | In 2000, Ramadan school vacation coincided with the original annual exam period of December in Bangladesh. This forced schools to pre-pone their final exam schedules in November, which was the month before the harvest begins. 'Ramadan 2000' is a natural experiment that reduced the labor demand for children during the exam period. Using household level panel data of 2000 and 2003, and after controlling for various unobservable variations including individual fixed effects, aggregate year effects, and subdistrict-level year effects, this paper finds evidence of statistically significant impact of seasonal labor demand on school dropout in Bangladesh among the children from agricultural households. |
| Keywords: | Bangladesh, Child labor, Schools, Labor market, Drop out, Seasonal labor demand, School calendar |
| JEL: | I28 J24 O13 O15 |
| Date: | 2011–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jet:dpaper:dpaper295&r=ure |
| By: | Kevin Elie Beaubrun-Diant (LEDa - Laboratoire d'Economie de Dauphine - Université Paris Dauphine - Paris IX); Tristan-Pierre Maury (Research Center on Economics - École des hautes études commerciales du Nord (EDHEC)) |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we provide a new empirical analysis of the dynamic portfolio decisions of households by simultaneously considering their stock market participation and home tenure choices. There is already a huge body of literature on housing status (own/rent) decisions and many contributions doc- umented the low stock market participation rate of US households. Although some papers evidenced that the home status (modeled as an exogenous variable) has an impact on the stock proportion in portfolio, our paper is the rst one to allow both decisions (home and stock) to be simultaneous and endogenous. We estimate a dynamic bivariate logistic panel data model on Panel Study of income Dynamics data from 1999 to 2007 controlling for sample selection bias and time-invariant unobserved heterogeneity. We rst evidence that our original joint setup outperforms a standard one (with two distinct equations for stock holdings and for home tenure), i.e. marginal odds ratios are signi cant. Using these estimates, we are able to simulate individual paths of stock and home equity positions over the life cycle according to households attributes. Ceteris Paribus, we show that households taking positions in one asset (home or stock) encounter a positive position in the other asset at an earlier stage in their life cycle, i.e. some households appear to be locked in a no-stock-and-renter position. |
| Keywords: | Housing, Stock market participation, Portfolio choices, Panel Data |
| Date: | 2011–10–24 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-00635582&r=ure |
| By: | Helen Higgs; Andrew C Worthington |
| Keywords: | Retail finance demand, housing loans, term loans, credit card loans, margin loans |
| JEL: | C22 D14 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gri:fpaper:finance:201117&r=ure |
| By: | Dionissi Aliprantis |
| Abstract: | Our understanding of effects from kindergarten entrance age is complicated by at least two facts: a child’s age relative to their classmates may be just as important as their entrance age, and the choice of parents or schools to delay a child’s enrollment> is likely to be correlated with entrance age effects. This paper addresses both of these issues by presenting a novel identification strategy for separately estimating effects from entrance and relative age at school entry that addresses the issue of essential heterogeneity. After first selecting a sample of children from the ECLS-K data set with quasi-random variation in entrance and relative ages, this paper then specifi es and estimates education production functions for achievement. Entrance age parameters are positive, large, and persist until the spring of third grade. Relative age parameters are smaller, tend to be negative, and fade out for math achievement by third grade. The estimated parameters have the following implications for the average child in our sample: both an earlier entrance cutoff date and an earlier birth date will increase achievement if the child remains eligible. There is evidence of extreme heterogeneity in effects by gender and home environment, and these are likely to be the results most relevant for policy. |
| Keywords: | Education ; Early childhood education |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedcwp:1126&r=ure |
| By: | Nathan Yang (Department of Economics, University of Toronto) |
