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on Urban and Real Estate Economics |
| By: | Li, Jieying (Financial Stability Department, Central Bank of Sweden); Zhang, Xin (Research Department, Central Bank of Sweden) |
| Abstract: | Using a monthly panel dataset of individuals' debt composition including mortgage and non-mortgage consumer credit, we show that house price changes can explain a significant fraction of personal debt composition dynamics. We exploit the variation in local house price growth as shocks to homeowners' housing wealth to study the consequential adjustment of personal debt composition. To account for local demand shocks and disentangle the housing collateral channel from the wealth effect, we use renters and non-equity-withdrawal homeowners in the same region as control groups. We present direct evidence that homeowners reoptimize their debt structure by using withdrawn home equity to pay down comparatively expensive short-term non-mortgage debt during a housing boom, unsecured consumer loans in particular. We also find that homeowners withdraw home equity to finance their entrepreneurial activities. Our study sheds new light on the dynamics of personal debt composition in response to changes in house prices. |
| Keywords: | Household Decision; Personal Debt Management; Credit Constraint; Cash-out Re nancing; Entrepreneurship |
| JEL: | D14 G21 L26 R31 |
| Date: | 2017–10–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:rbnkwp:0343&r=ure |
| By: | William H. Hoyt; Aaron Yelowitz |
| Abstract: | Restrictions imposed on property assessment practices by state legislation such as Proposition 13 in California and Proposition 2½ in Massachusetts can lead to significant divergences between the assessed and market values of property, particularly for households with long tenures. As properties are assessed at their market value when sold, this can lead to a significant divergence in the property tax payment for a current homeowner and a prospective purchaser of the property. This may lead to “lock-in†, decreased mobility, of homeowners reluctant to lose their tax advantage. Here using data on single family dwellings in Lexington, KY (Fayette County) we examine another practice leading to a systematic difference between assessed and market value of properties, the practice of assessing properties in individual neighborhoods on a four-year basis. In times of high housing appreciation, the difference in tax payments for houses last assessed two or three years earlier and their market values, the tax base for a new purchaser, can be significant and lead to a lock-in effect. Using administrative data from the Fayette County PVA we find evidence that housing sales are higher in the year before a neighborhood assessment suggesting that households adjust their mobility to capture the tax advantage associated with limited assessment. |
| Keywords: | property taxation, assessment, lock-in |
| JEL: | H20 H71 R30 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6264&r=ure |
| By: | Kim, Jun Sung; Patacchini, Eleonora; Picard, Pierre M; Zenou, Yves |
| Abstract: | This paper studies social-tie formation when individuals care about the geographical location of other individuals. In our model, the intensity of social interactions can be chosen at the same time as friends. We characterize the equilibrium in terms of both social interactions and social capital (the value of social interactions offered by each agent) for a general distribution of individuals in the urban geographical space. We show that greater geographical dispersion decreases the incentives to socially interact. We also show that the equilibrium frequency of interactions is lower than the effcient one. Using a unique geo-coded dataset of friendship networks among adolescents in the United States, we estimate the model and validate that agents interact less than the social first best optimum. Our policy analysis suggests that, given the same cost, subsidizing social interactions yields a higher total welfare than subsidizing transportation costs. |
| Keywords: | policies.; Social interactions; urban economic |
| JEL: | R1 R23 Z13 |
| Date: | 2017–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:12432&r=ure |
| By: | Patricia C. Melo; Daniel J. Graham |
| Abstract: | While the interaction between transport and agglomeration economies is widely accepted, there is insufficient research attempting at a direct empirical quantification. Using a balanced panel dataset for US metropolitan areas, we estimate a system of simultaneous equations to measure the indirect effect of urban agglomeration economies which arises through transport provision. Our findings suggest that public transit reinforces the effect of urban agglomeration, whereas road lane miles appearto weaken it. The results highlight the importance of public transit in supporting positive urban agglomeration externalities. |
| Keywords: | Transport-induced agglomeration effects, productivity, system of simultaneous equations, metropolitan areas |
| JEL: | R11 R12 R41 |
| Date: | 2017–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ise:remwps:wp0062017&r=ure |
| By: | Fretz, Stephan; Parchet, Raphaël; Robert-Nicoud, Frédéric |
| Abstract: | We design a spatial model featuring workers embodied with heterogeneous skills. In equilibrium, locations with improved market access become relatively more attractive to the high-skilled, high-income earners. We then empirically analyze the effects of the construction of the Swiss highway network between 1960 and 2010 on the distribution of income at the local level, as well as on employment and commuting by education level. We find that the advent of a new highway access within 10km led to a long-term 19%-increase of the share of high-income taxpayers and a 6%-decrease of the share of low-income taxpayers. Results are similar for employment data decomposed by education level, as well as for in- and out-commuters. Highways also contributed to job and residential urban sprawl. |
