|
on Urban and Real Estate Economics |
| By: | Gonzalez Pampillon, Nicolas |
| Abstract: | I estimate spillovers from new housing supply on house prices, crime rates, and household income. To estimate these effects, I use exogenous variation in supply induced by a housing subsidy implemented in middle-income neighborhoods in the city of Montevideo. The program incentivized residential development through tax breaks that led to sizable investments in certain neighborhoods. I exploit the spatial structure of the scheme to identify the externalities and find clear evidence of spillovers from new supply on house prices, with prices increasing between 12 and 17%. Property crime rates only decreased in the short term, while there is evidence of an increase in household income, suggesting that the neighborhood income mix responded to the supply expansion. Increasing supply appears to revitalize neighborhoods, but these effects also reduce housing affordability. |
| Keywords: | housing supply; house prices; neighborhood change; crime; difference-in-differences; housing policies |
| JEL: | R23 R30 R58 |
| Date: | 2019–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:103446&r=all |
| By: | Pfeiffer,Basile Fabrice; Rabe,Claus; Selod,Harris; Viguie,Vincent |
| Abstract: | Building on a two-dimensional discrete version of the standard urban economics land-use model, this paper presents a tractable urban land-use simulation model that is adapted to developing country cities, where formal and informal housing submarkets coexist. The dynamic closed-city framework simulates developers'construction decisions and heterogeneous households'housing and location choices at a distance from various employment subcenters, while accounting at the same time for land-use regulations, natural constraints, exogenous amenities, and dynamic scenarios of urban population growth and of State-driven subsidized housing. Designed and calibrated for Cape Town, the model is used to assess the impact of an urban growth boundary and of changes in the scale of subsidized housing schemes, informing a discussion of the potential trade-offs in policy objectives and of policy effectiveness. |
| Keywords: | Municipal Management and Reform,Urban Housing and Land Settlements,Urban Housing,Urban Governance and Management,Transport Services,Urban Economic Development,City to City Alliances,Urban Economics,National Urban Development Policies&Strategies,Urban Communities,Regional Urban Development,Labor Markets |
| Date: | 2019–06–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:8921&r=all |
| By: | Joep Tijm (CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis); Thomas Michielsen (CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis); Peter Zwaneveld (CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis); Raoul van Maarseveen |
| Abstract: | Infrastructure projects are increasingly aiming to improve liveability, in particular in urban areas. We analyse a specifi c case in which an existing highway in an urban area was moved underground in order to improve intercity traffic flows and to reduce traffic externalities. As travel times within the city hardly changed, this allows for a clean identifi cation of the value of traffic externalities. We find that the liveability bene fits of such integrated infrastructure are substantial relative to the construction costs. Each halving of distance to the tunneled segment is associated with 3.5% more appreciation in house prices since the start of the project. |
| JEL: | R12 J24 J31 |
| Date: | 2018–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpb:discus:379.rdf&r=all |
| By: | Agnew, Kerri; Lyons, Ronan C. |
| Abstract: | Access to employment is one of the most valuable amenities offered by cities. In urban economics, this is the principal driver of the bid-rent gradient and is a key determinant of housing prices and land values. However, little is known about the causal effect of employment on housing prices, due to the problem of identification. This study presents the first causal estimates of employment changes on housing prices, both sales and rental. It does this by using a purpose-built spatially granular dataset of 1.4 million housing prices and FDI employment, covering Ireland 2007–2013. Identification rests on a combination of rich spatio-temporal variation due to the abundance of FDI in Ireland, a rich set of location controls and an inelastic housing supply in the period covered. The main results show that 1–2 years after 1000 extra jobs have been created, monthly rents in nearby properties will be between 0.5% and 1% higher. The effect on prices is at least 2% but less consistent across specifications. On average, net job creation in export-oriented FDI firms 2009–2013 added roughly €48 million to the stock of wealth of owner occupied real estate and €8 million to the stock of wealth of the rental sector. We also estimate that the aggregate effect of the stock of FDI jobs in 2013 on Irish housing prices is €440 million, or just over 1%. |
| Keywords: | housing prices; employment; foreign direct investment; Ireland; hedonic regression |
| JEL: | F23 R10 R21 |
| Date: | 2018–05–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:87223&r=all |
| By: | Gray, Rowena |
| Abstract: | Historical inequality is difficult to measure, especially at the sub-country level and beyond the top income shares. This paper presents new evidence on the level of inequality in Manhattan from 1880 to 1910 using housing rents. Rental prices and characteristics, including geocodable locations, were collected from newspapers and provide extensive geographic coverage of the island, relevant for the overwhelming majority of its population where renting predominated. This provides a measure of consumption inequality at the household level which helps to develop the picture of urban inequality for this period, when income and wealth measures are scarce. For large American cities, but particularly for New York, housing made up a large share of consumption expenditure and its consumption cannot be substituted, so this is a reliable and feasible way to identify the true trends in urban inequality across space and time. |
| Keywords: | inequality,housing markets,measurement,consumption inequality,New York |
| JEL: | N31 N91 R31 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:qucehw:202002&r=all |
| By: | Cartagena Farias, Javiera; McIntosh, Steven |
| Abstract: | We analyse the effect of geographic competition between schools on academic performance in Chile. The analysis controls for prior pupil performance, and a range of school and municipality characteristics. We allow for the endogeneity of voucher school location, using the number of local Catholic churches as an instrument. We find that a larger number of public schools positively affects the quality of education of other schools located in the same area, particularly amongst middle-class families and in middle-ranking schools. However, the number of voucher schools is associated with lower performance in neighbouring schools, which we attribute to pupil sorting. |
| Keywords: | school choice; competition; educational vouchers |
| JEL: | I20 I28 |
| Date: | 2018–08–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:90244&r=all |
| By: | Andrew F. Haughwout; Joelle Scally; Wilbert Van der Klaauw; Donghoon Lee |
| Abstract: | Our most recent Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit showed that although total household debt has increased somewhat since 2012, that growth has been driven almost entirely by nonhousing debt?credit cards, auto loans and student loans. The largest category of household debt?mortgages?has been essentially flat since 2012, in spite of a substantial rise in housing prices over that period. In this post, we explore the sources of the sluggish growth in mortgage debt using our New York Fed Consumer Credit Panel, which is based on Equifax credit data. |
| Keywords: | household finance; housing; mortgages; saving |
| JEL: | D1 R3 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednls:87104&r=all |
| By: | Waights, Sevrin |
| Abstract: | I investigate the welfare effect of conservation areas that preserve historic districts by regulating development. Such regulation may improve the quality of life but does so by reducing housing productivity—that is, the efficiency with which inputs (land and non-land) are converted into housing services. Using a unique panel dataset for English cities and an instrumental variable approach, I find that conservation areas lead to higher house prices for given land values and building costs (lower housing productivity) and higher house prices for given wages (higher quality of life). The overall welfare impact is found to be negative. |
| Keywords: | housing; planning; regulation; historic preservation; construction; land |
| JEL: | D62 H89 L51 L74 R21 R31 R38 R52 R58 |
| Date: | 2019–03–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:87175&r=all |
| By: | Evan Mast (W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research); Brian Asquith (W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research); Davin Reed |
| Abstract: | We study the local effects of new market-rate housing in low-income areas using microdata on large apartment buildings, rents, and migration. New buildings decrease nearby rents by 5 to 7 percent relative to locations slightly farther away or developed later, and they increase in-migration from low-income areas. Results are driven by a large supply effect—we show that new buildings absorb many high-income households—that overwhelms any offsetting endogenous amenity effect. The latter may be small because most new buildings go into already-changing areas. Contrary to common concerns, new buildings slow local rent increases rather than initiate or accelerate them. |
| Keywords: | amenities; gentrification; Housing supply; housing a˙ordability |
| JEL: | R21 R23 R31 |
| Date: | 2020–02–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedpwp:87487&r=all |
| By: | Michael Fritsch (Friedrich Schiller University Jena and Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH), Germany.); Michael Wyrwich (University of Groningen, The Netherlands and Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany.) |
| Abstract: | Popular theories claim that innovation activities should be located in large cities because of more favorable environmental conditions that are absent in smaller cities or remote and rural areas. Germany provides a clear counterexample to such theories. We argue that a main force behind the geography of innovation in Germany is the country's federal tradition that has shaped the settlement structure, the geographic distribution of universities and public research institutions, as well as local access to finance. Additional factors that may play a role in this respect are the system of education and the tax treatment of inheriting a business. We demonstrate the long-lasting effect of the historical political structure and distribution of knowledge sources on innovation activities today. We conclude that historical factors that shape the settlement structure and location of knowledge sources are of key importance for the geographic location of innovation activities. |
| Keywords: | Innovation, patents, agglomeration economies, cities, Germany |
| JEL: | R11 L26 |
| Date: | 2020–02–24 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2020-004&r=all |
| By: | Volker, Jamey; Lee, Amy; Fitch, Dillon |
| Abstract: | Local governments have long relied on Level of Service (LOS), a measure of automobile congestion, as the basis for assessing transportation impacts of land use development projects. However, use of the LOS metric creates an incentive for projects that contribute to urban sprawl while penalizing denser development projects that could allow people better accessibility to jobs and services through alternate modes like walking, bicycling, or transit. Starting July 1, 2020, local governments in California are required to use vehicle miles traveled (VMT) rather than LOS to measure land use projects’ transportation impacts. Researchers at UC Davis studied how this change affects the approval process for urban development. Because most agencies have not yet switched to using VMT in their analyses, the researchers looked back at environmental documents for development projects in the City of Los Angeles between 2001 and 2016 and determined whether these projects could have benefited from using a VMT metric instead of LOS for measuring their transportation impacts. Findings are summarized in this policy brief. View the NCST Project Webpage |
| Keywords: | Engineering, Law, CEQA, development, housing, level of service, vehicle miles traveled |
| Date: | 2020–02–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:itsdav:qt9gc99576&r=all |
| By: | Holl, Adelheid; Peters, Bettina; Rammer, Christian |