| Abstract: | This paper advances our collective knowledge about the role of learning in retail agglomeration. Uncertainty about new markets provides an opportunity for sequential learning, where one firm's past entry decisions signal to others the potential profitability of risky markets. The setting is Canada's hamburger fast food industry from its early days in 1970 to 2005, for which simple analysis of my unique data reveals empirical patterns pointing towards retail agglomeration. The notion that uninformed potential entrants have an incentive to learn, but not informed incumbents, motivates an intuitive double-difference approach that separately identifies learning by exploiting differences in the way potential entrants and incumbents react to spillovers. This identification strategy confirms that information externalities are key drivers of agglomeration. Estimates from a dynamic oligopoly model of entry with information externalities provide further evidence of learning, as I show that common uncertainty matters. Counterfactual analysis reveals that an industry with uncertainty is initially less competitive than an industry with certainty, but catches up over time. Furthermore, there are many instances in which chains enter markets they would have avoided had they not faced uncertainty. Finally, consistent with the interpretation of uncertainty as an entry barrier, I find that chains place significant premiums on certainty at proportions beyond 2% of their total value from being monopolists. |
| Keywords: | Agglomeration, commercial real estate investment, dynamic discrete choice game, entry and exit, investment delay, market structure, retail competition. |
| JEL: | C73 D83 L13 L66 L81 R00 |
| Date: | 2011–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:net:wpaper:1116&r=ure |
| By: | Meyer, E.; Van Klaveren, C. |
| Abstract: | Policies that aim at improving student achievement frequently increase instructional time, for example by means of an extended day program. There is, however, hardly any evidence that these programs are effective, and the few studies that allow causal inference indicate that we should expect neutral to small effects of such programs. This study conducts a randomized field experiment to estimate the effect of an extended day program in seven Dutch elementary schools on math and reading achievement. The empirical results show that this three-month program had a modest but non-significant effect on math, and no significant effect on reading achievement. |
| Keywords: | Extended Day; Increased Instructional Time; Random Assignment; Field Experiment |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tir:wpaper:40&r=ure |
| By: | Rosetta Lombardo; Marianna Falcone (Dipartimento di Economia e Statistica, Università della Calabria) |
| Abstract: | Crime is a complex phenomenon which needs to be investigated at appropriate disaggregate temporal and territorial levels of analysis. The specic issue addressed in this paper concerns the possibility of classifying Italian provinces in groups by using a new methodology that combines cluster analysis with panel time series data regarding a wide range of crime indicators, economic performance indicators and other socio-demographic variables. Our main contribution is to show that crime is not inextricably linked to geographic location as is usually believed. From this point of view, the position of the Italian Mezzogiorno has two facets; one is found in those relatively not affluent provinces which are resistant to random street and organized crime while the other facet is encountered in those provinces which are caught in a vicious circle where increasing criminal activity and weak economic performance feed on each other to undermine the security of the population. The pattern for the Center-North of Italy is much more varied and composed of a series of four clusters. In particular, there is a relatively large cluster of provinces which should be considered at risk because of an increasing value added per capita, high rates of population replacement and female employment; all conditions that might attract and encourage criminal activity. |
| Keywords: | Law-breaking behavior, Local economic development, Socio-economic factors, Cluster analysis, Time-series-cross-section data |
| JEL: | C32 E27 D73 K42 O1 R11 |
| Date: | 2011–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:clb:wpaper:201112&r=ure |
| By: | Wang, Zigan; Zhu, Youwei |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we build the rationale of the financial intermediate's decision of making loans to potential home buyers over an infinite time horizon. In the first period "good" borrowers with stable future income flows receive loans and buy homes. In later periods, the intermediate securitizes the loans to raise new capital and makes loans to some of the "bad" borrowers with uncertain future income flows. Currently, we simplify the securitization as a tool to raise capital without cost over time. This unrealistic simplification should be improved in later work. The financial intermediate calculates the expected payoffs in different scenarios under the realizations of uncertainty to decide whether to make loans to a new borrower and whether to liquidate a house if the owner is short of liquidity in the short run. After clarifying the sequence of moves of different agents within each period, we compute the financial intermediate's decision rule described by a Bellman equation. Then we simulate borrowers' income realization and produce a figure of house price as well as value function over time. |