| Keywords: | Highway; Income sorting.; market access; Transportation |
| JEL: | D31 H54 O18 R11 R23 |
| Date: | 2017–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:12437&r=ure |
| By: | Rainald Borck |
| Abstract: | The paper studies the effect of public transport policies on urban pollution. It uses a quantitative equilibrium model with residential choice and mode choice. Pollution comes from commuting and residential energy use. The model parameters are calibrated to replicate key variables for American metropolitan areas. In the counterfactual, I study how free public transport coupled with increasing transit speed affects the equilibrium. In the baseline simulation, total pollution falls by 0.2%, as decreasing emissions from transport are partly offset by rising residential emissions. A second counterfactual compares a city with and without public transit. This large investment decreases pollution by 1.6%. When jobs are decentralized, emissions fall by 0.3% in the first and by 3% in the second counterfactual. |
| Keywords: | public transport, pollution, discrete choice |
| JEL: | Q53 Q54 R48 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6606&r=ure |
| By: | Bart H.H. Golsteyn; Arjan Non; Ulf Zölitz |
| Abstract: | This paper provides evidence of a novel facet of peer effects by showing how peer personality affects educational achievement. We exploit random assignment of students to university sections and find that students perform better in the presence of more persistent peers and more risk-averse peers. In particular, low-persistence students benefit from highly-persistent peers without devoting additional efforts to studying. However, highly-persistent students are not affected by the persistence of their peers. The personality peer effects that we document are distinct from other observable peer characteristics and suggest that the personality traits of peers causally affect human capital accumulation. |
| Keywords: | Personality, peer effects, non-cognitive skills |
| JEL: | I21 I24 J24 |
| Date: | 2017–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zur:econwp:269&r=ure |
| By: | Puhani, Patrick A. |
| Abstract: | With girls having overtaken boys in many education indicators, the "feminization" of elementary school teaching is causing debates about disadvantages for male students. Using administrative panel data on the universe of students, teachers and schools for a German state, I exploit within school and within teacher variation to determine teacher characteristics' effects on students' tracking outcomes. Germany tracks students at age 10 into more or less academic school types. I find hardly any effects of teacher's gender, age, pay level, qualifications, or working hours on boys' or girls' school track recommendations or school choice. Even when following students into middle school, no effects of elementary-school teacher gender on school type change or grade repetition can be detected. |
| Keywords: | education; gender; identification; fixed effects; teacher quality |
| JEL: | I21 J45 J71 J78 |
| Date: | 2017–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:han:dpaper:dp-608&r=ure |
| By: | Joana Pais; Flip Klijn; Marc Vorsatz |
| Abstract: | In the context of school choice, we experimentally study how behavior and outcomes are affected when, instead of submitting rankings in the student proposing or receiving deferred acceptance (DA) mechanism, participants make decisions dynamically, going through the steps of the underlying algorithms. Our main results show that, contrary to theory, (a) in the dynamic student proposing DA mechanism, participants propose to schools respecting the order of their true preferences slightly more often than in its static version while, (b) in the dynamic student receiving DA mechanism, participants react to proposals by always respecting the order and not accepting schools in the tail of their true preferences more often than in the corresponding static version. As a consequence, for most problems we test, no significant differences exist between the two versions of the student proposing DA mechanisms in what stability and average payoffs are concerned, but the dynamic version of the student receiving DA mechanism delivers a clear improvement over its static counterpart in both dimensions. In fact, in the aggregate, the dynamic school proposing DA mechanism is the best performing mechanism. |
| Keywords: | dynamic school choice, deferred acceptance, stability, efficiency |
| JEL: | C78 C91 C92 D78 I20 |
| Date: | 2017–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ise:remwps:wp0042017&r=ure |
| By: | Simora, Michael; Vance, Colin |
| Abstract: | Despite steady increases in fuel economy, CO2 emissions from road transportation in Germany are on the rise, increasing by nearly 4% since 2009. This study analyzes the impact of different policy levers for bucking this trend, focusing specifically on the role of fuel prices and features of the built environment. We estimate two multinomial logit models, one addressing work-related tours and the other non-work related tours. Both models consider two interrelated dimensions of travel on the extensive margin: mode choice and tour complexity. We use the model estimates to predict outcome probabilities for different levels of our policy variables. Our results suggest significant effects of the built environment – measured by bike path density, urbanization, and proximity to public transit – in discouraging car use and increasing tour complexity. Fuel prices, by contrast, appear to have little bearing on these choices. |