| Abstract: | Recent empirical evidence has shown that firm's innovation behavior exhibits high persistency but not much is known about potential contingencies affecting the degree of persistence. This paper focuses on the role of the local knowledge environment and asks how local knowledge spillovers affect firms' innovation persistence. The empirical analysis draws upon a representative panel data set of firms in Germany from 2002-2016, complemented by detailed geographic information of patent activity over discrete distances to proxy local knowledge spillovers. Based on correlated random effects probit models that control for state dependence, unobserved individual heterogeneity and endogenous initial conditions, our results corroborate former evidence that persistency in innovation is driven by true state dependence. More importantly, we find that the local patenting activity positively moderates firms' degree of persistency in innovation behavior. This is a novel firm-level mechanism that can explain the widening of spatial disparities in innovation performance. Estimations with different distance bands show that the strength of knowledge spillovers that contribute to innovation persistence via true state dependence declines rather rapidly with increasing distance. |
| Keywords: | innovation,persistence,location,knowledge spillovers |
| JEL: | O31 R1 D22 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:20005&r=all |
| By: | Fulton, Lew PhD; Brown, Austin PhD; Compostella, Junia |
| Abstract: | The emergence of “3 Revolutions” in transportation (automation, electrification and shared mobility) presents a range of questions regarding how consumers will travel in the future, and under what conditions there may be rapid adoption of various services. These include individual on-demand taxi-style services, shared mobility in pooled services, and use of public transit, all with or without drivers. There is now enough data and estimates on the costs of these service combinations, and in some cases ridership data, to consider how consumers are making choices and could do so in the future as things evolve. This project involved: (a) reviewing existing literature and data on consumer mode and vehicle choice; (b) developing new “generalized cost” estimates that combine monetary and non-monetary (e.g., hedonic) components of travel choice, notably incorporating value of time; and (c) conducting a comparison of monetary and generalized trip cost for a range of trip types across travel options in the near term (2020) and longer term (2030-35). Three main travel options were considered: privately owned vehicles, ridesourced solo trips, and ridesourced pooled trips. Consideration of internal combustion vs. battery electric and, in the longer term, automated technology was also core to the analysis. The trips considered include urban and suburban types in the San Francisco metro area, using actual trip characteristics. The results suggest that in the near-term, solo ridesourcing is likely to be perceived as significantly more expensive (in terms of monetary and time costs) than pooled ridesourcing or solo private vehicle trips except for those with a very high value of time. Solo ridesourcing does better in dense, slow, urban trips than in faster suburban trips. In the longer term, with automated driverless vehicles, solo ridesourcing could become the cheapest mode for many travelers in a range of situations. This report includes an initial consideration of the implications of these policies for affecting travel choices, presumably to push choices toward pooled ridesourcing as a sustainable option. VMT-based pricing, pricing that could be adjusted with vehicle occupancy, and parking-related approaches are described. A large price signal might be needed to shift travel, given some of the differences in generalized cost found in this analysis. |
| Keywords: | Engineering, Ridesourcing, ridesharing, vehicle sharing, travel costs, travel behavior, autonomous vehicles, automobile ownership, policy analysis |
| Date: | 2020–02–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:itsdav:qt6vz5q4mc&r=all |
| By: | Max Livingston; Rajashri Chakrabarti |
| Abstract: | On October 29, superstorm Sandy hit the tri-state area, flooding streets, highways, tunnels, buildings, and homes, and crippling the region?s public transit system. At least ninety-four people in New York and New Jersey were killed. Downed power lines and damaged transformers plunged downtown Manhattan and coastal areas into days and weeks of darkness. The damage is still being assessed, but costs are sure to be in the tens of billions. Schools were no exception to this devastation, both in infrastructural damage and in disruptions to students? education. The storm shut down all 1,750 New York City public schools for a full week, and many remained closed, damaged, or were relocated in the following week. A few schools will not return to their normal locations until 2013. In this post, we analyze the impact of Sandy on New York City schools and assess how the storm might affect students? educational outcomes. |
| Keywords: | School Closures; Sandy; New York City Schools; Relocations; Hurricane; Attendance |
| JEL: | Q1 R1 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednls:86845&r=all |
| By: | Laia Maynou (Department of Health Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK); Javier Ordóñez (IEI and Department of Economics, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Spain); José Ignacio Silva (Department of Economics, Universitat de Girona, Spain) |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we study the convergence of the NEET rates (the rate of young people not in employment, education or training) across European regions between 2000 and 2015. First, we apply the Phillips and Sul (2007, 2009) convergence tests and identify the presence of four important clusters with different trends in the NEET rates. The first two clusters mainly include regions located in Western and Southern Europe and show an increase with respect to the average NEET but with different speed. The other two clusters mainly contain North and Central European regions showing constant NEET rates with respect but with different levels. Then, we use a spatial-temporal econometric model to confirm the presence of β–convergence in the NEET rates, identify their determinants in each cluster and calculate their long-run NEET rates. The young unemployment rate and the percentage of early leavers from education and training are the main determinants of the in all clusters. |
| Keywords: | convergence, European Union, youth unemployment, NEET |
| JEL: | C33 E23 J13 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jau:wpaper:2020/08&r=all |
| By: | Martin, Carolin; Schmitt, Noemi; Westerhoff, Frank H. |
| Abstract: | We integrate a plausible expectation formation and learning scheme of boundedly rational investors into a standard user cost housing market model, involving a rental and a housing capital market. In particular, investors switch between heterogeneous expectation rules according to an evolutionary fitness measure, given by the rules' past profitability. We analytically show that our housing market model may produce endogenous boom-bust dynamics. Furthermore, we demonstrate that policy makers may use our model as a tool to explore how different tax policies may affect the housing market's steady state, its stability and out-of-equilibrium behavior. |
| Keywords: | housing markets,bubbles and crashes,heterogeneous expectations,bounded rationality and learning,tax policy,steady state and stability analysis |
| JEL: | D84 H24 R31 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:bamber:156&r=all |
| By: | Koen van Ruijven (CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis); Paul Verstraten (CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis); Peter Zwaneveld (CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis) |
| Abstract: | As urbanization continues, congestion externalities are becoming more important due to an increasing utilization of the prevailing infrastructure. A growing number of cities have conducted transit-oriented developments to mitigate these congestion externalities. In this article, we analyze the effects of transit-oriented developments on residential property values As an extension to the standard hedonic pricing method, we employ the synthetic control method to estimate the value-added of transit-oriented developments. Three quantitative case studies in the Netherlands indicate that the effects of transit-oriented developments are highly heterogeneous. One case shows strong positive results. The other two are either insignificant, or temporarily negative. |
| JEL: | R38 R58 |
| Date: | 2019–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpb:discus:399.rdf&r=all |
| By: | Das,Abhiman; Ghani,Ejaz; Grover,Arti Goswami; Kerr,William Robert; Nanda,Ramana |
| Abstract: | This paper uses the construction of India's Golden Quadrangle central highway network, together with comprehensive loan data from the Reserve Bank of India, to investigate the interaction between infrastructure development and financial sector depth. The paper identifies a disproportionate increase in loan count and average loan size in districts along the Golden Quadrangle highway network, using stringent specifications with industry and district fixed effects. The results hold in straight-line instrumental variable frameworks and are not present in placebo tests with another highway that was planned to be upgraded at the same time as Golden Quadrangle but subsequently delayed. Importantly, however, the results are concentrated in districts with stronger initial financial development, suggesting that although financing responds to large infrastructure investments and helps spur real economic outcomes, initial financial sector development might play an important role in determining where real activity will grow. |
| Keywords: | Pulp&Paper Industry,Textiles, Apparel&Leather Industry,General Manufacturing,Food&Beverage Industry,Common Carriers Industry,Construction Industry,Plastics&Rubber Industry,Business Cycles and Stabilization Policies,Roads and Highways Performance,Roads&Highways,Inter-Urban Roads and Passenger Transport,Transport Services,Financial Sector Policy,Economic Growth,Industrial Economics,Economic Theory&Research |
| Date: | 2019–06–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:8885&r=all |
| By: | Kemeny, Thomas; Storper, Michael |
| Abstract: | After a long period of convergence, around 1980, inter-place gaps in economic well-being in the United States began to increase. This rising inequality offers a rich terrain to explore causality in regional economics and development theory. This paper presents new, long-run evidence on interregional inequality that highlights the need to situate the current moment in a context of episodic alternations between convergence and divergence. In light of this evidence, the paper revisits the theoretical literature, finding gaps in existing supply- and demand-side models. A demand-led perspective can be strengthened by integrating a primary role for disruptive technological change. We posit a theory of alternating waves, where major technology shocks initially concentrate, and eventually deconcentrate, demand for skilled workers performing complementary tasks. Labor supply responds to these centripetal and centrifugal forces. These reversals yield the observed patterns of rising and falling interregional inequality. We trace out the implications of this theory in both academic and policy terms. |
| Keywords: | cities; income; inequality; economic geography; regional development; convergence |
| JEL: | R11 R12 O33 N90 |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:103312&r=all |
| By: | Lisa Dragoset; Cassandra Baxter; Dallas Dotter; Elias Walsh |
| Abstract: | The purpose of this report was to investigate the feasibility of constructing a school-level measure of students' academic growth from kindergarten to grade 3 and to assess the validity and precision of that measure. |
| Keywords: | Accountability, Growth models, Achievement gains, Elementary school students, Kindergarten, Grade 1, Grade 2, Grade 3, Standardized tests, Public schools, Reading achievement, Mathematics achievement, Correlation |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mpr:mprres:935d6a7320684da8b5c0561461237fb7&r=all |
| By: | Phillip B. Levine; Robin McKnight |