| Keywords: | Real estate market; house price; securitization; mortgage-backed securities; bubble; dynamic forward looking model |
| JEL: | C6 L85 P25 R21 R31 R33 |
| Date: | 2011–05–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:34395&r=ure |
| By: | Grahn-Voorneveld, Sofia (VTI) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the incentives for different countries to cooperate concerning pricing in transport systems, and how to handle the profit from such cooperation. Two types of simple networks with congestion are considered; one with parallel links, and one serial network with a number of consecutive links. The owner of each link tolls the traffic using the link. First the incentives for cooperative behavior among the countries are studied, and shown to be considerable. This is done by using non-cooperative game theory. Second, cooperative game theory is used to analyse solution concepts for allocating the resources raised from cooperation. |
| Keywords: | Transport networks; game theory; cooperative game theory |
| JEL: | C71 C72 H71 L92 R41 |
| Date: | 2011–11–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ctswps:2011_007&r=ure |
| By: | Konrad B. Burchardi; Tarek A. Hassan |
| Abstract: | We use the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 to show that personal relationships which individuals maintain for non-economic reasons can be an important determinant of regional economic growth. We show that West German households who have social ties to East Germany in 1989 experience a persistent rise in their personal incomes after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Moreover, the presence of these households significantly affects economic performance at the regional level: it increases the returns to entrepreneurial activity, the share of households who become entrepreneurs, and the likelihood that firms based within a given West German region invest in East Germany. As a result, West German regions which (for idiosyncratic reasons) have a high concentration of households with social ties to the East exhibit substantially higher growth in income per capita in the early 1990s. A one standard deviation rise in the share of households with social ties to East Germany in 1989 is associated with a 4.6 percentage point rise in income per capita over six years. We interpret our findings as evidence of a causal link between social ties and regional economic development. |
| Keywords: | economic development, German reuni cation, networks, social ties |
| JEL: | O11 J61 L14 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp405&r=ure |
| By: | Konstantin A. Kholodilin; Andreas Mense |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we propose an indicator of the homeownership rate based on Internet ads offering the housing for rent and sale. We constructed the HOR estimate using the number of ads in four different markets (flats for rent, flats for sale, houses for rent, and houses for sale). Our HOR indicator was tested using data of German NUTS1 and planning (ROR) regions. The correlation between our estimate of the HOR and the alternative HOR figures varies between 0.834 and 0.874 at NUTS1 level and is 0.761 at the ROR level. All correlation coefficients are statistically significant. Our HOR estimate is particularly highly correlated with the official HOR figures. Thus, it is shown that our Internet-based indices could serve as a good indicator of the homeownership rate in German regions. |
| Keywords: | Internet ads, homeownership rate, German regions, NUTS, planning regions |
| JEL: | C21 O47 R11 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp1168&r=ure |
| By: | Jason M. Fletcher (Yale University); Stephen L. Ross (University of Connecticut) |
| Abstract: | Researchers typically examine peer effects by defining the peer group broadly (all classmates, schoolmates, neighbors) because of the lack of friendship information in many data sources as well as to enable the use of plausibly exogenous variation in peer group composition across cohorts in the same school. This paper estimates the effects of friend's health behaviors on own health behaviors for adolescents. A causal effect of friend's health behaviors is identified by comparing similar individuals who have the same friendship opportunities because they attend the same school and make the same friendship choices, under the assumption that the friendship choice reveals information about an individual's unobservables. We combine this identification strategy with a cross-cohort, within school design so that the model is identified based on across grade differences in the clustering of health behaviors within specific friendship options. This strategy allows us to separate the effect of friends behavior on own behavior from the effect of friends observables attributes on behavior, a key aspect of the reflection problem. We use a partial equilibrium model of friendship formation in order to derive the conditions under which our identification strategy will provide consistent estimates, and the key assumption required for our strategy to be feasible is supported by the empirical patterns of across cohort variation that we observe in our data. Our results suggest that friendship network effects are important in determining adolescent tobacco and alcohol use, but are over-estimated in specifications that do not fully take into account the endogeneity of friendship selection by 15-25%. |