| Keywords: | activity-based approach,travel mode choice,tour complexity,multinomial logit,predicted probabilities |
| JEL: | D10 R48 R42 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:rwirep:711&r=ure |
| By: | Facundo Albornoz; María Victoria Anauati; Melina Furman; Mariana Luzuriaga; María Eugenia Podestá; Inés Taylor |
| Abstract: | This paper uses a RCT implemented in state schools in Argentina to estimate the learning impact and cost-effectiveness of different teacher training methods: structured curricula and coaching. Our findings suggest that there is a substantial gain in terms of learning for students with teachers being trained using structured curricula and coaching (between 55% and 64% of a standard deviation more than those students in the control group). Coaching teachers does not appear as a cost-effective intervention since the unit cost per 0.1 standard deviation is more than twice the cost of using a structured curriculum only. However, additional coaching is particularly relevant for relatively inexperienced teachers. A structured curriculum and coaching also affect perceptions: teachers enjoyed more teaching Science, they taught more hours of Science and students learned more and developed more skills. |
| Keywords: | Science education; Teacher training; Experimental study |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:not:notcre:17/08&r=ure |
| By: | Zhang Jingchao (School of Economics and Management, Kochi University of Technology); Koji Kotani (School of Economics and Management, Kochi University of Technology); Tatsuyoshi Saijo (School of Economics and Management, Kochi University of Technology) |
| Abstract: | Urbanization leads to cultural changes that shape people's social values and behaviors. Topographical variation of mountainous, hilly and plains areas is considered one of the main factors to reflect different degrees of urbanization, following distance to urban cities. Therefore, it is hypothesized that there may be a topographical difference in distributions of social value orientations (SVOs) that categorize people's social preferences into the prosocial, the proself and the unidentified. To examine this hypothesis, we conduct field surveys and experiments in mountainous, hilly and plains areas of Beijing, collecting sociodemographic information and SVOs of 596 samples. We find that proportions of proself people are higher in plains and hilly areas than mountainous areas, as the distance to the center of Beijing becomes shorter. Also, a proportion of unidentified people is prominent in hilly areas as a transitional society. Overall, this result suggests that social preferences transition from the prosocial to the unidentified and then to the proself with the topographical changes, implying that new social mechanisms shall be necessary to affect people's social preferences for inducing prosocial behaviors in the progress of urbanization. Otherwise, important social problems such as air pollution or sustainability, which require further cooperation for the solutions, will pose more danger in the future. |
| Keywords: | Social value orientation, topography, urbanization |
| Date: | 2017–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kch:wpaper:sdes-2017-21&r=ure |
| By: | Anna Makles; Kerstin Schneider |
| Abstract: | Noise pollution is detrimental to health and to cognitive development of children. This is not only true for extreme levels of noise in the neighborhood of an airport but also to traffic noise in urban areas. Using a census of preschool children, we show that children who are exposed to intensive traffic noise significantly fall behind in terms of school readiness. Being exposed to additional 10 dB(A) compares to about 3 months in kindergarten. We contribute to the literature and the policy debate by working with administrative data and focusing on everyday exposure to noise. The proposed method is easily applied to other regions. We assess the public costs of different abatement instruments and compare the costs to the benefits. It turns out that the commonly used abatement measures like quiet pavement or noise protection walls in densely populated areas of about 3,000 to 5,000 inhabitants per km2 can be cost efficient, even with a conservative assessment of the benefits. |
| Keywords: | noise, child development, early education, abatement, abatement costs |
| JEL: | I18 Q53 H23 H54 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6281&r=ure |
| By: | Marc Badia-Miró (Universidad de Barcelona (España).); Esteban Nicolini (Universidad Nacional de Tucumán (Argentina).; Universidad Santo Tomás de Aquino (Argentina).); Henry Willebald (Universidad de la República (Uruguay). Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración. Instituto de Economía) |