| Abstract: | This paper examines student exposure to school shootings in the United States since the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School. We analyze shootings that occurred during school hours on a school day and resulted in a death. These shootings are likely to be uniformly reported and have a greater potential to cause harm – either directly or indirectly – to enrolled students. We measure the number and characteristics of children who were exposed to them, along with measures of the economic and social environment in which these shootings occur. We distinguish between indiscriminate shootings, suicides, personal attacks and crime-related shootings. The primary finding of our analysis is the importance of separating these types of shootings. Indiscriminate shootings and suicides more commonly affect white students, schools in more rural locations, and those in locations where incomes are higher. The opposite geographic and socioeconomic patterns are apparent for personal attacks and crime-related shootings. Analyses that ignore these distinctions or focus on a particular type may provide a misleading impression of the nature of school shootings. Policy discussions regarding approaches to reducing school shootings should take these distinctions into account. |
| JEL: | I18 I20 |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26728&r=all |
| By: | Maruyama Rentschler,Jun Erik; Braese,Johannes Michael; Jones,Nicholas K.W.; Avner,Paolo |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses the degree to which infrastructure reliability and urban economic activity in several African cities is impacted by flooding. It combines firm-level micro data, flood maps, and several spatial data layers across cities through a harmonized geospatial network analysis. The analysis shows that a significant share of jobs in cities is directly affected by floods. It further details how transport infrastructure is subjected to significant flood risk that disproportionally affects main roads in many cities. While direct flood effects are revealed to be significant, this work further shows how knock-on implications for the entire urban economy might be even larger. Regardless of the direct flood exposure of firms, flooded transport networks mean that disruptions propagate across the city and drastically reduce the connectivity between firms. Access to hospitals is also found to be reduced significantly -- even during relatively light flooding events: From a third of locations in Kampala, floods mean that people would no longer be able to reach hospitals within the"golden hour"-- a rule of thumb referring to the window of time that maximizes the likelihood of survival after a severe medical incident. Overall, this study showcases the use of high-detail city-level analyses to better understand the localized impacts of natural hazards on urban infrastructure networks. |
| Keywords: | Natural Disasters,Transport Services,Labor Markets,Hydrology,Energy Policies&Economics |
| Date: | 2019–06–17 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:8898&r=all |
| By: | Bold,Tessa; Filmer,Deon P.; Molina,Ezequiel; Svensson,Jakob |
| Abstract: | In many low-income countries, teachers do not master the subject they are teaching, and children learn little while attending school. Using unique data from nationally representative surveys of schools in seven Sub-Saharan African countries, this paper proposes a methodology to assess the effect of teacher subject content knowledge on student learning when panel data on students are not available. The paper shows that data on test scores of the student's current and the previous year's teachers, and knowledge of the correlation structure of teacher knowledge across time and grades, allow estimating two structural parameters of interest: the contemporaneous effect of teacher content knowledge, and the extent of fade out of teacher impacts in earlier grades. The paper uses these structural estimates to understand the magnitude of teacher effects and simulate the impacts of various policy reforms. Shortfalls in teachers'content knowledge account for 30 percent of the shortfall in learning relative to the curriculum, and about 20 percent of the cross-country difference in learning in the sample. Assigning more students to better teachers would potentially lead to substantial cost-savings, even if there are negative class-size effects. Ensuring that all incoming teachers have the officially mandated effective years of education, along with increasing the time spent on teaching to the officially mandated schedule, could almost double student learning within the next 30 years. |
| Keywords: | Educational Sciences,Effective Schools and Teachers,Educational Policy and Planning - Ministry of Education,Educational Policy and Planning,Educational Institutions&Facilities,Educational Policy and Planning - Institutional Development |
| Date: | 2019–05–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:8849&r=all |
| By: | Donghoon Lee; Joelle Scally; Wilbert Van der Klaauw; Andrew F. Haughwout |
| Abstract: | Total household debt balances increased by $192 billion in the second quarter of 2019, boosted primarily by a $162 billion gain in mortgage installment balances, according to the latest Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit from the New York Fed?s Center for Microeconomic Data (the mortgage installment balances exclude home equity lines of credit, which are reported separately and have been declining in balance for some time). The new mortgage total of $9.4trillion is slightly higher than the previous high in mortgage balances from the third quarter of 2008 in nominal terms. |
| Keywords: | Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit; delinquency; Consumer Credit Panel; CCP |
| JEL: | D1 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednls:87347&r=all |
| By: | Michael Fritsch (Friedrich Schiller University Jena and Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH), Germany.); Michael Wyrwich (University of Groningen, The Netherlands and Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany.) |
| Abstract: | We investigate the geographic concentration of patenting in large cities using a sample of 14 developed countries. There is wide dispersion of the share of patented inventions in large metropolitan areas. South Korea and the US are two extreme outliers where patenting is highly concentrated in large cities. We do not find any general trend that there is a geographic concentration of patents for the period 2000-2014. There is also no general trend that inventors in large cities have more patents than in rural areas (scaling). Hence, while agglomeration economies of large cities may offer advantages for innovation activities, the extent of these advantages is not very large. We conclude that popular theories over-emphasize the importance of large cities for innovation activities. |
| Keywords: | Innovation, patents, cities, urban scaling, creativity |
| JEL: | R12 O57 |
| Date: | 2020–02–24 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2020-003&r=all |
| By: | Laia Maynou (Department of Health Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK); Bruce Morley (Department of Economics, University of Bath, UK); Mercedes Monfort (IEI and Department of Economics, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Spain); Javier Ordóñez (IEI and Department of Economics, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Spain) |
| Abstract: | The aim of this study is to determine whether there is any evidence of convergence in house prices across the European economies, including both members and non-members of the Eurozone. A new test which searches for convergence among clusters of markets is used. This suggests there are five clusters across Europe, however there is no evidence of a Eurozone cluster. The bconvergence dynamic model shows overall convergence among the 12 countries analysed. The econometric analysis also allows us to determine the main drivers of the real House Price indices, which are private consolidated debt (%GDP), the unemployment rate (%) and the long-term government interest rate (%). Given the importance of housing markets to the economy, the Eurozone may have to consider measures that facilitate convergence across the member’s housing markets. |
| Keywords: | convergence, European Union, house prices |
| JEL: | C33 E44 R21 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jau:wpaper:2020/07&r=all |
| By: | Gray, Rowena; Bowman, Rocco |
| Abstract: | There is a dearth of systematic information about the historical New York City housing market. We present anew sample containing rental price and characteristic data for almost 10,000 Manhattanunits which was collected from historical newspapers for the period 1880 to 1910. These units were geolocated to the historical map of Manhattan Island to explore theirgeographic coverage, using Geographic Information System (GIS) software. We use this new sample to plot the evolution ofthe locationand quality of available Manhattanhousing units.This complements existing research on the growth of New York City and the evolution of the ethnic composition of neighborhoods across Census years, as we show information at annual frequency during this time of high growth for the city. |
| Keywords: | historical GIS,New York City,housing markets,neighborhood change |
| JEL: | N31 N91 R31 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:qucehw:202001&r=all |
| By: | Murray, Cameron |
| Abstract: | Many housing policies aim to increase supply and reduce prices through rezoning, relying on the assumption that increasing allowable densities automatically accelerates the rate of housing supply. However, the existence of landbanking (land hoarding), where land able to be profitably developed for housing is withheld from the market in anticipation of future gains, undermines the logic of such policy changes. We expose major limits of the static housing supply model behind these policies by looking at the degree to which landbanking behaviour is consistent with model predictions. To do this, we assemble a new dataset of home sales and landbanks from the annual reports of Australia’s top eight publicly-listed residential developers from 2001 to 2018 and use complete state-level planning approvals and lot production data in Queensland, Australia. In contrast to the static model prediction that landbanks serve the function of inventories, and are hence minimised, we find that (1) over 200,000 housing lots, or 13 years of new supply, are held by the eight largest housing development companies, and eight years of these landbanks are held in housing subdivisions that are approved and already for sale, that (2) the amount of zoned supply in a region is unrelated to the rate of new housing supply, and that (3) housing developers routinely delay housing production to capitalise on market cycles. Dynamic incentives to maximise total returns, including capital gains in the option value of undeveloped land, could be related to observed behaviour. |
| Date: | 2020–02–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:osfxxx:hym43&r=all |
| By: | Frick, Susanne A.; Rodríguez-Pose, Andrés |
| Abstract: | The paper investigates (1) the evolution of urban concentration from 1985 to 2010 in 68 countries around the world and (2) the extent to which the degree of urban concentration affects national economic growth. It aims to overcome the limitations of existing empirical literature by building a new urban population dataset that allows the construction of a set of Herfindahl-Hirschman-Indices which capture a country’s urban structure in a more nuanced way than the indicators used hitherto. We find that, contrary to the general perception, urban concentration levels have on average decreased or remained stable (depending on indicator). However, these averages camouflage diverging trends across countries. The results of the econometric analysis suggest that there is no uniform relationship between urban concentration and economic growth. Urban concentration is beneficial for economic growth in high-income countries, while this effect does not hold for developing countries. The results differ from previous analyses that generally underscore the benefits of urban concentration at low levels of economic development. The results are robust to accounting for reverse causality through IV analysis, using exogenous geographic factors as instruments |
| Keywords: | Agglomeration; urban primacy; economic growth; high-income countries; low-income countries |
| JEL: | R11 R12 |
| Date: | 2018–05–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:86500&r=all |
| By: | Moritz Drechsel-Grau; Fabian Greimel |
| Abstract: | We evaluate the hypothesis that rising inequality was a causal source of the US household debt boom since 1980. The mechanism builds on the observation that households care about their social status. To keep up with the ever richer Joneses, the middle class substitutes status-enhancing houses for status-neutral consumption. These houses are mortgage-financed, creating a debt boom across the income distri- bution. Using a stylized model we show analytically that aggregate debt increases as top incomes rise. In a quantitative general equilibrium model we show that Keeping up with the Joneses and rising income inequality generate 60% of the observed boom in mortgage debt and 50% of the house price boom. We compare this channel to two competing mechanisms. The Global Saving Glut hypothesis gives rise to a similar debt boom, but does not generate a house prices boom. Loosening collateral constraints does not generate booms in either debt or house prices. |