| Date: | 2011–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hka:wpaper:2011-011&r=ure |
| By: | Sergio Beraldo; Raul Caruso; Gilberto Turati |
| Abstract: | This paper tests the relationship between time preferences and crime rates as posited by Davis (1988), whose theoretical analysis suggests that individuals’ attitude towards the future significantly affect their propensity to commit crime. Our empirical analysis is based on a panel of Italian regions for the period 2002-2007. Various proxies for time preferences are considered: the consumer credit share out of the total amount of loans to households, the share of obese individuals out of the total population, and the rate of marriages out of the total population. In line with the theoretical prediction, our empirical analysis confirms that where people are more impatient and discount the future more heavily, property and violent crimes are higher. Results are robust to a number of alternative specifications including covariates drawn from the literature on the determinants of crime. |
| Keywords: | Time Preferences, Property Crime, Violent Crime, Italian Regions, Panel data. |
| JEL: | D99 K42 Z13 |
| Date: | 2011–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:icr:wpicer:18-2011&r=ure |
| By: | Olivier Marie |
| Abstract: | The heavy police presence at football matches in England has reduced hooliganism in the stadium - but at what cost in terms of both policying budgets and under-protected places elsewhere in the neighbourhood? Olivier Marie examines the multiple effects of football matches on crime. |
| Keywords: | Football, police, crime |
| JEL: | K10 K42 |
| Date: | 2011–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepcnp:348&r=ure |
| By: | Jonathan Fox (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany); Mikko Myrskylä (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany) |
| Abstract: | During the 1920s and early 1930s, fertility in American municipalities declined overall and with large variation between areas and across time. Using data for 1923-1932 on fertility and public spending for over 50 large cities, we show that the local government programs of health education and outdoor care of poor had the unintended effect of reducing fertility. Fixed effects regressions indicate a $4 increase in per capita public health education spending or a $37 increase in poor relief reduced the TFR by 0.1. This suggests that cities spending in the 75th percentile on health education experienced a 1.95% faster fertility decline than cities spending in the 25th percentile. For poor relief the difference was 1.45%. The mechanisms may be related to increased breastfeeding, social insurance incentives or the stressing of a two child home. The results help explain differing fertility trends, and highlight how policy may unintentionally reduce fertility. |
| Keywords: | USA, fertility, fertility decline, public health, social welfare |
| JEL: | J1 Z0 |
| Date: | 2011–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dem:wpaper:wp-2011-018&r=ure |
| By: | Lundberg, Mattias (CTS); Jenpanitsub, Anchalee (Mass Rapid Transit Authority of Thailand) |
| Abstract: | Cost overrun of transport projects is one of the most important problems in transport planning. It also makes the result of the cost-benefit analyses uncertain, thus decreasing their usefulness for decision making. In recent years more emphasis has been put on improving cost calculations and reducing cost overruns, in Sweden and internationally. Still cost overruns have not decreased. We find that the average cost overrun in Swedish road projects is similar to other countries, while it is lower than in other countries for rail. Small projects (< 100 million SEK) have much higher cost overruns than large projects and constitute a large share of total overruns. A project type with large overruns, both in absolute and relative terms, is new rail tracks on existing lines. To improve cost estimates in Sweden, the Successive Calculation method has recently been applied. We find that the variance is significantly lower in these than in actual outcomes, and that the difference is surprisingly small between projects in different planning stages. Another method, Reference Class Forecasting, is demonstrated in two case studies. It results in higher required uplifts. An interesting way forward would be to develop risk-based estimating, based on principal component analysis. To do that, a database needs to be collected, which in turn demands better follow-up procedures. |