| Abstract: | The aim of this paper is to analyze the evolution of regional income disparities in the South American Southern Cone (SASC) in historical perspective. One of the first results of our analysis is that most of the regional inequality in this geographic area stems from differences within countries rather than from disparities across countries. The second result is that the evolution of regional inequality between the end of the 19th century and the second third of the 20th century is different in each country: while Chile shows a higher inequality and a U-shaped evolution (reduction of inequality and a slight increase in the 1960), Uruguay presents a monotonically declining inequality and Argentina exhibits a U-shaped evolution with decreasing disparities until the beginning of the 20th century and increasing inequality afterwards. When the entire subnational units are analyzed together, we find a U-shaped curve which started at the end of the 19th century with high levels of inequality, a minimum is found in the 1940s and another local maximum ended with the collapse of the Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) polices in the 1960s-1970s. We also analyze regional convergence in the long run for the Southern Cone at both national and regional level. The existence of convergence at a national level depends on the periods and countries: while Uruguay shows convergence in all the analyzed sub-periods, the provinces of Argentina only converge during the period of the first globalization; most of the departments of Chile converge in general but the presence of outliers induces the rejection of convergence hypothesis during the first globalization. Convergence at a regional level (including all the sub-national units from the three countries in the same analysis) is accepted for the period of the first globalization but rejected for the central decades of the 20th century. The empirical findings are interpreted as the result of the combination of the varying potential of the sub-national units for taking advantage of (i) the forces of agglomeration (inducing high growth rates in the main cities and, in particular, in the administrative capitals), (ii) the abundance of natural resources, and (iii) the stimulus originated in technological change, integration (or dis-integration) to international markets and public policies for industrialization. |
| Keywords: | Latin America, regional convergence, regional inequality, Southern Cone |
| JEL: | N16 N56 N96 R12 |
| Date: | 2017–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulr:wpaper:dt-11-17&r=ure |
| By: | Pouirkèta Rita Nikiema |
| Abstract: | Food for Education (FFE) programmes have been implemented in developing countries since the 1960s. This paper examines the impact of the Catholic Relief Services (CRS) school feeding programme on pupils’ attendance and girls’ enrolment rate within primary schools in northern Burkina Faso. Using difference-in-difference (DID) estimation with the data set on the Beoog Biiga programme, we find that take-home rations (THRs) increased school attendance for both boys and girls. Moreover, the findings show that girls’ enrolment rate within schools increased by 3.2 per cent. This is driven by the increase in the number of newly enrolled girls compared with boys. We conclude that THRs have the potential to increase girls’ educational attainment and gender equality within schools. |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp2017-182&r=ure |
| By: | José Brandão |
| Abstract: | The vehicle routing problem with backhauls and soft time windows contains two disjoint sets of customers: those that receive goods from the depot,who are called linehauls, and those that send goods to the depot, named backhauls. To each customer is associated an interval of time (time window), during which each one should be served. If a time window can be violated it is called soft, but this violation implies an additional cost. In this paper, only the upper limit of the interval can be exceeded. For solving this problem we created deterministic iterated local search algorithm, which was tested using a large set of benchmark problems taken from the literature. These computational tests have proven that this algorithm competes with best known algorithms in terms of the quality of the solutions and computing time. So far as we know, there is no published paper for this problem dealing with soft time windows, and, therefore, this comparison is only with the algorithms that do not allow time windows violation. |
| Keywords: | Backhauls; iterated local search; linehauls; logistics; soft time windows, vehicle routing |
| Date: | 2017–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ise:remwps:wp0102017&r=ure |
| By: | VAN DAMME Maike |
| Abstract: | To what extent is there an association between housing density and divorce? And if so, is it a causal relationship? Housing space may affect the probability of divorcing because of stress, lower subjective well-being, and poor mental health, any of which could put pressure on the relationship with the partner and eventually cause a break-up. Using the Luxembourgish PSELL 2003-2014, we operationalize overcrowding with both an objective and a subjective measure. We check for the following confounding factors: financial difficulties, home ownership, and nationality. We find that there is no significant association between housing density and divorce once confounders are taken into account, not to mention causality. Instead, home ownership turns out to be of the utmost importance in explaining the bivariate association between housing density and union dissolution. |
| Keywords: | divorce; housing; overcrowding; spuriousness; union dissolution |
| JEL: | A10 J12 R31 Y90 |
| Date: | 2017–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:irs:cepswp:2017-15&r=ure |
| By: | Douglas S. Massey; Amelie F. Constant |