| Keywords: | mortgages, housing boom, social comparisons, consumption networks, keeping up with the Joneses |
| JEL: | D14 D31 E21 E44 R21 |
| Date: | 2020–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2020_159&r=all |
| By: | Wilbert Van der Klaauw; Andrew F. Haughwout; Joelle Scally; Donghoon Lee |
| Abstract: | Today, the New York Fed released the Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit for the second quarter of 2014. Aggregate debt was relatively flat in the second quarter as housing-related debt shrank, held down by sluggish mortgage originations. But non-housing debt balances increased across the board, with especially strong gains in auto loans. Auto loan balances, which include leases, have increased for thirteen straight quarters, and originations have not been this high since the third quarter of 2006. The Quarterly Report and the following analysis are based on data from the New York Fed?s Consumer Credit Panel, a nationally representative sample drawn from anonymized Equifax credit data. |
| Keywords: | subprime auto loans |
| JEL: | D1 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednls:86962&r=all |
| By: | Haris Aziz; Serge Gaspers; Zhaohong Sun; Toby Walsh |
| Abstract: | In the past few years, several new matching models have been proposed and studied that take into account complex distributional constraints. Relevant lines of work include (1) school choice with diversity constraints where students have (possibly overlapping) types and (2) hospital-doctor matching where various regional quotas are imposed. In this paper, we present a polynomial-time reduction to transform an instance of (1) to an instance of (2) and we show how the feasibility and stability of corresponding matchings are preserved under the reduction. Our reduction provides a formal connection between two important strands of work on matching with distributional constraints. We then apply the reduction in two ways. Firstly, we show that it is NP-complete to check whether a feasible and stable outcome for (1) exists. Due to our reduction, these NP-completeness results carry over to setting (2). In view of this, we help unify some of the results that have been presented in the literature. Secondly, if we have positive results for (2), then we have corresponding results for (1). One key conclusion of our results is that further developments on axiomatic and algorithmic aspects of hospital-doctor matching with regional quotas will result in corresponding results for school choice with diversity constraints. |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2002.06748&r=all |
| By: | Matteo Leombroni; Monika Piazzesi; Martin Schneider; Ciaran Rogers |
| Abstract: | In the 1970s, U.S. asset markets witnessed (i) a 25% dip in the ratio of aggregate household wealth relative to GDP and (ii) negative comovement of house and stock prices that drove a 20% portfolio shift out of equity into real estate. This study uses an overlapping generations model with uninsurable nominal risk to quantify the role of structural change in these events. We attribute the dip in wealth to the entry of baby boomers into asset markets, and to the erosion of bond portfolios by surprise inflation, both of which lowered the overall propensity to save. We also show that the Great Inflation led to a portfolio shift by making housing more attractive than equity. Disagreement about inflation across age groups matters for the size of tax effects, the volume of nominal credit, and the price of housing as collateral. |
| JEL: | E1 E2 E3 E44 G1 G11 G12 |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26740&r=all |
| By: | Manh Hung Do; Trung Thanh Nguyen; Thanh-Tung Nguyen; Ulrike Grote |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the factors affecting the decision of migrants to return home in rural areas and their length of stay in cities with a focus on shocks and rural development policies. We use the unique Thailand Vietnam Socio Economic Panel (TVSEP) data. Our results reveal that the decision to return is positively associated with demographic shocks and negatively associated with social shocks during the time migrants stay in the cities. Meanwhile, economic shocks positively influence migrants’ staying period in the cities. Besides, migrants from poor communes with poverty reduction projects are more unlikely to return. This implies that current rural development policies in Vietnam with a goal of poverty reduction might not be attractive enough for migrants to return. |
| Keywords: | Two-step Heckman selection, Shocks; Rural-urban migration, Migrants’ behavior, Rural development |
| JEL: | J62 D13 O13 Q12 |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tvs:wpaper:wp-018&r=all |
| By: | Born, Andreas (Department of Economics); Janssen, Aljoscha (Singapore Management University) |
| Abstract: | In most democracies, members of parliament are either elected over a party list or by a district. We use a discontinuity in the German parliamentary system to investigate the causal effect of a district-election on an MP’s conformity with her party-line. A district-election does not affect roll call voting behavior causally, possibly due to overall high adherence to party voting. Analyzing the parliamentary speeches of each MP allows us to overcome the high party discipline with regard to parliamentary voting. Using textual analysis and machine learning techniques, we create two measures of closeness of an MP’s speeches to her party. We find that district-elected members of parliament do not differ, in terms of speeches, from those of their party-peers who have been elected through closed party lists. However, both speeches and voting correlate with district characteristics suggesting that district-elections allow districts to select more similar politicians. |
| Keywords: | Party-line; Textual Analysis; Regression Discontinuity; Parliamentary Speeches; Voting |
| JEL: | D72 |
| Date: | 2020–02–24 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:1320&r=all |
| By: | Ahrens, Achim; Beirne, Keelan; Economides, Philip; Kostarakos, Ilias; McQuinn, Kieran; O'Toole, Conor |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:esr:wpaper:wp651&r=all |
| By: | Andreas Fuster (Schweizerische Nationalbank; Federal Reserve Bank of New York; National Bureau of Economic Research); James Vickery; Matthew Plosser |
| Abstract: | The adoption of new technologies is transforming the mortgage industry. For instance, borrowers can now obtain a mortgage entirely online, and lenders use increasingly sophisticated methods to verify borrower income and assets. In a recent staff report, we present evidence suggesting that technology is reducing frictions in mortgage lending, such as reducing the time it takes to originate a mortgage, and increasing the elasticity of mortgage supply. These benefits do not seem to come at the cost of less careful screening of borrowers. |
| Keywords: | refinance; mortgage; technology |
| JEL: | G2 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednls:87261&r=all |
| By: | Deeksha Gupta (Carnegie Mellon University); Ronel Elul (Federal Reserve Bank); David K. Musto (Wharton School; National Bureau of Economic Research) |
| Abstract: | When home prices threaten to decline, lenders bearing more of a community’s mortgage risk have an incentive to combat this decline with new lending that boosts demand. We test whether this incentive drove the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) to guarantee riskier mortgages in early 2007, as the chance of substantial declines grew from small to significant. To identify the effect we relate new risky lending to regional variation in the GSEs’ exposure and the interaction of this variation with home-price elasticity. We focus on the GSEs’ discretion across potential purchases by reference to the credit-score threshold that triggers manual underwriting. We conclude that this incentive helps explain the GSEs’ expansion of risky lending shortly before the financial crisis. |
| Keywords: | GSEs; Risk Exposure; Concentration |
| JEL: | R31 L25 G01 G21 |
| Date: | 2020–01–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedpwp:87406&r=all |
| By: | Lu Zhang (CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis) |
| Abstract: | To what extent do large drops in house prices drive household consumption? Using a large panel of Dutch households over the period 2007 to 2014, when house price dropped 27%, we find a significantly positive relationship between house prices and household (durable) consumption. A 10% change in home values leads to a 0.7% change in household consumption for homeowners, but a negligible response for renters. Young and middle-aged homeowners have larger consumption sensitivities to house prices than old households. Delving into the underlying channels, a pure wealth effect can explain part of the consumption sensitivity to house prices. Furthermore, we find strong evidence that house prices affect consumption through the borrowing collateral (and precautionary saving) channel. |
| JEL: | D12 D14 E21 |
| Date: | 2019–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpb:discus:396.rdf&r=all |
| By: | Ravi Bhalla; Rajashri Chakrabarti |
| Abstract: | In the first of this two post series, we investigated the relationship between state aid and local funding before and after the Great Recession. We presented robust evidence that sharp changes in state aid brought about by the prolonged downturn influenced local budget decision-making. More specifically, we found that relative to the pre-recession relationship, a dollar decline in state aid resulted in a $0.19 increase in local revenue and a $0.14 increase in property tax revenue in New York school districts. In this post, we dive deeper to consider whether there were variations in this compensatory response across school districts, using an approach described in our recent study. For example, one might expect that there would be differences in willingness and ability to offset cuts in state aid across districts with varying levels of property wealth, which in turn might lead to differences in responses. Was this really the case? |
| Keywords: | state funding; property tax; Education Finance; local revenue |
| JEL: | Q1 R1 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednls:86991&r=all |
| By: | Tianye Lin (China Economics and Management Academy, Central University of Finance and Economics); Yangyang Ji (China Economics and Management Academy, Central University of Finance and Economics); Sen Zhang (China Economics and Management Academy, Central University of Finance and Economics) |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we reveal robust findings of the co-movement of real-estate loans, real-estate booms, and market interest rates by observing Chinese data and using vector auto-regressions. We construct a two-sector credit market partial equilibrium model to explain this phenomenon. The findings show that rising real-estate prices are a cause for this co-movement. We believe that an expansion in demand for real-estate loans has brought about an increase in interest rates in the credit market since 2002, which has crowded-out credit for the non-land sector. We also find that rising real-estate prices can lead to expansion in demand for real-estate loans. |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cuf:wpaper:613&r=all |
| By: | Darius Li (Research and Statistics Group); Fatih Karahan |
| Abstract: | Geographic mobility is thought to be important both for economic mobility and for the efficiency of a labor market in allocating the right people to the right jobs. Accordingly, the willingness of the U.S. workforce to move is a factor behind the greater dynamism of the U.S. labor market compared to Europe. While Europeans tend to be more reluctant to move to distant places within their respective countries, the idea of moving across state borders for a job has been woven into the fabric of the American Dream. However, the image of the United States as a mobile nation has changed substantially over recent decades. This post investigates the role that demographic shifts?in particular, the nation?s aging population?have played in the recent decline in interstate migration. |
| Keywords: | labor market; dynamism; migration; demographics |
| JEL: | J00 R1 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednls:87158&r=all |
| By: | Marques, Pedro (Universitat Politècnica de Valencia); Morgan, Kevin (Cardiff University) |