| Keywords: | Cost overrun; cost estimates; actual costs; successive calculation; reference class forecasting |
| JEL: | R40 R42 |
| Date: | 2011–11–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ctswps:2011_011&r=ure |
| By: | M. Carree; A. Della Malva; E. Santarelli |
| Abstract: | New entrepreneurial ventures may represent a viable and effective mechanism to transform academic knowledge into regional economic growth. We test this notion for the Italian provinces between 2001 and 2006. We evaluate three outputs of academic activities: teaching, research and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) activities management. New ventures may be able to transform the mentioned outputs into improved economic performance. The findings show that the effects of academic outputs on provincial economic growth (all sectors) are appreciable when they are associated with sustained entrepreneurial activities in the province. It suggests that academic inquiry may provide new ventures with valuable commercial opportunities overseen by established companies. |
| JEL: | I23 O18 O34 R11 |
| Date: | 2011–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bol:bodewp:wp793&r=ure |
| By: | Kopsch, Fredrik (VTI) |
| Abstract: | The aim of this study is to estimate the price elasticity of demand for domestic air travel in Sweden. Using national aggregated data on passenger quantities and fares, price elasticities of demand are estimated with an unbalanced, in terms of stationarity, yet well performing model. The analysis also includes estimates of cross-price elasticities for the main transport substitutes to air travel, rail and road. The robustness of the results is enforced by a primitive division of business and leisure travellers. The results indicate that aggregated demand flr domestic air travel in Sweden is fairly elastic (-0.84) in the short-run and more elastic (-1.13) in the long-run. The robustness test of the model show that leisere travellers, as defined in the data, are more sensitive to price changes than are business travellers. Furthermore, the cross price elasticity between rail and air travel is found to be 0.44. |
| Keywords: | Aviation; elasticity; transport; demand |
| JEL: | C22 D12 Q58 R41 |
| Date: | 2011–11–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ctswps:2011_008&r=ure |
| By: | Marianne Bertrand; Jessica Pan |
| Abstract: | This paper explores the importance of the home and school environments in explaining the gender gap in disruptive behavior. We document large differences in the gender gap across key features of the home environment – boys do especially poorly in broken families. In contrast, we find little impact of the early school environment on non-cognitive gaps. Differences in endowments explain a small part of boys’ non-cognitive deficit in single-mother families. More importantly, non-cognitive returns to parental inputs differ markedly by gender. Broken families are associated with worse parental inputs and boys’ non-cognitive development, unlike girls’, appears extremely responsive to such inputs. |
| JEL: | J13 J16 |
| Date: | 2011–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17541&r=ure |
| By: | Dungey, Mardi; Dwyer, Gerald P.; Flavin, Thomas (School of Economics and Finance, University of Tasmania) |
| Abstract: | The misevaluation of risk in securitized ?nancial products is central to understand- ing the Financial Crisis of 2007-2008. This paper characterizes the evolution of factors a¤ecting collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) based on subprime mortgages. A key feature of subprime-mortgage backed indices is that they are distinct in their vintage of issuance. Using a latent factor framework that incorporates this vintage e¤ect, we show the increasing importance of a common factor on more senior tranches during the crisis. We examine this common factor and its relationship with spreads. We estimate the e¤ects on the common factor of the ?nancial crisis. |
| Keywords: | Consumer Economics: Theory, Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis, Demographic Economics |
| Date: | 2011–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tas:wpaper:11817&r=ure |
| By: | Murakami, Kaoru |
| Abstract: | In Turkey, social assistance program has been widely criticized for being inefficient in the provision of relief. Yet there are almost no movements among poor people to make demands couched in rational and critical language for a better program, which liberal modernist thinkers idealize as the politics of need interpretation. It is generally believed that poor people are mute and excluded from the process because of their lack of discursive capital. In this paper I discuss the possibility of different varieties of participation in the politics of need interpretation by focusing on the everyday practices of the poor based on ethnographic research conducted in a low income district in Istanbul. I argue that the poor do participate in the struggle over needs, elucidating how the poor negotiate with the officials of the Fund's local branch by assuming the former image and by using religious moral language. |