| Abstract: | This paper charts the growth and development of the Latino population of the northeastern U.S. from 1970 to 2015. The relatively small population dominated by Puerto Ricans and concentrated in New York and a few other cities has evolved into a large, diverse, and more geographically dispersed population. It grew from 1.9 to 7.7 million persons and rose from 3.8% to 10.5% of the regional population. It has increasingly suburbanized with roughly equal numbers of Latinos living in cities and suburbs. They are the most diverse Latino population of all regions in the U.S., they are not dominated by Mexicans, they are predominantly documented, and the large majority are citizens. |
| Keywords: | Latinos, immigration, United States |
| JEL: | J15 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6521&r=ure |
| By: | Ulf Zölitz; Jan Feld |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates how the peer gender composition in university affects students' major choices and labor market outcomes. Women who are randomly assigned to more female peers become less likely to choose male-dominated majors, they end up in jobs where they work fewer hours and their wage grows at a slower rate. Men become more likely to choose male-dominated majors after having had more female peers, although their labor market outcomes are not affected. Our results suggest that the increasing female university enrolment over recent decades has paradoxically contributed to the occupational segregation among university graduates that persists in today’s labor market. |
| Keywords: | Peer effects, major choice, gender composition |
| JEL: | I21 I24 J24 |
| Date: | 2017–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zur:econwp:270&r=ure |
| By: | José Pedro Pontes; Carlos Eduardo Lobo e Silva |
| Abstract: | This paper deals with the location of R&D by vertical multinational firms. By taking the colocation of laboratories and productive plants as a benchmark, we can see that the spatial separation of both emerges under two conditions – high intensity of R&D spillovers and strong size asymmetry between countries. The latter condition is effective since it is related with a rising international inequality of wages. If the spatial separation of R&D and manufacturing takes place, headquarters services (namely R&D units) will be likely located in the smaller country. The converse pattern, where laboratories are place in the larger country, may arise if production is high-tech and the localized externalities of research activity are strong. Hence, this article confirms the main results of the literature on this topic but in the context of a different framework which allows us to tackle two usually disregarded topics: the transfer cost of technology; and the direct engagement of industrial workers in R&D spillovers. These aspects are dealt with by presupposing that, in addition to a “technological” externality among researchers, there is an “educational” externality exerted by researchers upon neighbouring industrial workers. When a country loses its laboratories, the inhabitants become intellectually “impoverished” and their labour starts to have a lesser efficiency. |
| Keywords: | Location of R&D; Vertical Multinationals; Spillovers; Nash Equilibria in a Large Group of Agents. |
| JEL: | F23 O32 R12 |
| Date: | 2017–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ise:remwps:wp0122017&r=ure |
| By: | Stefan Jestl (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Mathias Moser; Anna K. Raggl |
| Abstract: | We estimate the effect of regional income inequality on emigration rates of Austrian municipalities using a unique data set that is constructed based on individual level data from Austrian administrative registers. The register-based data contain information on the municipality of residence of all individuals aged 16 and over that have their main residency in Austria, as well as their income and socio-demographic characteristics. Aggregating this information to the municipality level allows us to assess the role of relative deprivation – a measure of relative income – on top of absolute income in shaping internal migration in Austria. We find that increases in relative deprivation in a municipality lead to higher emigration from the municipality. Allowing for heterogeneous effects across income, education, and age groups reveals that the effect is stronger among those with comparably low levels of income, and among low-skilled and young individuals. |
| Keywords: | relative deprivation, inequality, internal migration |
| JEL: | D31 R23 |
| Date: | 2017–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wii:wpaper:137&r=ure |
| By: | Marcel Henkel; Tobias Seidel |
| Abstract: | We use a quantitative model to study the implications of European integration for welfare and migration flows across 1,318 regions. The model suggests that an increase of trade barriers to the level of 1957 reduces welfare by about 1-2 percent on average, depending on the presumed trade elasticity. However, remote regions may face initial welfare losses of up to 4 percent causing an estimated migration of about 8 million individuals to the European core. This implies that the dismantling of trade barriers in Europe has led to a more homogeneous spatial distribution of economic activity. With regard to the Brexit, we find moderate welfare losses for the UK of -0.44 percent in the most pessimistic scenario while continental Europe’s welfare declines by 0.18 percent. In the most unfavorable scenario, about 500,000 people would leave the UK in the long run. |
| Keywords: | regional integration, labor mobility, spatial inequality |
| JEL: | F10 F12 F15 R11 R12 R13 R23 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6289&r=ure |
| By: | Gupta, Abhimanyu; Kokas, Sotirios; Michaelides, Alexander |