| Abstract: | This paper argues that the development of regional innovation concepts drawing primarily on the experiences of advanced regions, has meant that the dominant narratives about regional development are not adequate to explain the experiences of less developed regions (LDRs). Drawing on the extensive experience of the authors doing research in LDRs, the paper develops three main arguments: first, the emphasis put on networks and systems means that not enough attention is paid to the internal capabilities of organisations, including those of firms, Universities and the public sector. These capabilities shape the strategies of these organisations regarding innovation and collaboration, and therefore influence the nature and content of innovation systems. Second, the paper argues that too much attention has been paid to the importance of informal institutions, rather than analysing the dynamic interaction between formal and informal institutions. The latter approach allows us to avoid culturally deterministic interpretations of under-development and to think about ways in which formal policies could help to improve innovation environments. Third, the paper argues that innovation at the firm level does not always lead to improvement in productivity and economic growth at the aggregate scale. This is partly due to the effects of the dynamics discussed in the two previous points, but is also because advanced regions benefit from a socio-economic ecosystem which supports the translation of new ideas into economic activity. This means that though innovation is fundamental for long-term economic growth, it is not sufficient without mechanisms that ensure its dissemination through the entirety of the economic system. |
| Keywords: | Less developed regions; Innovation; Productivity; Organisational capabilities; Institutions; Regional Development |
| JEL: | O31 O43 P48 R11 |
| Date: | 2020–02–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:lucirc:2020_003&r=all |
| By: | Jonneke Bolhaar (CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis); Sander Gerritsen (CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis); Sonny Kuijpers (CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis); Karen van der Wiel (CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis) |
| Abstract: | This paper concludes that school dropout rates did not decrease significantly in three randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in Dutch vocational training colleges. Colleges could apply for a subsidy on interventions that aim to reduce dropout rates amongst young students that still lack a sufficient degree. All interventions were bottom-up approaches, so initiated by the colleges themselves. The interventions were relatively light interventions for a tough problem. |
| JEL: | I21 I28 C93 |
| Date: | 2019–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpb:discus:400.rdf&r=all |
| By: | Gordon, Ian R. |
| Abstract: | Brexit, the wider populist surge in Europe and Trumpism all seem to involve interesting geographies that have been taken as clues to the worrying puzzle facing a political/academic establishment about what’s driving the surge and how might it be abated. One major theme has been that of the places left behind economically by an opening up to competition from cheap (migrant or overseas) labour – counterpointed by the idea that specific types of people have been left behind culturally. This paper attempts a less reductive approach, starting with examination of oddities in the Brexit geography and then investigating how populist support across European regions is influenced by the interaction of economic/demographic change with varying cosmopolitan/localist influences |
| Keywords: | populist politics; spatial divisions of Labour; Brexit; European regions |
| JEL: | J24 P16 R23 |
| Date: | 2018–03–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:86442&r=all |
| By: | Toke Aidt; Stanley L. Winer; Peng Zhang |
| Abstract: | We study the effect of franchise extension on the fiscal structure of central and local governments in the United Kingdom between 1820 and 1913 to revisit the Redistribution Hypothesis - the prediction that franchise extension causes an increase in state-sponsored redistribution. We adopt a novel method of uncovering causality from non-experimental data proposed by Hoover (2001). This method is based on tests for structural breaks in the marginal and conditional distributions of the franchise and fiscal structure time series preceded by a detailed historical narrative analysis. We do not find any compelling evidence that supports the Redistribution Hypothesis. |
| Keywords: | franchise extension, redistribution, democratization, causality, structural breaks, local government, central government, historical narrative |
| JEL: | D72 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8114&r=all |
| By: | Chong, Shi Kai; Bahrami, Mohsen; Chen, Hao; balcisoy, Selim; Bozkaya, Burcin; Pentland, Alex 'Sandy' |
| Abstract: | Much recent work has illuminated the growth, innovation, and prosperity of entire cities, but there is relatively less evidence concerning the growth and prosperity of individual neighborhoods. In this paper we show that diversity of amenities within a city neighborhood, computed from openly available points of interest on digital maps, accurately predicts human mobility ("flows") between city neighborhoods and that these flows accurately predict neighborhood economic productivity. Additionally, the diversity of consumption behaviour or the diversity of flows together with geographic centrality and population density accurately predicts neighborhood economic growth, even after controlling for standard factors such as population, etc. We develop our models using geo-located purchase data from Istanbul, and then validate the relationships using openly available data from Beijing and several U.S. cities. Our results suggest that the diversity of goods and services within a city neighborhood is the largest single factor driving both human mobility and economic growth. |
| Date: | 2020–02–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:osfxxx:j59u3&r=all |
| By: | Donghoon Lee; Wilbert Van der Klaauw; Joelle Scally; Andrew F. Haughwout |
| Abstract: | Today, the New York Fed released the 2013:Q3 Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit. The data show the first substantial increase in outstanding balances since 2008, when Americans began reducing their debt. As of September 30, 2013, total consumer indebtedness was $11.28 trillion, up 1.1 percent from its level in the previous quarter, although still considerably below the peak of $12.67 trillion in 2008:Q3. This quarter, the increase was boosted by nearly across-the-board growth. Balances on mortgages, auto loans, student loans, and credit cards all increased. Balances on home equity lines of credit (HELOCs) were the only exception, with a $5 billion decrease. To better convey the implications of these balance changes, this post briefly updates our previous deleveraging analyses. |
| JEL: | D1 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednls:86904&r=all |
| By: | Chatman, Daniel G. PhD; Moran, Marcel E. |
| Keywords: | Social and Behavioral Sciences |
| Date: | 2019–10–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:itsrrp:qt4xv6z4mj&r=all |
| By: | Richard Peach; Joseph Tracy; Andrew F. Haughwout |
| Abstract: | The homeownership rate?the percentage of households that own rather than rent the homes that they live in?has fallen sharply since mid-2005. In fact, in the second quarter of 2016 the homeownership rate fell to 62.9 percent, its lowest level since 1965. In this blog post, we look at underlying demographic trends to gain a deeper understanding of the large increase in the homeownership rate from 1995 to 2005 and the subsequent large decline. Although there is reason to believe that the homeownership rate may begin to rise again in the not-too-distant future, it is unlikely to fully recover to its previous peak levels. This is a disconcerting finding for those who view homeownership as an integral part of the American Dream and a key component of income security during retirement. |
| Keywords: | Headship Rate; age-specific population growth; Homeownership Rate |
| JEL: | R3 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednls:87178&r=all |
| By: | Christiaensen,Luc; Gonzalez,Alvaro S.; Robalino,David A. |
| Abstract: | With an estimated 724 million extreme poor people living in developing countries, and the world's demographics bifurcating into an older North and a younger South, there are substantial economic incentives and benefits for people to migrate. There are also important market and regulatory failures that constrain mobility and reduce the net benefits of migration. This paper reviews the recent literature and proposes a conceptual framework for better integration and coordination of policies that can address the different market and regulatory failures. The paper advances five types of interventions in need of particular attention in design, implementation, and evaluation; namely, (1) active labor market programs that serve local, regional, and foreign markets; (2) remittances and investment subsidies to promote job creation and labor productivity growth; (3) social insurance programs that cover all jobs and facilitate labor mobility; (4) labor taxes to internalize the social costs of migration in receiving regions; and (5) more flexible private sector driven schemes to regulate the flow of migrants and minimize irregular migration. |
| Keywords: | Labor Markets,Rural Labor Markets,Educational Sciences |
| Date: | 2019–05–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:8867&r=all |
| By: | Andrew F. Haughwout; Donghoon Lee; Joelle Scally; Wilbert Van der Klaauw |
| Abstract: | Household debt balances increased in the third quarter of 2018, a seventeenth consecutive increase. Total debt balances reached $13.51 trillion, a level more than 20 percent above the trough reached in 2013, according to the latest Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit from the New York Fed?s Center for Microeconomic Data. With today?s report we begin publishing a new set of charts that depict debt and repayment outcomes by the age of the borrower. The report and this analysis are based on the New York Fed Consumer Credit Panel (CCP), a 5 percent sample of anonymized Equifax credit reports. Here we?ll highlight three of the new charts. |
| Keywords: | CCP; debt; household debt; demographics |
| JEL: | D1 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednls:87295&r=all |
| By: | Lei Ding; Leonard I. Nakamura |
| Abstract: | This study provides new evidence on the impact of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) on mortgage lending by taking advantage of an exogenous policy shock in 2014, which caused significant changes in neighborhoods’ CRA eligibility in the Philadelphia market. The loss of CRA coverage leads to an over 10 percent decrease in purchase originations by CRA-regulated lenders. While nondepository institutions replace approximately half, but not all, of the decreased lending, their increased market share was accompanied by a greater involvement in riskier and more costly FHA lending. This study demonstrates how different lenders respond to the incentive of CRA credit. |
| Keywords: | Community Reinvestment Act; Housing; Bank Lending; Mortgage |
| JEL: | G21 G28 D14 G23 |
| Date: | 2020–02–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedpwp:87490&r=all |
| By: | Ambler, Kate |
| Abstract: | Emigration from the countries of Central America has evolved since the 1960s from small numbers of largely intra-regional emigrants to substantial numbers of people, emigrating in large part to the United States. For example, in 1960, 69 percent of emigrants from El Salvador resided in Honduras and only 12 percent lived in the United States. By 2000, 88 percent of Salvadoran emigrants in the world lived in the United States. |
| Keywords: | CENTRAL AMERICA, LATIN AMERICA, migration, emigration, migrants, remittances, |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpr:lacwps:4&r=all |
| By: | Gaurav Khanna (University of California - San Diego); Carlos Medina (Banco de la Republica de Colombia); Anant Nyshadham (University of Michigan; NBER); Jorge Tamayo (Harvard Business School) |
| Abstract: | Canonical models of crime emphasize economic incentive. Yet, causal evidence of sorting into criminal occupations in response to individual-level variation in incentives is limited. We link administrative socioeconomic microdata with the universe of arrests in Medellín over a decade. We exploit exogenous variation in formal-sector employment around a socioeconomic-score cutoff, below which individuals receive benefits if not formally employed, to test whether a higher cost to formal-sector employment induces crime. Regression discontinuity estimates show this policy generated reductions in formal-sector employment and a corresponding spike in organized crime, but no effects on crimes of impulse or opportunity. |