| Keywords: | Turkey, Social welfare, Social policy, Poverty, Urban societies, Social assistance, Urban poor, Politics of needs interpretation, Everyday politics |
| JEL: | I38 |
| Date: | 2011–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jet:dpaper:dpaper291&r=ure |
| By: | Michel Alexandre da Silva |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anp:en2009:213&r=ure |
| By: | Fairlie, Robert W.; Hoffmann, Florian; Oreopoulos, Philip |
| Abstract: | This paper uses detailed administrative data from one of the largest community colleges in the United States to quantify the extent to which academic performance depends on students being of similar race or ethnicity to their instructors. To address the concern of endogenous sorting, we use both student and classroom fixed effects and focus on those with limited course enrolment options. We also compare sensitivity in the results from using within versus across section instructor type variation. Given the computational complexity of the 2-way fixed effects model with a large set of fixed effects we rely on numerical algorithms that exploit the particular structure of the model’s normal equations. We find that the performance gap in terms of class dropout and pass rates between white and minority students falls by roughly half when taught by a minority instructor. In models that allow for a full set of ethnic and racial interactions between students and instructors, we find African-American students perform particularly better when taught by African-American instructors. |
| Keywords: | Higher Education, Student Outcomes and Skills, Teacher and Student Interactions, Economics of Minorities and Races, Discrimination, 2-way Fixed Effect |
| JEL: | I20 I23 J24 J71 |
| Date: | 2011–10–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ubc:clssrn:clsrn_admin-2011-27&r=ure |
| By: | Okamuro, Hiroyuki; Nishimura, Junichi |
| Abstract: | This paper provides a detailed comparison of the following five cases of Japanese and European clusters in biotechnology: (1) Kobe Biomedical Innovation Cluster (KBIC) in Kobe (Japan), (2) Fuji Pharma Valley Cluster in Shizuoka Prefecture (Japan), (3) BioM Biotech Cluster in Munich (Germany), (4) BioRegion Rhine-Neckar in Heidelberg (Germany), and (5) Alsace BioValley Cluster in Strasbourg (France). We pay special attention to the cluster policy and its management by each region's core cluster management organization. Information on the focal clusters and the management of cluster policies has been obtained through interviews with the cluster directors and core staff in 2010 and 2011. We find several similarities and differences among the five cases of Japanese and European clusters. We also discuss how the management of cluster policies by the core management organizations may be related with the performance of regional clusters. |
| Keywords: | management, cluster policy, regional cluster, R&D, biotechnology, international comparison |
| JEL: | O32 O38 R58 |
| Date: | 2011–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hit:hitcei:2011-7&r=ure |
| By: | Abdulnasser Hatemi-J; Eduardo Roca |
| Keywords: | Beta, Casewise Bootstrap, Real Estate, World stock market, US Subprime Crisis, Integration |
| JEL: | F36 G15 C22 |
| Date: | 2011–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gri:fpaper:finance:201111&r=ure |
| By: | Max Nathan; Henry G. Overman |
| Abstract: | This note considers the impact of land use planning on economic performance. Specifically, we discuss some of the economic and social costs of the current English system, some of which have been underplayed in public debate. Our aim is to provide evidence to better inform discussions of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF). A companion paper ('Assessing the Government's Proposals to Reform the Planning System', SERC Policy Paper No.11, November 2011) specifically addresses the NPPF and makes recommendations for improving it. |
| Date: | 2011–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:sercpp:010&r=ure |
| By: | OSMAR TOMAZ DE SOUZA; Izete Pengo Bagolin; Flávio Comim; Sabino Silva Porto Junior |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anp:en2009:175&r=ure |