| Abstract: | A large theoretical literature emphasizes the importance of financial networks, but empirical studies remain scarce. Due to overlapping bank portfolios, the syndicated loan market provides a natural setting to study financial networks. We exploit the tiered structure of syndicated loans to construct such a network and characterize quantitatively its evolution over time. A spatial autoregressive model provides an ideal methodological framework to estimate spillovers from this financial network to lending rates and quantities. We find that these spillovers are economically large, time-varying and can switch sign after major economic shocks. Moreover, we find that network complexity and uncertainty rise after a large negative shock. Counterfactual experiments confirm the quantitative importance of spillovers and network structure on lending rates and quantities and can be used to disentangle the effects arising from spillovers versus changes in network structure. |
| Keywords: | complexity.; cost of lending; Financial Networks; spatial autoregression; Spillovers; syndicated loan market |
| JEL: | G01 G21 L14 |
| Date: | 2017–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:12424&r=ure |
| By: | Daire McCoy, Sean Lyons, Edgar Morgenroth, Donal Palcic, Leonie Allen |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses the impact of broadband infrastructure, along with a range of other local charac- teristics such as motorways and other infrastructure, availability of human capital and access to third level educational facilities, on the location of new business establishments. The sample period spans the intro- duction and recent history of broadband in Ireland. The results indicate that the availability of broadband infrastructure is a significant determinant, but its effects may be mediated by the presence of suffciently high human capital in an area. |
| Date: | 2017–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lsg:lsgwps:wp282&r=ure |
| By: | Alessandro Gavazza; Mattia Nardotto; Tommaso M. Valletti |
| Abstract: | We empirically study the effects of broadband internet diffusion on local election outcomes and on local government policies using rich data from the U.K. Our analysis suggests that the internet has displaced other media with greater news content (i.e., radio and newspapers), thereby decreasing voter turnout, most notably among less-educated and younger individuals. In turn, we find suggestive evidence that local government expenditures and taxes are lower in areas with greater broadband diffusion, particularly expenditures targeted at less-educated voters. Our findings are consistent with the idea that voters’ information plays a key role in determining electoral participation, government policies and government size. |
| JEL: | D72 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6659&r=ure |
| By: | Neophyta Empora |
| Abstract: | This study investigates the effect of pollution and pollution spillovers on the Total Factor Productivity (TFP) growth among the 48 contiguous U.S. states, for the period 1965-2002. Specifically, this study accounts for the spatial relationship between the states that arises from the transboundary nature of Sulphur dioxide (SO2) emissions and investigates how the dispersion of pollution affects economic growth. The relationship between TFP growth, pollution and pollution spillovers is estimated using a semiparametric smooth coefficient model that allows estimating the output elasticity of pollution and pollution spillovers for each state and each period and accounts for possible nonlinearities in the data. According to the results, the effect of spillover pollution on growth is negative and larger in magnitude than the positive effect of a state’s own emissions: decreases in emissions might not be so harmful for productivity growth. |
| Keywords: | TFP Growth; Pollution; Transboundary Pollution Spillovers; Semiparametric Estimation |
| JEL: | C14 O13 O40 |
| Date: | 2017–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucy:cypeua:06-2017&r=ure |
| By: | Badinger, Harald; Reuter, Wolf Heinrich |
| Abstract: | This study analyzes the effects of increased trade with China and Eastern Europe on manufacturing employment in 1,146 NUTS-3 regions of 17 Western European countries from 1991 to 2011. Building on Autor et al. (2013) we aim at identifying the causal effects of an increase in import and export exposure on regional manufacturing employment, thereby, explicitly accounting for labor and product market spillovers. Overall, our results support previous findings of a negative effect of increased import exposure from China for our sample of Western European countries, whereas spatial spillover effects turn out to be positive, slightly mitigating the quantitative impact without changing results quantitatively. Moreover, our cross-country study highlights the pronounced heterogeneity of the estimated effects of trade exposure on manufacturing employment across countries with respect to the trade balance. |
| Keywords: | International Trade,Globalization,Western Europe,China,Eastern Europe,Employment |
| JEL: | F16 J31 R11 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:svrwwp:062017&r=ure |