| Keywords: | organized crime, informality, occupational choice, gangs, Medellin |
| JEL: | K42 J46 J24 |
| Date: | 2019–10–31 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cgd:wpaper:520&r=all |
| By: | Kornejew,Martin Gunter Michail; Maruyama Rentschler,Jun Erik; Hallegatte,Stephane |
| Abstract: | This study explores the role of governance in improving infrastructure reliability. It estimates that increasing infrastructure spending and improving governance in parallel is six times more effective at enhancing transport system performance than increasing spending alone. It also estimates that under current fiscal budgeting, every $1 spent on infrastructure maintenance is as effective as $1.5 of new investments in many OECD economies. Overall, the evidence in this study demonstrates that it is the quality rather than the quantity of infrastructure spending that determines the quality of infrastructure services. |
| Keywords: | Transport Services,Energy Policies&Economics,Hydrology,Public Sector Economics,Public Financial Management,Public Finance Decentralization and Poverty Reduction |
| Date: | 2019–06–17 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:8894&r=all |
| By: | Di Cataldo, Marco; Monastiriotis, Vassilis |
| Abstract: | With the prospective exit of the UK from the European Union, a crucial question is whether EU Structural Funds have been beneficial for the country and which aspects of Cohesion Policy should be maintained if EU funds are to be replaced. This paper addresses this question through a twofold investigation, assessing not only whether but also how EU funds have contributed to regional growth in the UK from 1994 to 2013. We document a significant and robust effect of Cohesion Policy in the UK, with higher proportions of Structural Funds associated to higher economic growth both on the whole and particularly in the less developed regions of the country. In addition, we show that the strategic orientation of investments also plays a distinct role for regional growth. While concentration of investments on specific pillars seems to have no direct growth effects, unless regions can rely on pre-existing competitive advantages in key development areas, we unveil clear evidence that targeting investments on specific areas of relative regional need has a significant and autonomous effect on growth. These findings have important implications for the design of regional policy interventions in Britain after Brexit. |
| Keywords: | EU Cohesion Policy; UK; Structural Funds; regional policy design; Brexit |
| JEL: | O18 R11 R53 |
| Date: | 2018–08–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:89190&r=all |
| By: | Gizem Kosar; Tyler Ransom; Wilbert van der Klaauw |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates how migration and location choice decisions depend on a large set of location characteristics, with particular focus on measuring the importance and nature of the non-monetary cost of moving. We employ a stated-preference approach to elicit respondents’ choice probabilities for a set of hypothetical choice scenarios, using two waves from the NY Fed’s Survey of Consumer Expectations. Our hypothetical choice methodology elicits choice probabilities from which we recover the distribution of individual-level preferences for location and mobility attributes without concerns about omitted variables and selection biases that hamper analyses based on observed mobility choices alone. We estimate substantial heterogeneity in the willingness-to-pay (WTP) for location characteristics, both across and within demographic groups. Our results also indicate evidence of sorting into current locations based on preferences for these attributes as well as a strong negative association between respondents’ non-monetary moving costs and their moving expectations and actual mobility decisions. |
| Keywords: | subjective probabilities, stated choice methodology, migration, location choice |
| JEL: | J61 R23 D84 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8117&r=all |
| By: | Tetsuji Okazaki (Graduate School of Economics, University of Tokyo); Toshihiro Okubo (Faculty of Economics, Keio University); Eric Strobl (Department of Economics, Bern University) |
| Abstract: | Natural disasters seriously damage firms and banks. The ability to finance recovery is a key factor for damaged firms to survive and grow after the event. However, small- and medium-sized firms are financially constrained and largely depend on local banks. In this paper, we focus on the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, which resulted in serious damage to small- and medium-sized firms and banks in Yokohama City. The crucial solutions were the provision of loans by local banks as well as the Earthquake Bills policy implemented by the Bank of Japan. Using firm- and bank level datasets, we find that larger local banks allowed damaged firms to survive and grow. The policy by the Bank of Japan mitigated the negative impact of bank damage on firms and prevented credit crunch, although this deteriorated the balance sheet of local banks and resulted in financial instability and a banking crisis as a side effect. |
| Keywords: | Great Kanto Earthquake, Earthquake Bills, Local Bank, Natural Disaster, Japan |
| JEL: | G21 R10 N25 N85 |
| Date: | 2020–01–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:keo:dpaper:2020-001&r=all |
| By: | Dunaetz, David Robert (Azusa Pacific University); Cullum, Melody; Barron, Edgar |
| Abstract: | Although wavering personal commitment to a local body of believers has been a concern of Christian leaders since New Testament times, increasing individualism and other cultural changes are affecting individual Christians’ commitment to their churches in new ways. This study examines church commitment using the multidimensional construct of organizational commitment to examine characteristics of churches, church leaders, and church members that may influence such commitment. Specifically, church size, perceptions of pastoral humility, church tenure (the time one has attended a church), age, and gender are considered as possible predictors of church commitment. This commitment is measured as affective commitment (one’s emotional attachment to the church), continuation commitment (the felt-need to stay at the church), and normative commitment (one’s belief that staying at the church is the right thing to do). In a study of evangelical Christians in the U.S. (N = 244), a regression analysis indicates that higher affective commitment is associated with perceptions of greater pastoral humility and member tenure. Continuation commitment decreases as church size goes up. Higher normative commitment is associated with perceptions of greater pastoral humility, smaller churches, and longer member tenure. Overall, higher church commitment is best predicted by perceptions of pastoral humility, then by tenure and church size, with larger churches having less committed attenders. No significant differences in church commitment were associated with age or gender. |
| Date: | 2020–02–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:osfxxx:zxc4t&r=all |
| By: | Giuseppe Berlingieri (OECD); Sara Calligaris (OECD); Chiara Criscuolo (OECD); Rudy Verlhac (OECD) |
| Abstract: | This paper provides new evidence on the main characteristics of laggard firms - firms in the bottom 40% of the productivity distribution - and their potential for productivity growth. It finds that laggards are on average younger and smaller than more productive firms, and matter for aggregate resource reallocation. Moreover, younger laggards converge faster toward the productivity frontier, suggesting that the composition of the laggard group matters for future productivity. Yet this report finds that laggards converge at a slower rate in highly digital- and skill-intensive industries, suggesting that there are barriers to technology and knowledge diffusion. This could help explain the much-debated productivity slowdown and the increased productivity dispersion. This report also finds that policies aimed at improving workers’ skills, alleviating financial constraints to investments and increasing firms' absorptive capacity through direct R&D support can accelerate the diffusion of knowledge and technology, and help laggard firms to catch up. |
| Keywords: | Catch-up, Laggards, Productivity |
| JEL: | D2 D4 L2 O57 |
| Date: | 2020–03–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:stiaac:86-en&r=all |
| By: | Garcia Moreno,Vicente A.; Gertler,Paul J.; Patrinos,Harry Anthony |
| Abstract: | A school-based management program was implemented Mexico in 2001 and continued until 2014. This national program, Programa Escuelas de Calidad, was considered a key intervention to improve learning outcomes. In 2006, the national program was evaluated in the Mexican state of Colima, being the first experimental evaluation of the national program. All schools were invited to participate in the program; a random selection was performed to select the treatment and control groups among all the applicants. An intent-to-treat approach did not detect any impact on learning outcomes; a formal school-based management intervention plus a monetary grant was not enough to improve learning outcomes. First, the schools in the evaluation sample, control and treatment, were schools with high learning outcomes. Second, these schools had experienced some years of regular school-based management practices before the evaluation. A difference-in-difference design is used to identify heterogeneous effects of the program on learning outcomes. The difference-in-difference approach shows that the intensity of treatment increased test scores during the first year of the intervention. |
| Date: | 2019–06–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:8874&r=all |
| By: | Maaike Diepstraten (CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis); Rudy Douven (CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis); Bram Wouterse (CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis) |
| Abstract: | We examine the impact of the accessibility of an older individual’s house on her use of nursing home care. We link administrative data on the accessibility of all houses in the Netherlands to data on long-term care use of all older persons from 2011-2014. We find that older people living in more accessible houses are less likely to use nursing home care. The effects increase with age and are largest for individuals aged 90 or older. The effects are stronger for people with physical limitations than for persons with cognitive problems. We also provide suggestive evidence that older people living in more accessible houses substitute nursing home care by home care. |
| JEL: | I11 I13 H51 |
| Date: | 2019–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpb:discus:397.rdf&r=all |
| By: | Matthew Ploenzke (Harvard University); Jason Bram |
| Abstract: | For at least the past few decades, New York City?s economy, both its booms and busts, have been driven primarily by the finance sector, or more specifically the securities industry (a.k.a. Wall Street). In contrast, the city?s current economic boom?one of the strongest on record?has seen virtually no job growth on Wall Street. Much of the job creation has been in lower-paying sectors like retail trade, restaurants and hotels, and health care and social assistance, with some of the fastest job growth going on in what would be considered ?information technology? industries?jobs that pay quite well for the most part. But how big is the Big Apple?s ?tech sector,? how fast has it been growing, and how does it stack up against other tech hubs across the United States? Before addressing these questions, we must first answer a more fundamental question: what exactly is the tech sector? |
| Keywords: | New York City; tech; IT sector; Silicon Alley |
| JEL: | R1 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednls:87043&r=all |
| By: | Elizabeth Setren; Rajashri Chakrabarti |
| Abstract: | Surprisingly, there is no literature on how recessions (including the Great Recession) have affected schools. Perhaps this is because educational funding stresses and decisions vary among and within states, which makes it hard to reach general conclusions. Yet schools play an indispensable role in our society, educating the populace and building the nation?s future. Therefore, it is important to understand how the Great Recession is affecting public spending on schools, the delivery of education services, and student learning. In this post, we analyze one state?s experience, drawing on our study ?The Impact of the Great Recession on School District Finances: Evidence from New York.? While we do not find evidence of much impact on schools? overall revenue or expenditures, we do detect important compositional changes that could affect both student learning and school financing in coming years. |