| By: | Jain, Tarun |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the impact of language on economic performance. I use the 1956 reorganization of Indian states on linguistic lines as a natural experiment to estimate the impact of speaking the majority language on educational and occupational outcomes. I find that districts that spoke the majority language of the state during colonial times enjoy persistent economic benefits, as evidenced by higher educational achievement and employment in communication intensive sectors. After reorganization, historically minority language districts experience greater growth in educational achievement, indicating that reassignment could reverse the impact of history. |
| Keywords: | Language; Communication costs; Education; Occupational choice; Reorganization of Indian states |
| JEL: | I20 O43 O15 N95 |
| Date: | 2011–11–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:34423&r=ure |
| By: | Catarina Cardoso (School of Business and Economics, Loughborough University, UK); Eric J. Pentecost (School of Business and Economics, Loughborough University, UK) |
| Abstract: | Potentially one of the most important determinants of regional economic growth and convergence is human capital, although due to a lack of data this factor is frequently omitted from econometric studies. In contrast, this paper constructs three measures of human capital at the NUTS III regional level for Portugal for the period 1991-2008 and then includes these variables in regional growth regressions. The results show that both secondary and higher levels of education have a significant positive effect on regional growth rates which may be regarded as supportive of Portuguese education policy, which over the last three decades has attempted to raise the regional human capital by locating higher education institutions across the country. |
| Keywords: | Human capital, Regional convergence, GMM |
| JEL: | C23 I21 O18 R11 |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lbo:lbowps:2011_03&r=ure |
| By: | Max Nathan; Henry G. Overman |
| Abstract: | This note discusses the UK government's proposed reforms to the land use planning system. It considers the case for reform and the extent to which the reforms are likely to meet their objectives. It then makes some suggestions on how the National Planning Policy Framework could be improved. It should be read alongside our companion evidence paper: 'What we know (and don't know) about the links between planning and economic performance'. |
| Date: | 2011–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:sercpp:011&r=ure |
| By: | ANA MARIA BONOMI BARUFI (USP/FEA); EDUARDO AMARAL HADDAD (USP/FEA); ANTONIO PAEZ (MCMASTER UNIVERSITY) |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anp:en2010:195&r=ure |
| By: | Alexander Cotte Poveda |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we analyse economic development and growth through traditional measures (gross domestic product and human development index) and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) in Colombian departments over the period 1993–2007. We use a DEA model to measure and rank economic development and growth from different approaches such as poverty, equality and security. The results show considerable variation in efficiency scores across departments. A second-stage panel data analysis with fixed effects reveals that higher levels of economic activity, quality life, employment and security are associated with a higher efficiency score based on the standards of living, poverty, equality and security. All findings of this analysis should demonstrate that economic development and growth could be achieved most effectively through a decrease in poverty, an increase in equality, a reduction in violence, and improved security. This indicates the need to generate effective policies that guarantee the achievement of these elements in the interest of all members of society. |
| Date: | 2011–10–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000137:009080&r=ure |
| By: | Jane Cooley Fruehwirth (Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin--Madison); Salvador Navarro (Department of Economics, University of Western Ontario); Yuya Takahashi (Department of Economics, University of Mannheim) |
| Abstract: | Increasingly, grade retention is viewed as an important alternative to social promotion, yet evidence to date is unable to disentangle how the effect of grade retention varies by abilities and over time. The key challenge is differential selection of students into retention across grades and by abilities. Because existing quasi-experimental methods cannot address this question, we develop a new strategy that is a hybrid between a control function and a generalization of the fixed effects approach. Applying our method to nationally-representative, longitudinal data, we find evidence of dynamic selection into retention and that the treatment effect of retention varies considerably across grades and unobservable abilities of students. Our strategy can be applied more broadly to many time-varying or multiple treatment settings. |
| Keywords: | time-varying treatments, dynamic selection, grade retention, factor analysis |
| Date: | 2011–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hka:wpaper:2011-015&r=ure |