| By: | Zurab Abramishvili (International School of Economics at Tbilisi State University, Tbilisi) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates how a unique education policy positively affected university enrollment rates of public school students in Georgia. In 2007, the Georgian government enacted legislation mandating the replacement of all public school principals under the assumption that the replacement of the principals with randomly assigning qualified candidates to public schools would fairly decentralize and improve school governance across Georgia. About half of public school principals were actually replaced with new candidates and a majority of them were assigned through a random allocation mechanism. Therefore, the standard difference-indifferences methodology is used to compare treated public schools with private schools that are not affected by the policy in order to identify how this reform impacted education outcomes. Using the National Assessment and Examination Center university admissions data, the public schools with replaced principals increased university enrollment more than the control schools by an average of 4%. The largest part of this increase comes from schools with randomly assigned principals. The positive findings herein could tenably impact education policy in developing (and perhaps developed) countries and elicits further research where applicable. The statistically significant and strong effects of this type of reform could cause a positive domino effect in the developing world, especially in countries with similar characteristics and predicaments in their education system. |
| Keywords: | School principals, university enrollment rate, education reform, random assignment |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tbs:wpaper:17-006&r=ure |
| By: | Martijn (M.I.) Droes (University of Amsterdam & Amsterdam School of Real Estate; Tinbergen Institute, The Netherlands); Boris Ziermans (Cushman & Wakefield); Philip Koppels (TU Delft) |
| Abstract: | Using a unique transactions dataset from the Amsterdam office market, this paper examines the determinants of property lease incentives. The study focuses on the type of landlord involved (institutional/private) and whether the tenant or landlord used an advisor (professional broker) to help negotiate the lease. The results show that an institutional landlord, ceteris paribus, offers 3 percentage points more incentives than a private owner. In addition, a landlord who uses the services of an advisor pays 9 percentage points less incentives. An advisor at the side of the tenant increases incentives by 7 percentage points. However, if both parties use an advisor there are no additional benefits in terms of lease incentives. These findings are in line with a prisoner's dilemma story. Further results show an effect of the lease term and economic cycle on lease incentives. The results in this paper highlight the crucial role of market information, information asymmetry, and bargaining in the market for commercial real estate. |
| Keywords: | commercial real estate, office market, lease incentives, advisor, information asymmetry |
| JEL: | R30 D82 L85 |
| Date: | 2017–11–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:wpaper:20170106&r=ure |
| By: | Gabriel Lyrio de Oliveira; André Luis Squarize Chagas |
| Abstract: | In this research we estimate the effects of the management of a cash transfer program, the Bolsa Família, on migration flows among Brazilian municipalities from 2008 to 2010. We consider the aggregated origin-destination flows coming from a Spatial Dependent Discrete Choice Model, and focus on the interest variables of release of resources and surveillance of the Program. Then, we discuss the possible lying mechanisms relating the interest variables and individual migration decisions. Each mechanism differs according to the individual status, beneficiary of the program or not, income profile, specific characteristics of its home municipality and of potential destinations. Among our results, the control variables appear in agreement with the main findings of migration literature, and the management of the program was revealed relevant to the beneficiary and potential beneficiary locational choices, specially the release of resources. |
| Keywords: | Migration; Origin-Destination Flow; Discrete Choice; Spatial Dependence; Bolsa Família. |
| JEL: | O15 R12 R23 |
| Date: | 2017–10–31 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:spa:wpaper:2017wpecon28&r=ure |
| By: | Nirav Mehta |
| Abstract: | This note examines the potential output gains from the implementation of optimal teacher incentive pay schemes, by calibrating the Hölmstrom and Milgrom (1987) hidden action model using data from Muralidharan and Sundararaman (2011), a teacher incentive pay experiment implemented in Andhra Pradesh, India. Findings suggest that the introduction of optimal individual incentive-pay schemes could result in very large increases in output, about six times the size of the (significant) results obtained in the experiment. |
| Keywords: | hidden action, empirical contracts, teacher incentive pay |
| JEL: | I20 J30 J40 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6598&r=ure |
| By: | Rodger Barros Antunes Campos; Gustavo Pereira Serra |
| Abstract: | An important challenge in the earmarking literature is to isolate causal effects of earmarking decisions on public goods supply. Following the Brazilian Supreme Court’s decision on unconstitutionality of São Paulo State’s earmarking policy to face housing deficit, in September 1997, earmarked resources to fund the CDHU were forbidden. The Supreme Court’s decision created an uncertain housing policy scenario,especially, to households with a housing deficit. The Supreme Court intervention can be assumed to be exogenous to a housing deficit econometric model. The decision on unconstitutionality of the earmarking mechanism for housing construction by the Brazilian Court allows identifying an exogenously determined pre and post treatment situation, with the households between zero and five-minimum wages and households between five and six-minimum wages defining the treatment-group and control-group, respectively, along the lines of the eligibility rule by the CDHU. We apply a difference-in-difference empirical model with non-linear estimators. Our results suggest that low-income households under uncertainty face an average increase of 1.8% in the probability to remain in a housing deficit condition and indicate that low-income households depend on the government earmarking policy. |