| Keywords: | ARRA; Federal Stimulus; School Finance; New York; Recession |
| JEL: | Q1 R1 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednls:86784&r=all |
| By: | Prateek Bansal; Akanksha Sinha; Rubal Dua; Ricardo Daziano (King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center) |
| Abstract: | The ‘ride-hailing’ services offered by transportation network companies (TNCs) such as Uber and Lyft have rapidly disrupted personal transportation, particularly in cities. Schaller (2018) reports that TNCs provided 2.6 billion rides in 2017 in the United States (U.S.), a 37% increase from 2016. The rapid increase in the adoption of TNC services can be attributed to the ease of access offered by smartphone applications and the higher availability of cars and drivers compared to regulated, traditional taxi services. |
| Keywords: | Transportation, Ride-hailing, Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) |
| Date: | 2020–02–24 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:prc:dpaper:ks--2020-dp03&r=all |
| By: | Alex Rees-Jones; Ran Shorrer; Chloe J. Tergiman |
| Abstract: | A growing body of evidence suggests that decision-makers fail to account for correlation in signals that they receive. We study the relevance of this mistake in students' interactions with school-choice matching mechanisms. In a lab experiment presenting simple and incentivized school-choice scenarios, we find that subjects tend to follow optimal application strategies when schools' admissions decisions are determined independently. However, when schools rely on a common priority—inducing correlation in admissions—decision making suffers: application strategies become substantially more aggressive and fail to include attractive “safety” options. We document that this pattern holds even within-subject, with significant fractions of participants applying to different programs when correlation is varied but all payoff-relevant elements are held constant. We provide a battery of tests suggesting that this phenomenon is at least partially driven by correlation neglect, and we discuss implications that arise for the design and deployment of student-to-school matching mechanisms. |
| JEL: | C91 D01 D03 M21 |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26734&r=all |
| By: | Braese,Johannes Michael; Maruyama Rentschler,Jun Erik; Hallegatte,Stephane |
| Abstract: | This review examines the literature on the role of infrastructure in determining the productivity and competitiveness of firms. It shows that the existing evidence base is clear in concluding that reliable and high-quality infrastructure is a crucial foundation for enabling businesses to thrive. It demonstrates that the provision of electricity, transport, water, and telecommunications systems increases firm-level productivity. It also shows that providing infrastructure per se is not enough to boost productivity, unless it offers reliable service. Disruptions and irregular service have substantial adverse effects on firms, not least due to disrupted supply chains, underutilization of production capacity, and costly adaptation measures. |
| Keywords: | Energy Policies&Economics,Transport Services,Common Carriers Industry,Construction Industry,Business Cycles and Stabilization Policies,Food&Beverage Industry,Plastics&Rubber Industry,General Manufacturing,Textiles, Apparel&Leather Industry,Pulp&Paper Industry,Hydrology,Economic Theory&Research,Industrial Economics,Economic Growth |
| Date: | 2019–06–17 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:8895&r=all |
| By: | Timmons, Shane; Barjaková, Martina; McElvaney, Terence; Lunn, Pete |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:esr:wpaper:rb202002&r=all |
| By: | Brice Corgnet (Emlyon Business School and Economic Science Institute, Chapman University); Brian C. Gunia (Carey Business School, Johns Hopkins University); Roberto Hernán González (Burgundy School of Business, Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté and Economic Science Institute, Chapman University) |
| Abstract: | We study several solutions to shirking in teams that trigger social incentives by reshaping the workplace social context. Using an experimental design, we manipulate social pressure at work by varying the type of workplace monitoring and the extent to which employees engage in social interaction. This design allows us to assess the effectiveness as well as the popularity of each solution. Despite similar effectiveness in boosting productivity across solutions, only organizational systems involving social interaction (via chat) were at least as popular as a baseline treatment. This suggests that any solution based on promoting social interaction is more likely to be embraced by workers than monitoring systems alone. |
| Keywords: | Social Incentives; Social Pressure; Moral Hazard in Teams; Laboratory Experiments |
| JEL: | C92 D23 D91 M5 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:chu:wpaper:20-05&r=all |
| By: | Simone Bertolia; Frédéric Docquier; Hillel Rapoport; Ilse Ruyssen |
| Abstract: | We use a multilevel approach to characterize the relationship between weather shocks and (internal and international) migration intentions. We combine individual survey data on migration intentions with measures of localized weather shocks for Western African countries over 2008-2016. A meta-analysis on results from about 310,000 regressions is conducted to identify the specification of weather anoma-lies that maximizes the goodness of fit of our empirical model. We then use this best specification to document heterogeneous mobility responses to weather shocks, which can be due to differences in long-term climatic conditions, migration percep- tions, or adaptation capabilities. We find that droughts are associated with a higher probability of migration intentions in Senegal, Niger and Ivory Coast. The effect on international migration intentions are only significant in Niger. These effects are amplified, but qualitatively similar, when restricting the sample to rural low-skilled respondents. |
| Keywords: | International Migration;Migration intentions;Individual-level Data;Weather Shocks;Western Africa |
| JEL: | F22 J61 O13 O15 |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cii:cepidt:2020-02&r=all |
| By: | Ayşegül Şahin; Richard K. Crump |
| Abstract: | Recessions and recoveries typically have been times of substantial reallocation in the economy and the labor market, and the current cycle does not appear to be an exception. The speed and smoothness of reallocation depend in part on the structure of the labor market, particularly the degree of mismatch between the characteristics of available workers and newly available jobs. Such mismatches could occur because of differences in skills between workers and jobs (skills mismatch) or because of differences in the location of the available jobs and available workers (geographic mismatch). In this post, we focus on skills mismatch to assess the extent to which the slow pace of the labor market recovery from the Great Recession can be attributed to such problems. If skills mismatch is much more severe than usual, we would expect the unemployment rate to remain higher for longer and the workers subject to such mismatch to have worse labor market outcomes. |
| Keywords: | Skills mismatch; Labor market; Construction workers; Unemployment |
| JEL: | E2 J00 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednls:86797&r=all |
| By: | Francisca M. Antman; Brian Duncan; Stephen J. Trejo |
| Abstract: | The literature on immigrant assimilation and intergenerational progress has sometimes reached surprising conclusions, such as the puzzle of immigrant advantage which finds that Hispanic immigrants sometimes have better health than U.S.-born Hispanics. While numerous studies have attempted to explain these patterns, almost all studies rely on subjective measures of ethnic self-identification to identify immigrants’ descendants. This can lead to bias due to “ethnic attrition,” which occurs whenever a U.S.-born descendant of a Hispanic immigrant fails to self-identify as Hispanic. In this paper, we exploit information on parents’ and grandparents’ place of birth to show that Mexican ethnic attrition, operating through intermarriage, is sizable and selective on health, making subsequent generations of Mexican immigrants appear less healthy than they actually are. Consequently, conventional estimates of health disparities between Mexican Americans and non-Hispanic whites as well as those between Mexican Americans and recent Mexican immigrants have been significantly overstated. |
| JEL: | I14 J12 J15 |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26742&r=all |
| By: | Bandiera,Luca; Tsiropoulos,Vasileios |
| Abstract: | This paper provides a framework to assess the impact of infrastructure investment expected under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) on the debt vulnerabilities of countries that are located on BRI transport and connectivity corridors in the absence of comprehensive and consistent information on investments and financing terms. Key assumptions relate to the amount of public and publicly guaranteed (PPG) debt financing and its terms, the size and sectoral type of identified BRI investment, and the expected impact of growth in the medium and long term of that investment. BRI debt financing is expected significantly increase PPG debt in a number of countries. The paper provides estimates for both the medium and the long term. In the medium term, defined as the period 2019-2023, debt financing of BRI investment is expected to be fully disbursed while the full growth impact of BRI related infrastructure is not entirely realized. In this initial phase, around one-third of assessed BRI-recipient countries are estimated to face elevated debt vulnerabilities post- BRI, several of which have already high debt vulnerabilities. The impact of BRI on public debt would improve over the longer term under the assumption of a sustained negative interest rate-growth differential and in the absence of the materialization of BRI related fiscal risks. Still, debt to GDP ratio is expected to remain higher in one-third of countries (11 out of 30 with available data). |
| Keywords: | International Trade and Trade Rules,Public Finance Decentralization and Poverty Reduction,Macro-Fiscal Policy,Public Sector Economics,Economic Adjustment and Lending,Transport Services,Energy Policies&Economics,Economic Growth,Industrial Economics,Economic Theory&Research |
| Date: | 2019–06–17 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:8891&r=all |
| By: | Yana Bagina (National Research University Higher School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | The paper is focused on the interrelations between citizens’ everyday mobilities and the ways they cope with urban fears. It describes situations when people expect and experience security threats that trigger their fears, while moving in the city. To deal with fears urban citizens develop coping strategies - a set of actions that helps them to manage their emotional experiences. Coping strategies transform various elements of everyday urban mobility and, thus, rearrange and redefine it. The paper is based on semi-structured interviews with Moscow residents and digital diaries of emotions. |
| Keywords: | fear; coping with fear; coping strategies; mobility; everyday travels; urban mobility |
| JEL: | Z |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hig:wpaper:08/urb/2019&r=all |
| By: | Resnick, Danielle; Siame, Gilbert; Mulambia, Peter; Ndhlovu, Dorothy; Shicilenge, Beverly; Sivasubramanian, Bhavna |
| Abstract: | Since the early 2000s, decentralization has been espoused as a major policy goal of successive Zambian governments. With the passing of the 2019 Local Government Act, a greater understanding is needed of how decentralization has progressed thus far in Zambia and how political economy dynamics have constrained the process. As such, a survey was conducted with 153 bureaucrats across 16 councils in four Zambian provinces, complemented by interviews with elected ward councilors. Three key findings emerge. First, the organizational setting in which councils operate undermines the continuity of service provision. In particular, transfers of staff by the Local Government Service Commission (LGSC), partially driven by the growth in the number of councils in recent years, increases pressure on the wage bill of local authorities, creates uncertainty for civil servants, and undermines institutional memory. Second, the unwillingness to cede genuine autonomy to local councils by the Ministry of Local Government (MLG) repeatedly emerged. A perception of low levels of consultation with council bureaucrats and elected councilors, especially when statutory instruments are issued, reinforce that accountability remains upwards to the MLG rather than downwards to citizens. Third, within the councils, there is a mismatch in incentives between the bureaucrats and politicians that can undermine policy implementation; while the former respect authority and attention to procedures, the latter are focused on constituents’ priorities and may bypass formal procedures to deliver to their voters. Based on interviews with market committees and solid waste companies, these dynamics have negative externalities on citizen perceptions and service provision in urban areas. As one of the few analyses conducted with local bureaucrats to assess their experiences with decentralization, the study aims to advance both policy and scholarship about the political economy dynamics surrounding efforts to strengthen subnational capabilities in developing countries. |
| Keywords: | ZAMBIA, SOUTHERN AFRICA, AFRICA SOUTH OF SAHARA, AFRICA, decentralization, governance, public sector, urbanization, urban areas, services, reforms, politics, local governance, political economy, public sector reform, service delivery, |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpr:ifprid:1893&r=all |
| By: | Shaheen, Susan PhD; Stocker, Adam; Meza, Ruth |
| Abstract: | To better understand the equity implications of a variety of congestion management strategies, researchers at the Transportation Sustainability Research Center (TSRC) at University of California, Berkeley analyzed existing literature on congestion management strategies and findings from 12 expert interviews. The literature review applies the Spatial – Temporal – Economic – Physiological – Social (STEPS) Equity Framework1 to identify impacts and classify whether social equity barriers are reduced, exacerbated, or both by a particular strategy. The congestion management strategies of interest were categorized into six broader categories: 1) pricing, 2) parking and curb policies, 3) operational strategies, 4) infrastructure changes, 5) transportation services and strategies, and 6) conventional taxation. |
| Keywords: | Engineering, traffic congestion, congestion pricing, social equity |
| Date: | 2019–12–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:itsrrp:qt7rm9w4pn&r=all |
| By: | Santamaria, Marta (University of Warwick) |
| Abstract: | This paper quantifies the gains from infrastructure investments and shows that reshaping the highway network after a large economic shock, the division of Germany, had positive welfare and income effects. To address the endogeneity between infrastructure and economic outcomes, I develop a multi-region quantitative trade model where infrastructure is chosen by the government to maximise welfare. I calibrate the model to the prewar German economy and estimate the key structural parameter of the model using the prewar Highway Plan. I exploit the divisionofGermany,alarge-scaleexogenousshocktoeconomicfundamentals,toshowthatthe model can predict changes in highway construction after the division. Using newly collected data, I document that half of the new highway investments deviated from the prewar Highway Plan. I find that the reallocation of these investments (one-third of the network) increased real income by 0.69% to 2% each year, compared to the construction of the original prewar Plan. Finally, I find a large cost of path-dependence: the ability to reshape the full network in anticipation of the division could have increased real income by an additional 1.85%. |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wrk:warwec:1244&r=all |
| By: | Benjamin M. Hébert; Michael Woodford |
| Abstract: | We propose a new measure of the cost of information structures in rational inattention problems, the "neighborhood-based" cost functions, given that many applications involve states with a topological structure. These cost functions summarize the results of a sequential information sampling problem, and also capture a notion of perceptual distance. This second property allows neighborhood-based cost functions, unlike mutual information, to make accurate predictions about behavior in perceptual experiments. We compare the implications of our neighborhood-based cost functions with those of a mutual-information cost function in a series of applications: security design, global games, modeling perceptual judgments, and linear-quadratic-Gaussian problems. |
| JEL: | D83 |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26743&r=all |
| By: | Jonathan Hastings (Research and Statistics Group); Jason Bram; James A. Orr |
| Abstract: | Has Wall Street?the term for the securities industry that symbolizes New York City?s role as a global financial center?become less of a specialty for the city? In this post, we show that while the securities industry continues to play an outsized role in the New York City economy, the city?s job base has become somewhat more diversified since 1990. Diversification can be beneficial, as it makes a local economy less vulnerable to adverse shocks to its key industry. A recent example appears in a post by Bram and Orr showing that with Wall Street in a bit of a slump, nonfinancial industries have picked up the slack and are leading the city?s employment recovery this time around. |
| Keywords: | Hachman Index; employment; Location Quotient; diversification; New York City; specialization; securities industry; Wall Street |
| JEL: | R1 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednls:86809&r=all |
| By: | Rudy Douven (CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis); Minke Remmerswaal (CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis); Ana Moura; Martin Salm |
| Abstract: | We assess the relative importance of demand and supply factors as determinants of regional variation in healthcare expenditures in the Netherlands. Our empirical approach follows individuals who migrate between regions. We use individual data on annual healthcare expenditures for the entire Dutch population between the years 2006 and 2013. Regional variation in healthcare expenditures is mostly driven by demand factors, with an estimated share of around 70%. Both demographics and other unobserved demand factors, e.g. patient preferences, are important components of the demand share. |
| JEL: | I11 I13 H51 |
| Date: | 2018–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpb:discus:384.rdf&r=all |
| By: | Joseph Morris Morris (Transportation Research Board); Andrew F. Haughwout; Therese McGuire (Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University) |
| Abstract: | On January 14, the Transportation Research Board, an arm of the National Research Council, released a new report, Transportation Investments in Response to Economic Downturns. The report is intended to provide guidance on three important and related policy questions:?If the federal government undertakes a future stimulus program, should transportation spending be part of that package??If so, how should the transportation spending be structured and managed??Should established transportation programs be modified to make transportation spending more useful as economic stimulus? |
| JEL: | E2 H00 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednls:86924&r=all |
| By: | Aghion, Philippe; Bergeaud, Antonin; Blundell, Richard; Griffith, Rachel |
| Abstract: | Matched employee-employer data from the UK are used to analyze the wage premium to working in an innovative firm. We find that firms that are more R&D intensive pay higher wages on average, and this is particularly true for workers in some low-skilled occupations. We propose a model in which a firm’s innovativeness is reflected in the degree of complementarity between workers in low-skill and highskilled occupations, and in which non-verifiable soft skills are an important determinant of the wages of workers in low-skilled occupations. The model yields additional predictions on training, tenure and outsourcing which we also find support for in data. |
| Keywords: | innovation; skill-based technological change; wage; complementarity |
| JEL: | O33 L23 J31 |
| Date: | 2019–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:103452&r=all |
| By: | Frank Martin |
| Abstract: | The Vermont Division of Vocational Rehabilitation’s Linking Learning to Careers (LLC) program provides enhanced services to help high school students with disabilities as they make the transition to careers or postsecondary education. These enhanced services include access to assistive technology. |
| Keywords: | Vermont Division of Vocational Rehabilitation’s (DVR’s) Linking Learning to Careers (LLC) program , assistive technology, high school students with disabilities, careers or postsecondary, transition to adulthood, young adults |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mpr:mprres:89ddfc0b32984c89b465df04f2bfc23f&r=all |
| By: | Maxim L. Pinkovskiy; Donald P. Morgan; Bryan Yang (Markets Group) |
| Abstract: | U.S. banks have shuttered nearly 5,000 branches since the financial crisis, raising concerns that more low-income and minority neighborhoods may be devolving into ?banking deserts? with inadequate, or no, mainstream financial services. We investigate this issue and also ask whether such neighborhoods are particularly exposed to branch closings?a development that, according to recent research, could reduce credit access, even with other branches present, by destroying ?soft? information about borrowers that influences lenders? credit decisions. Our findings are mixed, suggesting that further study of these concerns is warranted. |
| Keywords: | crisis; Soft information; banks; branches; deserts |
| JEL: | D1 G2 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednls:87107&r=all |
| By: | Paccoud, Antoine; Niesseron, Pauline; Mace, Alan |
| Abstract: | This article analyses the interrelation of ethnicity, class and tenure in the gentrification trajectories that have taken place in England in the most recent intercensal period (2001–2011). It argues that the return of the Private Rented Sector has made possible the extension of social change to areas not favored by White British (majority ethnic) middle-class owner-occupiers. This has seen the inflow of White British private renters into White British working-class areas and the arrival of private renting Not White British middle classes–primarily migrants–in working-class areas with a significant proportion of Not White British individuals. There is thus an ethnic dimension to the geographical spread of buy-to-let gentrification and the movement toward property wealth re-concentration it feeds. The middle-class individuals entering gentrifying areas as private renters are however not classical gentrifiers as the closing of rent gaps starts with the supply of private rented units by property investors. |
| Keywords: | buy-to-let; rent gap; ethnicity; gentrification; private rented sector |
| JEL: | N0 R14 J01 |
| Date: | 2020–01–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:102985&r=all |
| By: | König, Felix |
| Abstract: | "Superstar effects" generate large compensation differentials among similarly talented individuals. Are superstar effects amplified by technological innovations that extend the scale over which talent is deployed? I test this idea in the market for entertainers, using the roll-out of television as a natural experiment which provides clean variation in a scale-related technological change. The launch of a local TV station increases top entertainers' incomes, resulting in a twofold increase in top-percentile income share, while reducing employment and incomes of lower-level talents. These results show clear evidence of superstar effects and are inconsistent with canonical models of skill-biased technological change. |
| Keywords: | superstar effect; inequality; top incomes; technical change |
| JEL: | J31 J23 O33 D31 |
| Date: | 2019–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:103450&r=all |
| By: | Joelle Scally; Wilbert Van der Klaauw; Andrew F. Haughwout; Donghoon Lee |
| Abstract: | The New York Fed?s Center for Microeconomic Data today released our Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit for the fourth quarter of 2017. Along with this report, we have posted an update of state-level data on balances and delinquencies for 2017. Overall aggregate debt balances increased again, with growth in all types of balances except for home equity lines of credit. In our post on the first quarter of 2017 we reported that overall balances had surpassed their peak set in the third quarter of 2008?the result of a slow but steady climb from several years of sharp deleveraging during the Great Recession. |
| Keywords: | household finance; CCP; mortgages |
| JEL: | R1 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednls:87241&r=all |