| Keywords: | Earmarked Tax; Housing Public Policy; Low-income Housing |
| JEL: | D61 H21 R21 |
| Date: | 2017–10–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:spa:wpaper:2017wpecon23&r=ure |
| By: | Christopher M Clapp; Steven Stern; Steven Dan Yu |
| Abstract: | Federal and state governments spend over $3 billion annually on public-sector Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) programs, yet almost a third of people with disabilities report having inadequate access to the transportation necessary to commute to a job, potentially negating the positive e¤ects of these interventions. We examine this previously understudied connection by assessing the impact access to public paratransit has on measures of VR program e¤ectiveness. To do so, we use the data and estimates from three previously estimated structural models of VR service receipt and labor market outcomes that contain limited information about mobility. We spatially link the generalized residuals from these models to di¤erent measures of the availability and effciency of local paratransit systems to determine whether paratransit explains any of the residual variation in the short- or long-run labor market outcomes of individuals receiving VR services. Results show that access to paratransit is an important determinant of the e¢ cacy of VR services, but that effects are heterogeneous across disability groups. We discuss the policy implications of our findings for VR programs. |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nys:sunysb:17-12&r=ure |
| By: | Eva M. Berger (Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Germany); Felix Schmidt (Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Germany) |
| Abstract: | When renting an apartment, often a commission is payable by the renter. In a perfect market, standard economic reasoning predicts the rental price for an apartment with a commission payable by the renter to be lower than the price for the same apartment without commission. We test this hypothesis against an alternative hypothesis based on insights from behavioral economics about mental accounting, inattention, and cognitive limitations. We apply a difference-in-differences strategy exploiting a law reform in Germany in June 2015 determining that a landlord is no longer allowed to make a renter pay the commission for a real estate agent the landlord ordered. Using a panel dataset we thus compare price changes (pre–post reform) of apartments without a commission prior to the reform with price changes of apartments with a commission prior to the reform. Based on our results we reject the standard reasoning hypothesis of differing prices; moreover, we cannot reject the behavioral hypothesis of equal prices. |
| Keywords: | Housing Market, Rental Prices, Real Estate Agent Commissions, Bounded Rationality |
| Date: | 2017–08–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jgu:wpaper:1716&r=ure |
| By: | Karle, Heiko; Peitz, Martin; Reisinger, Markus |
| Abstract: | For many products, platforms enable sellers to transact with buyers. We show that the competitive conditions among sellers shape the market structure in platform industries. If product market competition is tough, sellers avoid competitors by joining different platforms. This allows platforms to sustain high fees and explains why, for example, in some online markets, several homogeneous platforms segment the market. Instead, if product market competition is soft, agglomeration on a single platform emerges, and platforms fi ght for the dominant position. These insights give rise to novel predictions. For instance, market concentration and fees are negatively correlated in platform industries, which inverts the standard logic of competition. |
| Keywords: | endogenous segmentation; intermediation; market structure; price competition; Two-sided markets |
| JEL: | D43 L13 |
| Date: | 2017–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:12435&r=ure |
| By: | Antoine Dechezlepretre, Ralf Martin, Myra Mohnen |
| Abstract: | Government policy in support of innovation often varies across technology areas. An important example are climate change policies that typically try to support so called clean technologies that avoid greenhouse gas pollution and hamper dirty technologies that are associated with polluting emissions. This paper explores the economic consequences of such policy moves in the short run. At the margin private returns of R&D investments in different areas should be equalised. Hence, shifting the composition of R&D activities by a policy intervention will only have a meaningful impact on economic outcomes if the external returns differ. Hence, we compare innovation spillovers between clean, dirty and other emerging technologies using patent citation data. We develop new methodology including the usage of Page rank measures developed by Google to rank web content. Exploring a wide range of robustness checks we consistently find up to 40% higher levels of spillovers from clean technologies. We also use firm-level financial data to investigate the impact of knowledge spillovers on firms’ market value and find that marginal economic value of spillovers from clean technologies is also greater. |
| Date: | 2017–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lsg:lsgwps:wp135&r=ure |